About half of federal workforce answered Musk email, WH says
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More than 1 million federal workers responded to an email asking them to document what they did last week, sent at Elon Musk's behest, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday.
Why it matters: That's only about half the federal workforce — perhaps to be expected, as many agencies told employees to ignore the email.
- The email created confusion and a bit of chaos inside agencies. Musk had said on X that workers who didn't respond would be fired, but the White House backed away from that threat on Monday.
Zoom in: "We've had more than 1 million workers who have chosen to participate in this very simple task of sending five bullet points to your direct supervisor or manager, cc'ing OPM [the Office for Personnel Management]," Leavitt said, noting that she herself had sent off her five bullet points.
- "Took me about a minute and a half."
Where it stands: Leavitt noted that asking workers to report on their accomplishments is a strategy that Musk has employed at his private companies.
- But it's often a more complicated question at the federal level — for example, for employees are often working on classified information.
- Many took exception to having to justify their labor. One trauma nurse who messaged Axios said she was insulted by the question.
In the private sector, such strategies for assessing productivity are out of fashion these days, as companies use more sophisticated measures to understand what workers are doing, as the WSJ reported Tuesday.
- Asking workers who are under threat of termination to talk about their accomplishments may not yield much in the way of useful information — they're likely to give the most rosy view possible.
Leavitt on Tuesday said the point of the email exercise "is to ensure that federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers, that they are showing up to the office and that they are doing their jobs."
