An eight-hour day may only require about two or three hours of actual time on the keyboard with "outputs" that are measurable.
If I'd been working on a briefing, I may have spent time in another office, reading documents, calling to verify some information, chasing down rabbit holes, or otherwise doing things that can't be considered "productive." When I was supervising a bunch of Soldiers conducting their tasks, their tasks might not result in anything reportable, so they'd have nothing to show for their work, similar to a day spent on the bank of a river not necessarily resulting in catching a certain number of fish. I had a battalion commander who used to complain that some of the analysts were on duty for eight hours and didn't have a report to show for their time. I told him that some things just aren't reportable. He also believed (incorrectly) that other people could make activity that was reportable appear. I told him that if someone could make the adversary do something reportable, I'd like to know that because they're not on our side.
Salaried employees usually don't have guaranteed inputs or outputs, but agree to be available and to present certain things by certain times. They are paid to respond appropriately when the right input happens. It's not like working on an assembly line or in a factory. Even the IT guys can't guarantee that they'll get a certain number of work orders. Same for the guys who worked supply issues. No guarantee of number of calls for pick up or delivery.
Some of the bean counters (managers) don't know the quality of the beans or what they look like before they're counted, so they aren't assessing the right things or asking people to show that they've done the right things or the right amount of things. They were poor managers when people worked in the office and poor managers when peop0le worked from home. They don't know what to assign, how to measure things or what to measure.
