You really get at the crux of this for me, that these emails are kind of an abdication of responsibility. They are leapfrogging over (what I assume is) discomfort at actually dealing with people in favor of tasking the employee. Why have managers if they aren't responsible for the productivity of their underlings? Why make this an all-hands piece of information? It's passing the buck.

The two emails are two extremes of this: the first uses authority, the second uses information. "Tell us why we shouldn't hate you," vs. touchy-feely Lumbergh-ism. Both are too much. Tell the bosses of the people slacking off and let the employee's manager deal with it under pain of their job being at risk. Isn't that what a management hierarchy is for?