Paying Your Employees To Quit Ross | May 27th, 2008

Zappos, the online shoe store, has a very unusual approach to weeding out customer service employees that Zappos does not believe will ultimately make the grade. One week into the training program for new customer service employees, Zappos offers new employees $1,000 to resign on the spot (about 10 percent accept). This is a very innovative and unusual practice.

Zappos believes that a new customer service employee willing to take the $1,000 and resign is not fully committed to the job and isn’t fully in touch with the Zappos culture. Zappos has concluded that the $1,000 payout is less then the cost of continuing to pay an unproductive/uninspired call center employee.