> Should an employer not be able to see what their employees are doing at work?

There's a difference between visibility into work progress and just mass surveillance of all activity. The only metric that actually matters is the delivery of value.

Monitoring isn't an effective way to lead. It only reinforces employees to optimize for "looking busy" rather than being effective. If you have to audit your employees daily actions to know if they are doing their job, you've failed as a manager at defining their role or hiring the right people.

A good manager defines the what and the when, and leaves the how to the professional being paid to do it.