The quality of management will be the same regardless of if the employee is working from the office or at home. The person who was allowed to "milk the system" in the office, surely, will be allowed to do the same when they are working from home. It seems unreasonable to me an employee's manager would change their behavior based on where the employee happened to be working.
I don't believe Marissa Meier demonstrated that managers significantly improved when their employees were required to work full time in the office. I think that would be the interesting measure here: do managers really perform better when their direct reports are in the office?
Simply put. Some people need “structure” (that can be in the form of peer pressure, accountability, visibility, etc). Without it they flounder. At work if someone is not mainly on their job, people will eventually come to know them as slackers. Working from home allows quite a few slackers to fly under the radar.
It has parallels in learning. Some people are self paced self learners and can learn remotely. Some need the pace and management by going to a physical classroom with an instructor.
My question is why would they perform better at the office? In your example their performance is the same and they become labeled as "slackers" by their co-worker and management. If we allow these people to perform poorly in the office, shouldn't we also allow them to perform poorly when they work remotely?
If a manager is not providing adequate structure at the office, it seems unlikely that this would change regardless of where the employee is sitting. Those that need structure and do not get enough of it will flounder no matter their work location.
I disagree that it is more difficult to detect those employees who are less productive when the employee is working from home. On the contrary, I suspect their lack of productivity would be even more glaring and obvious then in the office.
Peer pressure. There are more eyes at work. Wannabe slackers see other slackers getting cut and want to avoid that fate by doing the minimum that allows them to avoid that result which is greater than the minimum to avoid that while working from home.
> My question is why would they perform better at the office?
If you spend the whole day watching Youtube in office, your boss/colleagues will notice that and ask questions, no one is going to do that when you are at home.
I don't believe Marissa Meier demonstrated that managers significantly improved when their employees were required to work full time in the office. I think that would be the interesting measure here: do managers really perform better when their direct reports are in the office?