Amazon knows that the best employees are the ones who want to be there. To keep the team full of committed employees, Amazon has created a “Pay to Quit” program that offers employees a bonus of up to $5,000 to leave the company.
Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, outlined the idea in his annual letter to the company’s stakeholders. After working at the company for a year, employees who no longer want to work there can leave and get a $2,000 check. Every year the severance amount increases by $1,000 until it reaches the $5,000 limit after four years.
The offer is titled “Please Don’t Take This Offer.”
“We hope they don’t take the offer. We want them to stay,” Bezos said in the 2013 stakeholder letter. “The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want. In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”
Employees who aren’t engaged can negatively impact retention, which is why Amazon-owned Zappos originally began the practice of paying unhappy new hires to quit.
Less than 2% of new employees take the money, according to Zappos’ website.
Zappos is known for having a great company culture, with CEO Tony Hsieh seen as an expert on the subject. His first book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,” was published in 2013.
The Zappos culture got additional media attention at the beginning of 2014 when they announced that they were getting rid of managers and job titles to work as a holacracy.
Instead of a traditional management structure, a holacratic-style workplace has groups of employees called “circles” that make decisions. This is intended to give all employees a voice and increase productivity.
The effectiveness of changing to a holacratic work environment remains to be seen. Zappos is one of the largest companies to undertake the style.
A Gallup estimate showed that about 70% of the responsibility for employee engagement stems from the management team. Gallup has yet to study a holacratic work environment.
