The Human Resources Administration (OPM) has notified agency leaders that employee responses to emails seeking a summary of what they have achieved this week were voluntary and that failure to do so would not be considered a resignation.
Guidance given to HR personnel at all agencies weakens Saturday push from Elon Musk, sending out five bullet notes of what all federal employees achieved by midnight on Monday or face Requests to be deleted.
“This afternoon, OPM, during the OPM Chief Human Capital Officer Council meeting, notified the agency that it was voluntarily responding to the OPM email,” according to an email obtained by The Hill.
“OPM also made it clear that the response to the email is not comparable to resignation.”
Guidance from OPM to HR leaders comes amidst the lawn war between agency leaders and masks.
Some departments have instructed employees not to respond to emails.
In a message to staff on Saturday, FBI Director Kash Patel said: “If you need more information, I'll adjust the answer. Please pause the response for now.”
“The FBI is responsible for our review process through the director's office and will carry out reviews,” he added.
DHS leadership has emailed over 250,000 employees. Similarly, I told them not to respond to emails.
“DHS Management responds on behalf of the department and all its component offices,” the email said.
“At this point, no reporting action is required. For now, please pause any answers other than the command chain in the DHS chain.”
But Trump defended his mission to Musk employees on Monday.
“There were a lot of geniuses in sending it. We're trying to find out if people are working, so we're sending letters to people. Tell us what you did last week. People are saying. If they don't respond, it's very possible that there are no such people or they're not working,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
