Chief Fun Officer

I found an article that I think it describes something great (Business Today, July 6, 2003: Geeks And Their Funny Bone tech Companies Are Going Out Of Their Way To Make Working Fun.. An Indian company called NIIT appointed some 51year old person named Thadani to become a CFO – not Chief Financial Officer, but Chief Fun Officer. Hi smission and I quote: “To bring the smile, rather the guffaws, back into the workplace.” He says that "There's a new intruder who has crept into our lives. It is causing terror in NIIT. As the CFO, I declare a prolonged war against that intruder-seriousness." He hired an “army of officers” and the “theme of the year is 366 days of fun”. NIIT is a company busy in e-commerce and as all the others, suffering under the dot.com stigma of reduced profits and so on. But this is not the reason for the person to be engaged. The main reason is to reduce the turnover amongst workforce – in India – which is actually a booming dot.com country – average turnover rate is high at 13-14%, apparently. And the job of Mr. or Mrs. Thadani would be to lower the rate in his or her company – but I don’t know the level of attrition here.

There are more examples here, so please e-mail me to always_wow@yahoo.com.sg, if someone wants to have the details.