Here's a great idea from Zappos, courtesy of Bill Taylor posting on Harvard's Business site.

Pay your employees to quit.

Here's an excerpt from his post:

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.)

I think back to the hundreds of people I employed over the years. There were a handful of bad picks - people who just weren't right for the company. For a few thousand dollars I could have saved myself hundreds of thousands worth of headaches. I probably would have save a few good employees who quit because they had to work with the misfits.

What do you think?

P.S.> Check out www.butterflyoflife.com. I'm consulting on starting a new ecommerce site. If you go in the next few days you'll see the "before" - next week we launch the "after." If you are curious, the site features fine Butterfly styled jewelry to raise awareness and money for cancer research.

Labels: consulting, HR

This entry was posted by Mike Nolan, on Tuesday, May 20, 2008. You can leave your response.