Tesla decided to take a very hands-on approach to tackling employees who call out sick at its gigafactory in Germany. Factory management is going to employees’ homes when they call out sick to check if they are actually ill. Plant workers are understandably pissed off, slamming the door in their faces and even calling the police. Despite the public backlash, Tesla hasn’t ruled out future home visits.
The call-out rate at the 12,000-employee factory outside of Berlin is ridiculous, according to Handelsblatt. The company states its sick leave rate was 17 percent in August. For comparison, the figure is well above the national average of 6.1 percent in 2023. In July, Tesla offered a €1,000 ($1,120) bonus to every employee who missed less than five percent of their time at work. The August callout rate shows that it didn’t work.
The factory’s managing director André Thierig and HR director Erik Demmler decided to take a hardline stance against absenteeism by conducting employee home visits like they were running Henry Ford’s River Rouge, a comparison that Elon Musk would welcome. The duo were also the ones going door-to-door themselves. In a taped recording published by Handelsblatt, Demmler said:
“This has nothing to do with general suspicion. We simply picked out 30 employees who had the relevant abnormalities, who had been on sick leave for quite a long time, but also many first notifications. And what we found was very, very mixed.”
If they chose employees based on sick day abnormalities, it’s clear that they suspected something. Thierig attempted to defend the policy by claiming that other companies do home visits as well and some employees approve of the practice. It doesn’t help factory morale if workers know management doesn’t care enough about their well-being to just let them use their sick days in peace.