May
22

Why Zappos Pay Employees To Quit?

Zappos have been for a long time one of the best shoes retailers on the internet, their customer service is just too professional and you as a customer you have the right (Oh how you feel important) Anyways, the another interesting point is that Zappos pay employees to quit:

From Harvard Business Publishing And Cosumerist:

It’s a hard job, answering phones and talking to customers for hours at a time. So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)

Zappos have a great strategy here because they really care to hire the best people which can make the customer service as their priority and that’s why they are so successfull in being one of the best online shoes retailers.

So, Zappos has a lot to be proud of. It survived the dot com crash. It’s topping $1 billion in annual sales. And it has a posse so loyal it’ll drop everything to come party on an hour’s notice. But will the long-in-the-tooth Web company ever go public?