… they’ve gotten comfortable with looking for superficial signs of whether or not people appear to be productive.

This is really the crux of the issue. Rather than adapt the way that people are managed, it’s easier to simply stay with the status quo.

The worst part of this managerial style is that it’s so easy to “fake” work. I like to write and I wrote some of my best stories while at “work” in the office. Someone walks by your desk and sees you furiously typing away at a document that fills a whole page, and they think, “Wow! Look at her go!” despite the fact that I’m writing my 450K word fanfiction novel on company time. When the 2048 game craze took over, I had an Excel document that looked like something legit, but actually had the 2048 game in the middle of rows that talked about volume variances and efficiencies.

The appearance of work doesn’t account for anything. Managers need to account for production, i.e., here is the work that is expected, and have these employees completed the work. Even increasing the workload over time can get a good amount of work out of any employee if employers are so utterly concerned about a moment of the workday spent doing anything other than “work”.

Yes, you’re going to have employees who will just go MIA for three hours and you find out that they went out shopping or stepped out to hit a few balls at the driving range, but that is - again - a manager’s ability or inability to check-in with their team, to know what their people are working on, and ensure that deliverables are met.