An administration official told The Epoch Times that it was an agency decision whether a response to the email was voluntary.
Federal agencies have been notified by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that their employees can choose to respond or ignore an email asking them to report what they did in the past week to their manager, according to an internal email sent to employees on Monday.
According to the internal email seen by The Epoch Times, employees were told that the OPM has clarified that any response to an email titled, “What did you do last week,” is voluntary and not responding to it “will not be considered a resignation.”
When asked by The Epoch Times whether a response to the email was voluntary, an administration official said that that question was an agency decision.
The guidance came after Elon Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s efforts in cutting government spending, said in a Feb. 23 post on social media platform X that federal workers will be required to respond to an email asking them about the work they completed in the past week and failure to respond would be taken as resignation.
The OPM email directed federal employees to provide a reply with five bullet points listing what they accomplished over the past week and copy their manager in their response email. Recipients were given until 11:59 p.m. local time on Feb. 24 to respond.
The email did not include the dismissal warning Musk had issued in his post on X.
Some departments have issued follow-up directives that contradicted Musk’s comments about the OPM email. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent an email to employees on Monday that there is “no HHS expectation that HHS employees respond to OPM and there is no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond.”
HHS advised its employees to keep their responses general if they choose to reply to the email and to avoid sharing details about grants or contracts they are working on.
“Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” the email stated.
