If I Pay You - Will You Quit?

What would you do if your boss gave you a monetary incentive to quit your job?  I don’t mean a severance payment for a layoff or reduction in the workforce, but rather he simply paid you to quit.  It is a very interesting thought.  This is the type of incentive Amazon is offering its employees, and here is why.

Gaining the trust and loyalty of an employee is not something that happens overnight, and sometimes for various reasons the bond never really happens and employees become disillusioned.  When an employee is disengaged from their work, companies pay dearly in productivity, morale, and absenteeism.  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, introduced a new program for improving employee engagement called “Pay to Quit.”  Here is what he said about 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 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.”

Paying disgruntled, unhappy, and disengaged employees to leave is in itself a protection to the company and to the rest of their workforce.  This may seem like a risky move on Amazon’s part, but really it is an experimental strategy for improving employee engagement and giving employees the opportunity to better themselves and do what makes them happy!

 

Source:  www.tlnt.com

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