In Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to shareholders, the Amazon.com CEO and founder revealed an interesting program that pays workers at the company’s warehouses to quit.
Yes, that’s right: Amazon gives money to those who jump ship.
“Pay to Quit,” an idea born at Amazon-owned Zappos.com, was put into place to get rid of employees who don’t actually want to be working at Amazon.
Here’s how Bezos explains it:
Pay to Quit is pretty simple. Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The first year the offer is made, it’s for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on the offer is “Please Don’t Take This Offer.” We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay. Why do we make this offer? 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.
This deal only applies to those inside Amazon’s warehouses, so employees that decide to leave their jobs down at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters won’t be making the extra dough when they depart.
Bezos also noted two other “employee empowerment” programs: Career Choice, in which Amazon pays up to 95 percent of tuition for courses related to in-demand fields, and Virtual Contact Center, which allows Amazon’s customer service employees to work from home.
Read Bezos’ entire letter to shareholders here.
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