Employee accountability with a remote only workforce?

I'm definitely being too nice. No one is seeing consequences besides my disappointment.

I need to get a handle on this. What are you guys doing to encourage meeting goals? What are you guys doing to reprimand when goals are consistently missed?

I feel like a glorified babysitter. If I am not meeting with my team at least a couple days a week for a few hours on those days, hand holding them through tasks, they are not getting done. I made myself extremely clear, We set goals, and I spent a month on running the business not doing the tasks in the business. They just went back to their old ways nearly as soon as the calls with me stopped. A month past with next to no progress at all.

T1, T2, T3 ticket comes in? Someone calls? They're on it. Any other internal task? Constant hand holding and babysitting If I want to see any progress.

I already let one guy go earlier this year after constant, constant letdowns, and thought it would put the fear of God in the other ones, but it did not. They are still nowhere near as bad as he was though so everyone is sticking around.

Then there are the non-technical tasks. I hired somebody in to do a bunch of non-tech stuff. They have clearly outlined goals, a whole bunch of resources at their disposal, And I'm right there to ask questions too. I always answer, And will set up a meeting if it's required. I never make them feel bad for asking, I encourage it. I leave them alone for weeks at a time before checking in finding out they have barely made it past the last thing we talked about, for two whole freaking weeks.

How in the hell do you combat this? I have used recruiters, I have hired in myself, I have done personality tests to try to get ahead of this. Employees ultimately hired always interview well. Their first few months are always good and then they just get lazy. I made this company's day to day too efficient.

My latest attempt was hiring a technical manager. I'm actually seeing progress, but he has come to me saying that he has to stay on them to see progress. They are killing it when there's work, but there's easily 20 hours of free time a week and a long list of internal things to do and assigned, set goals for each of them, they are consistently missed, And they don't even bother making excuses. I just don't get it.