What’s the matter? Did the CEO’s neighbor get a much bigger yacht and the CEO simply must outdo it?
I worked for Canon . This sounds very Japanese , no surprise.
Many years ago the company I worked for overpaid a bunch of people by sending double checks. One guy, who worked for me, cashed both checks and went on a spending spree. We made him pay it back. He told me “I knew it was wrong but just couldn’t help myself”.
I’m flabbergasted that so many of the replies are that the employees should get to keep what isn’t theirs. The company is being more than fair by giving them options to return the excess.
You can fire the people who did not catch the mistake.
And then you swallow hard and deal with it.
You can let it be known that a mistake was made and that you have chosen to not penalize your employees for something that was not their fault.
If every worker got $999 extra in bonuses it will not break the company.
And it would show you as a company that takes responsibility and does not sluff your errors off onto the innocent.
Or.. you do this.
This is very, very bad publicity for Honda.
The kind the comes with a great big price tag.