Elon's Miscalculation: Tesla Called All Workers Back to Office but Doesn't Have Space for Them

More than three months after Elon Musk announced Tesla employees must return to the office, the company still doesn’t have the room or resources to for its workforce, ranging from a lack of parking to not enough office chairs, according to sources.

CNBC reports that in May, Elon Musk informed Tesla employees that they would need to “spend a minimum of forty hours in the office per week.” He suggested that anything else was “phoning it in.” Three months after this order, Tesla still doesn’t have the room or resources to return all of its employees to the offices, according to sources that work for the company in the U.S. and internal documents seen by CNBC.

The order has also caused a decline in morale among staff, according to sources. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Tesla was reportedly quite open to employees in office roles working remotely. As Tesla’s workforce has expanded, the company has focused on building international hubs and a new Texas facility.

But Tesla reportedly failed to build enough new workspaces or acquire enough office equipment at its existing facilities in Nevada and California to return all office employees and long-term contractors to the office for forty hours per week.

Several current employees claim that Tesla recently wanted to bring its San Francisco Bay Area employees to the office three days per week, but that a shortage of chairs, desk space, parking spots, and other resources proved a logistical nightmare. Instead, Tesla set staggered in-office schedules back to two days per week.

Supplies like dongles and charging cords are even in short supply, and on days where more employees are scheduled to work in-office, the crowded conditions have forced people to take phone calls outdoors as the firm does not have enough conference rooms and phone booths to accommodate that many employees at once.

Tesla is now reportedly surveilling employees’ attendance and providing details weekly reports to Musk.