A purple cape has become an unlikely weapon in Japan's efforts to get its workers to work fewer hours. Employees at a Tokyo-based IT services company were recently forced to wear such "embarrassment" capes if they worked late on the third Wednesday of the month.
The shaming tactic worked: The amount of overtime worked was cut in half. This was not a case, however, of bosses imposing cape-wearing from on high. Instead, the company’s president and another senior colleague asked employees for their suggestions on ways to cut down on overtime after attending a training course on work-life balance, and the employees suggested the cape.
