I find it arguably easier now to see what people are actually contributing in a remote environment. In the office, people can just 'look busy' and take meetings

I find it arguably easier now to see what people are actually contributing in a remote environment. In the office, people can just 'look busy' and take meetings and then go to lunch/gym and just disappear for hours. In a remote environment, you have more metrics like how many tickets resolved/responded to, hours worked, meetings taken, what deliverables were completed.