If you pay people to make 1000 chairs that are just sitting there, do you really think that you don’t have an asset on your books at all? This is called Inventory. It’s certainly an asset.

And an asset doesn’t come into existence out of nowhere. It comes into existence because you paid money for it. And the money you pay for it is indeed the persons salary.

Now sure, it’s possible to get away with not doing this, but it’s not correct by accounting standards to do so.

As for which standards, International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS)