Not are, were. I no longer work for that company. I’m typing up more details in my reply to OP.

I never met the burden of proof that my HR team said was required if I wanted to write someone up. The company did not have appropriate spying tools to definitively prove that an employee had not actually typed anything in two hours even though their teams status was showing active. There was always the hypothetical, “I was at my desk but my phone was ringing non-stop with customer calls and that’s why I couldn’t answer this customer’s 5 urgent e-mails over 3 hours.”

I’m not saying that I wanted that kind of babysitting spyware installed. I absolutely did not. I don’t believe in that sort of thing and wouldn’t have wanted something like that installed on my computer for my bosses to spy on me.

To answer your question directly, I’m not an idiot. I’d call an employee’s cell to ask why certain things had not been actioned yet and hear background noises that clearly did not come from a home office (traffic noise, wind, PA announcements, etc). My best guess is they would stop whatever they were doing, pull out their laptop for a few minutes to do whatever I was bugging them about and then disappear again. I’d call them out on it, but they knew there was nothing I could actually do so it didn’t matter to them.

Most of the team were honest and diligent. They worked just as well at home as they did in the office and we never had any problems. But there are always people who know what they can get away with and will try to get away with as much as they can.