Federal workers are massively stressed, and that's a problem

The big picture: Workers inside the civil service are under massive stress.

• A return-to-office order has been confusing to follow for those who've always worked remotely, or are coming back to offices without enough space for everyone.
• Last weekend's email asking for five bullet points that describe what workers did last week triggered chaos. It's also a hard question to answer for those inside agencies that have seen cuts or stop-work orders.
• "Because of the indiscriminate firings and newly introduced culture of fear, I'm the only one left to work on my current project," Steve Leibman, an employee at the former U.S. Digital Service, wrote in his reply, which he posted on LinkedIn. "I'll be unable to accomplish it on my own..."

How it works: If cuts are ongoing and workers are under constant threat, problems set in quickly.

• These include emotional exhaustion, withdrawal, and a feeling like you're not so good at your job anymore, said Anthony Wheeler, a professor of organizational psychology and management at Widener University.
• These are basically classic signs of burnout. "Productivity plummets and turnover increases," he said. "There are very predictable effects when you start rattling your workforce."

You don't want a situation where workers are coming in not knowing if they, or the person next to them, is on the chopping block, said Robert Sutton, an organizational psychologist and professor of management emeritus at Stanford University who has studied this topic for decades.

• A best practice, Sutton said, is to do one round of cuts — swiftly — and move on, rather than drag out the process.
• Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz explained it in a post in 2010: "Once you decide that you will have to lay people off, the time elapsed between making that decision and executing that decision should be as short as possible."

Between the lines: The cuts underway within the federal government don't appear to be following the best practices playbook, judging by conversations with current and recently fired federal employees, as well as reports of firings at agencies that have had to be reversed.

• If you wanted to create an environment to make workers look like poor performers, this exactly what you would do, Wheeler said.

• "You would be constantly shocking people."

What they're saying: "They are trying to put a wrench in our system so we can't do our jobs, then fire us," an employee at Veterans Affairs told Axios, speaking on the condition of anonymity given the current environment.

Zoom in: That VA employee said it's been hard to get work done on her team, a group that has always worked remotely taking calls from vets about their healthcare.

• But after the Trump administration ordered workers to return to the office, they've been scrambling to find places to work.
• Since they have no office, one of her colleagues is working from a VA cafeteria, a tricky situation because calls deal with private information. Another colleague has staked out a room in an assisted living center that is meant for a patient.
• The employee herself is waiting for instructions on where to work.

The other side: The White House and Musk said they are trying to make government run more efficiently, at a lower cost to taxpayers.

• "As outlined in today's memo to agencies, this administration has created a thoughtful, phased process to carry out workforce restructuring that will reduce unnecessary waste and bloat while continuing to deliver high-quality services to the American people," a spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management, McLaurine Pinover, said in a statement to Axios.