Amazon is paying its employees to quit
How much would your boss have to pay you to get you to quit your job?
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos offered the company’s full-time warehouse employees $2,000 to $5,000, depending on tenure, to quit. In a letter to shareholders, Bezos explained:
“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 is especially healthy for the company’s bottom line says Nancy Koehn, historian at the Harvard Business School. She says Bezos is taking a line from the Zappos playbook.
“It is as much a financial and strategic issue as it is an image or PR issue,” Koehn says.
She notes how difficult it can be to get rid of an employee that doesn’t fit in well with the company. If handled poorly, a lawsuit would be much more expensive than $5,000.
But don’t expect all employers to offer the same deal. Koehn thinks it’s unlikely to become a new trend in working America.
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