Once a year, Amazon employees get an interesting opportunity. They are offered cash to quit working at their company. The first offer is worth $2,000. Each successive year it increases by $1,000 up to a maximum of $5,000. This creative idea began at Zappos, a company known for their innovative approach to organizational culture.
So why do organizations pay employees to leave? The premise is a simple one, “unhappy people make for unhappy companies” (Harvard Business Review). We have all worked with Poisonous Peter (or Petra). They can suck the life out of the best job. As Jeff Bezoes, CEO and founder of Amazon states, “Great companies are great precisely because they stand for something special, different, distinctive. That means, almost by definition, that they are not for everybody. It takes a certain personality type to thrive…if there isn’t the right fit, it makes perfect sense to quit” (Harvard Business Review). Paying employees to leave can serve the purpose of weeding the organizational garden.
But there may be an even more important reason. Pay-to-leave incentives make employees regularly review a very critical question – what gets you up in the morning? Because work is personal, we need to be motivated to perform our best. The pay-to-leave offer makes employees re-examine their motivation each year.
At a recent event hosted by the Coachella Valley Small Business Development Center we heard an example of this concept. Jennifer Di Francesco serves as the Spa & Sports Club Director for Toscana Country Club, a prestigious country club in our region. Each spring Jennifer has an interesting challenge. Due to a high population of seasonal residents who winter in the desert, she has to lay off almost all of her staff for five months during the slow season. Despite this challenge, she notes that almost every staff member chooses to return.
While she does not offer pay-to-leave incentives, her unique situation provides a different version of this concept. Instead of pay-to-leave, her employees are faced with a decision of pay-to-stay. Similar to the Amazon model, it makes her employees examine what is important. Jennifer believes that an employee’s decision to return is rooted in the value of their ‘psychic salary’, an idea promoted by Holly Steil in her book Neon Signs of Service. Psychic salary refers to the amount of non-financial value that an employee derives from their job. She realizes that there are more reasons than just money that keep employees happy. Similar to Amazon, Toscana Club employees must re-examine what gets them up in the morning on an annual basis.
Wise employers figure out what contributes to their employee’s psychic salary and intentionally build it. Jennifer notes that club prestige and a healthy work environment are two things which help her foster this. For your team, it may be the location of your business, the boss they work for, scheduling flexibility or organizational culture.
Research by the Gallup organization reveals that only 30% of Americans say they are engaged at work (Why We Hate Work: Issues of Engagement). This means that most of us are not creating the psychic salary that employees need to feel engaged. Peter Drucker summarized it well; “culture eats strategy for lunch”. If we fail to make our employees examine their motives, salary doesn’t matter.
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Jeff Suderman is a strategist, professor and consultant who works in the field of organizational development. He works with clients to improve leadership, teamwork, organizational alignment, strategy and organizational Future-Readiness. He resides in Palm Desert, California. Twitter: @jlsuderman
Bill Taylor (April 14, 2014). Why Amazon is copying Zappos and paying employees to quit. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review.