I believe Elon was saying 90 percent of government employees are not showing up at offices weekly now. Is it possible, that many of these employees do not even exist, and their paycheck is all just going to enrich a handful of insiders?
Thus, demanding that everyone shows up to work would be a means of calling them out on their fraud.
Temporarily do away with direct deposit and force them to pick up their paycheck, with ID. That would at least force a real person to be verified.