When you screw up big time at Laffoon and Sons, you won’t merely be whispered about and shunned during the company’s mandatory volleyball games.
You’ll also spend time standing in the hallway – facing the wall and wearing a dunce cap.
“Too many mistakes were costing us too many millions,” says Norbert Fingotti, CEO of the Miami-based software proposers. As the problem increased over the past five years, the company stepped up standard discipline measures like notes in files, withholding of raises, and banishment from task forces. Still, in 2017 losses attributable to employee error totaled $3,404,000.
And so, staring in January, “Project Accountability” was launched. If a mistake costs the company more than $35, the responsible employee is summoned to Human Resources, and handed a cap. Offenders must stand in the hall outside the cafeteria at lunchtime.
How long they remain depends on the severity of the mistake. In general, dunces must spend one hour for each $1000 they cost the company.
“Having people see you in a dunce cap automatically decreases your credibility,” says options analyzer Steve Fullman, who spent three days wearing one in late January because he miscalculated a post-transitional accrual. He says he now triple and quadruple checks his work to make sure he’ll never have to wear the cap again.
The program seems to be working, says CEO Fingotti, citing that losses due to error so far in 2019 have totaled only $201.55.
