Late on Monday, the Office of Personnel Management issued guidance with additional instructions on the email it sent to all Executive Branch federal employees. In short, OPM gave agencies discretion over excluding employees from responding.
The original email read as follows:
Subject: What did you do last week?
Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last
week and cc your manager.Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments.
Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST
OPM said that email responses should be directed to agency leadership with a copy sent to [email protected]. Employees who were on approved leave on February 24, or who lacked access to email, are not expected to respond by the deadline.
OPM directed agencies to review employee responses to the activity/accomplishment request, considering factors like leave status and email access. Agency heads may exclude personnel from the expectation and should inform OPM of the exclusions.
OPM’s full guidance reads:
Responses to this email should be directed to agency leadership, with a copy to OPM at [email protected]. Agencies should review responses and evaluate nonresponses, considering such factors as whether the employee was on excused leave on Monday, February 24, 2025 or had access to email on that date. Employees on approved leave on February 24, or who lacked access to email, are not expected to respond by the deadline. Agency heads may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion.
Agencies should consider whether the expectation for employees to submit activity and/or accomplishment bullets should be integrated into the agency’s Weekly Activity Report or future required organizational activity reporting in order provide an enterprise-wide view of workforce achievements and organizational trends. Furthermore, agencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity/accomplishment requests. It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.
At Counsel’s direction, in order to comport with the Presidential Records Act, the Executive Office of the President is exempted from this exercise.
According to the White House, over 1 million federal employees responded to the email.
The original email was sent on Saturday, February 22. Elon Musk said in a post on X Saturday afternoon:
Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.
Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.
President Trump addressed the email situation at the White House on Monday, backing Musk’s effort. He said to reporters that any federal employees that did not answer the email would be subject to termination.
“I thought it [the email] was great because we have people who don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they worked for the government, so by asking the question, ‘Tell us what you did this week,’ what he’s [Musk] doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’ And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist,” said Trump.
In a new post he published Monday evening, Musk wrote:, “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
Federal employees had been given varying direction from their agencies on whether or not to respond. OPM’s memo did not address any of this directly, so consequences for failing to respond remain vague at best.
