In a bid to push things back to normal, a Japanese semiconductor equipment company has asked its employees working from home to give a part of their earnings to their coworkers who braved the pandemic and reported to work in office. To accomplish this, the Company will be making use of its internal currency called “Will”.
With this, they are setting up a micro-economy within their firm. The sales executives will pay a part of their salary to the plant workers, who come in to produce the semiconductor. The plant workers will, in turn, pay the engineers designing the products. Even meeting rooms, work desks, and computers carry a price. Whenever a sale is made, the coin travels back through the supply chain. As a result, ‘will’ has helped reduced overtime and unnecessary meetings. The balance amounts that remain are paid in yen at the end of each quarter in the form of bonuses.
The mechanism was developed as the Company couldn’t allow all of their employees to work from home, given their nature of work. The Tokyo-based company had to keep its factories operational in order to facilitate production. Hence, it set up the currency, where some money gets back through the supply chain, and to the factory workers.
The Company realised that expecting some employees to report to work physically and others to stay at home was not fair, and therefore, it decided to offer behavioural incentives, such as the power of ‘will’.
Almost 40 per cent of the Company’s 5,600 employees showed up even during the pandemic and received the bonus. Despite Disco’s workplace being fairly active during the pandemic, it still managed to keep the virus under control. Cases were as low as in single digits.
Incentivising office work has been profitable for the company as well as its employees.
