Sure presence does not equal productivity. In leadership roles presence is very important. Absent management is can be demotivating. I do a lot of managing by walking around. It has a number of benefits but the big one is access. It makes me accessible. It advertises when I am available. If I am in my office, sure I will drop what I am doing to talk with an employee, if I can but if I am on the factory floor workers are more likely to start a conversation or air a grievance.
Productivity comes in different flavors. If you are making piece parts than, productivity is output and scrap rate. If you are writing proposals then it is dollar value of contracts awarded per time interval. How many piece parts do you think a worker will make working from home? Probably never have to come in to the office if you are writing proposals or sourcing material or doing stress analysis. If you are managing a team that works from home, a parking spot is a stupid idea but if you are managing a team that works on the factory floor, them seeing your car in the parking lot when they arrive and still there when they leave will mean a lot especially if they get paid by the hour and they know you are salary.
Oh, regarding the flashy ride. Don't get one, drive a modest vehicle. You don't want to make an impression that you make a ton more money than everyone else. I am support pay transparency but of course only after making sure pay is fair. Then I could have that flashy ride because then everyone would know that it did not come from the company paying me a lot more than others. I think that the lack of pay transparency is a strong indication that some people are being paid too much.
We are not a huge company so I know pretty well what everyone is doing, how good they are at their job and how productive are they. If I knew how much they are paid, I would know that they are being paid fairly. I am pretty sure that in some cases we are overpaying and it would cause trouble if we knew what these people were being paid.
Much talk is made here on medium about working from home. I guess it is because so many people here are knowledge workers who can work from home but only a small fraction of the work force can work from home. For most workers presence is necessary for any sort of productivity.
TEK
