Tesla begins tracking office worker attendance

Yahoo Finance auto reporter Pras Subramanian details how Tesla is reportedly sending emails to workers if they don't go into the office enough.

Video transcript

SEANA SMITH: Elon Musk wants his employees back in the office. And he's keeping a close eye to make sure that it happens. Reports saying that Tesla is sending emails to workers who haven't, quote, "badged in to the office enough." Pras Subramanian is on this story, a couple of other EV stories for us. But Pras, explain this to us because we heard from Musk just last month, he wanted a lot of his employees back in the office at least 40 hours a week. But he looks like he's really taking this to the extreme and monitoring when people actually come in.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAM: Yeah, imagine you go to work, and every time you scan that badge, you go in and out, they're tracking where you are. You're right. Musk said-- he said, I want my people in the office 40 hours a week minimum. And they're actually going to do something about it. So Insider reported this story earlier today. They got some emails on Blind, some employees getting these warning emails. We have one up right now.

So it says like, you are seeing this email because there's no record of you using the badge to enter a Tesla facility on at least 16 days over the 30-day period ending on June 28. Please clear the reason for your absence with your manager, with a copy sent to absence@tesla.com. HR people, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, it's-- employees are upset by this, right? It seems a little bit creepy. And it's like, you know, let us-- trust us to do our work. And Elon's saying, no, we want you to-- we want to prove you're in the office. So it's not surprising this happened. But you've got to imagine for someone like an Amazon or a company that doesn't care about that, they can poach some good talent from Tesla.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, it's a bad culture, you would think.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAM: Yeah.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And you raise a good point there. And especially with how he acts as a CEO really under scrutiny when you look at SpaceX, with the potential takeover of Twitter, what does, do you think, this does in terms of what people can expect from company culture if Elon Musk does end up being a CEO at Twitter?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAM: Here there's two sides to this story, where a lot of the old school thinking is that people in the office, you can talk and collaborate. You can actually get ideas and things done pretty quickly. So I think there's gonna be some people that actually appreciate that. But it seems like in today's tech world, most people want the flexibility of working from home and the trust that-- from their employer that they can actually get a lot of work done. In a way, it's easier for them, too, as well.

DAVE BRIGGS: Am I the only one here that thinks everyone that has a badge ought to expect that their company's tracking when they're in the office and not? You should not have an expectation of privacy if you are swiping in and out of every room.

SEANA SMITH: Yes.

DAVE BRIGGS: Including our own building.

SEANA SMITH: But what would you do if you got an email saying, hey, Dave-- well, take us out of it because we have to be at the office every single day. And it's very obvious when we're not at the office.

DAVE BRIGGS: All right.

SEANA SMITH: But if you didn't know that you were being closely monitored, I think that's the thing.

DAVE BRIGGS: I just-- assume you are.