The Trump administration despatched one other obnoxious e mail to federal staff ordering them to listing their achievements from the earlier week, making clear it intends for the bureaucratic memo exercise to be a brand new weekly ritual for greater than two million staff.
The e-mail from the Workplace of Personnel Administration, or OPM, was titled “What did you do final week? Half II.” Just like the earlier one, it instructed staff to “please reply to this e mail with approx. 5 bullets describing what you completed,” and gave a deadline of Monday at midnight.
The primary such e mail was paired with a menace from Elon Musk, the top of President Donald Trump’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity, who mentioned nonresponses can be thought-about resignations. It prompted widespread confusion throughout companies, with some division leaders telling staff to answer, and others telling them to disregard it and keep inside their company chain of command.
Comply with-up emails shared with HuffPost on Saturday confirmed some company leaders falling extra in step with Musk after OPM’s second “what did you do final week?” demand.
Management on the Division of Homeland Safety despatched an e mail to staff Saturday telling them they have been “implementing a structured course of to submit a short abstract of their key accomplishments from the earlier week.” They known as the brand new coverage “a part of our inner accountability” efforts, and mentioned it could align with OPM’s current steerage.
The earlier week, DHS had instructed staff to “pause” any response to OPM and mentioned “no reporting motion from you is required right now.”
“One employee mentioned the train appears to be based mostly on the premise that first-line supervisors pay ‘completely no consideration in any respect to wtf’ their staff are doing.”
In an indication of how time-consuming this train has already been, the appearing commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Safety, which is a part of DHS, despatched out a two-page memo to staff on Saturday attempting to clarify what’s anticipated.
It listed 17 questions and solutions on the method, together with “What ought to I do if I didn’t work all or a part of final week?” (Reply: Reply and “point out you have been on depart”), and “Ought to staff who carry out the identical actions every week ship the identical bullet factors every week?” (The TL;DR reply: “In case you are not sure about what to incorporate, ask your supervisor for help.”)
One employee, who spoke on situation of anonymity for concern of reprisal, mentioned the train appears to be based mostly on the premise that first-line supervisors pay “completely no consideration in any respect to wtf” their subordinates are doing.
On the Division of Vitality, Secretary Chris Wright had what one worker described as a “change of tenor” within the second week of OPM’s demand. After initially being informed they didn’t have to reply, staff have been notified Saturday that they need to reply.
Jose Luis Magana by way of Related Press
“At DOE, we do impactful and very important work for America and are proud to share our accomplishments with others,” Wright mentioned in an e mail shared with HuffPost. “To that finish, I ask all DOE staff to answer to the OPM e mail by the requested deadline of Monday at 11:59pm ET every week.”
He added, “Staff at present with out e mail entry because of depart, momentary responsibility, or different legitimate causes ought to submit their response inside 48 hours of regaining entry.”
Some company leaders have been nonetheless pushing again on the OPM directive, nevertheless. Each the State Division and the Nationwide Aeronautics and House Administration despatched messages to staff this weekend instructing them to not reply, based on a report in The Washington Submit.
The accomplishment memo is a part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to shrink the federal workforce, largely by making staff depressing and inspiring them to stop. The White Home has unilaterally shut down federal companies, orchestrated the firings of hundreds of probationary staff and tried to push out many extra via a legally dicey deferred resignation proposal.
Trump’s implementation of workforce insurance policies has been rife with chaos and confusion, as leaders contradict and reverse each other in pursuit of the administration’s targets. After OPM initially ordered staff to listing their week’s accomplishments, the company later walked again its demand and mentioned replying was voluntary.
However that recommendation was undermined by Trump himself, who mentioned publicly Monday that staff could possibly be punished for not replying to OPM.
“After which, in the event you don’t reply, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, as a result of lots of people aren’t answering as a result of they don’t even exist,” the president mentioned.
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