Shouldn't the manager of the 'bunch of workers' notice the guy is underperforming and understand why ? Maybe that manager is the one that shouldn't be doing that job
And they do that by either looking over your shoulder (1 person at a time) or collecting metrics on the entire team and the output. Both of these have different downsides.
The biggest issue is leadership or managers always wanting the number to go up from the individual. "We need 12 widgets per hour instead of 10 for just this one quarter bro" but then that becomes the new norm and eventually "We need 14/16/18/20 widgets per hour..."
It's boiling frog management that makes people distrust managers doing any kind of performance monitoring
The biggest issue is leadership or managers always wanting the number to go up from the individual. "We need 12 widgets per hour instead of 10 for just this one quarter bro" but then that becomes the new norm and eventually "We need 14/16/18/20 widgets per hour..."
It's boiling frog management that makes people distrust managers doing any kind of performance monitoring