Japanese Company Disco Corp Wants Its Remote Working Employees To Pay The Ones Attending The Offices
The pandemic has forced companies all over the world to let their employees work from home wherever it is possible. Japanese semiconductor equipment manufacturing company Disco Corp. had also adapted to the new remote working culture like so many other companies in the country. They have launched a new approach where the employees who want to stay at home to work have to pay a certain amount to the ones who come to the office regularly.
The company is based in Tokyo is quite unusual in its own way. It had been using an internal currency called Will. They have done so in order to form a micro-economy in which the sales team had to pay the factory workers to create the goods that they sell. Then the workers will pay the engineers to design the products they make. The office materials like desks, PC, and the rooms themselves had a certain price. Throughout the entire process, after the sale is made, the money goes back through the supply chain. The profits were then given to the employees in yen after every quarter as bonuses.
During the pandemic, Disco had to let the employees work from home. But some workers were needed at the factories to keep them going. That is when the company decided to try an approach in which the employees working remotely needed to pay some amount of Will to the ones who were keeping the factories running.
The SEO of the company, Kazuma Sekiya said that it is unfair when some are ordered to go to the office while others are not. He also mentioned that the company’s internal currency Will gave incentives based on behaviors, so the choice falls onto the employees.
The company was founded by Sekiya’s grandfather in 1937. The currency system was introduced to the system in 2011, inspired by video games. Will is given by saving from reducing unnecessary meetings and overtime. The venture had a huge impact on the bottom line. In the last fiscal year, Disco had a record profit and their margins were the highest in the industry. The share price of the company has tripled in just five years.
At the beginning of the pandemic, almost 40% of employees came to the office and they earned good bonuses, according to Disco. The infection rate at the company was quite low compared to others in Japan. Now nearly 90% of the workers are back to work physically. Almost 5600 people work at Disco.
The vaccination process has made the companies think about how to get people back to work. The biggest organizations like Uber Technology, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and others have offered new policies but were not that successful. Many are taking the risk of losing their jobs than stepping out into the world again.
Sekiya said that they needed to assure the workers that going back to work is safe.
