Introduction
Enhancement of performance and the work done by employees in an organization requires the organization to recognize ways to motivate the employees. Motivation in the workplace propels the enhancement of the performance as well as the quality of work done. Cognizant of the various dynamics that affect the workplace, employers engineer innovative ways through which they motivate their employees to increase productivity and performance of their employees. The pay to quit strategy is among the innovative models of human resource management that sprouts from the objective of increasing the performance of the employees through motivation and increase in morale of the workers (Chopra, and Chopra, 2012). Amazon deployed the strategy that targeted the newer employees to increase morale as well as eradicate those employees whose objectives are not aligned with the company objectives. Therein, this paper will endeavor to categorically analyze the strategy as employed by Amazon and its relevance in increasing employee morale. Further, the paper will analytically compare the strategy as deployed by Amazon and zappos.com.
Pay to quit offer
Cognizant of the problems encountered by employees in the workplace, amazon engineered a mechanism through which employees could be motivated and increase the morale in the workplace. Interestingly, the pay to quit offer encourages employees to quit their jobs. Nonetheless, critical analysis of the strategy indicates a well thought out mechanism through which Amazon employed to improve morale. Initially, Amazon was criticized for the deplorable working conditions through which its employees were working under. Several reports from the department of occupational safety were4 inclusive of the massive neglect through which employees’ working environment was (Moriez, 2016). Nevertheless, the workload through which the employees had to work through requires a maximum commitment to the job. Therefore, to increase the efficacy of the employees, Amazon derived a mechanism through which it increased the morale of the employees and reduce unhappiness. Bezos pay to quit strategy was demarcated to pay the new employees up to USD 1000 that increased annually till it the amount reached USD 5000.
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Employee happiness is a contribution of several factors that reside in the workplace and more so, on the objectives of the employees. To increase the morale of the employees, Bezos offered monetary incentives regarding the pay to quit offering through which the employees had the chance to be paid a work away fee with no questions asked. The strategy is based on the negotiation mechanism where the company wanted to identify the employees in the company whose objectives are in alignment with the company (Schmittdiel, 2016). Therein, by employees receiving this offer, those left in the company are those whose objectives and aspirations are bordered to the company objectives and are satisfied with their jobs. The implementation of the strategy is cognizant of the fact that job opportunities attract individuals whose objectives and alignment are different and therefore, there is a need for the company to find employees whose vision are aligned with their own to increase efficiency and performance of the job.
The incentive to accept the offer by the employees will be affected by several factors within the company and from within the employees. The factors are the encouragement through which employee satisfaction and happiness are attributed. Therein, for an employee to accept the pay to quit offer, one must recognize his or her objective, and to whether the job he/she is performing is in align with the objectives he/she has set. Secondly, the acceptance of the offer is dependent on the amount of the monetary incentive is offered to the employee at a particular time (Harris, 2015). For instance, the offer at Amazon increased every year that the employee works at the company for up to five years. Cognizant of this, the time may be a motivational factor, and the performance of the employee could improve. Therein, those encouraged to take the offer are cognizant of their unaligned objectives to the jobs they are performing.
On the other hand, the pay to quit strategy is an excellent incentive for employees to work at the company and not quit. For instance, the increasing amount of money every year that an employee works in Amazon encourages the employee to work for the company for an extended period, and by then if the employee decides to quit, he/she gets more money (Schmittdiel, 2016). More interestingly, the pay to quit strategy through monetary inceptive encouraged the increased performance of the employees. If the employee decides not to quit the job for the first year and is interested in gaining an increased amount when he/she quits the following year; there is no guarantee of job safety, and therefore, for an employee to maintain the job for that period, one must increase the performance of the job.
Benefits of the pay to quit model and the alternative models of incentives
The pay to quit strategy as employed by Bezos at Amazon has both positive and negative impacts on the company. First, the benefits of the strategy are incognizant of the cost to the company that disengaged employees have to both the profits as well as productivity of the company. Therein, the incentive provides the company with the opportunity to efficiently reduce the disengaged employees and increase the producti9vity of the remaining employees in Amazon. Therein, offering the employee a bonus package to opt out of the company is interpreted as a cost reduction mechanism (Harris, 2015). For instance, disengaged employees increase the liability of the company and have decreased performance in their tasks. Through the implementation of the pay to quit policy, Amazon was able to reduce the number of disengaged employees that yielded more efficiency on the employees. Secondly, the policy was consequential of performance evaluation in the workplace. Through the yearly offer to quit for a sustained period, the policy facilitated self-evaluation and organizational evaluation of the performance of the tasks conducted by the employees.
Nonetheless, the policy is limited in its reach. This is incognizant of the datum that, even though the policy enhances performance, it does not solve the underlying issues that reduce morale and happiness of the employee. Therefore, the alternative to the pay to quit policy in the effort to increase the employee satisfaction is a policy that solves the underlying issues related to the work environment (Kopelman et al., 2012). For instance, Amazon with its reputation for the employment conditions ought to generate a policy that is geared more on the psychological ideologies of employee happiness. A good example is the employment of job fulfillment and satisfaction through building a working environment where employees can pursue their career goals and objectives. This is cognizant that not all employees respond to monetary incentives.
Comparison of Zappos.com ‘pay to quit’ model and its application at Amazon
Zappos being the first company to employ the pay to quit policy, its motivation and reasons for doing so were much more different from its application at Amazon. The policy at Zappos was anchored on the co0mpany culture and personality. The company was concerned with safeguarding that the employees in the company are well satisfied with their jobs to offer the best service to their customers. Therefore, by doing so, Zappos offered the new employees a chance to quit with payment of the amount they have worked for plus a bonus of up to USD 1000. Through the offer, the company was able to thin out the employees whose commitment to the firm is shallow and therefore cannot perform to the standards of the customer service required (Kopelman et al., 2012). The motivation to maintain a highly engaged employee required the employer to rely on the commitment of the employee to the company and the tasks assigned to maintain productivity and increase performance.
Amazon, on the other hand, employed the policy cognizant of the opportunity the offer presented to the company. for instance, not only was the offer designed to ensure increased morale and commitment of the employees to the company but also offered the company the opportunity to make massive profits through reduced cost. Through the encouragement of employees to quit, the company realized that it reduced the costs of liability that the company is exposed to by the employees. Secondly, Amazon to it as an opportunity to discard employees and evade additional costs of payout such as the stocks payouts, 401k payouts, vacation pay among others (Harris, 2015) . By reducing the tenure of the employees, the company saves a considerable amount of money in its operations.
References
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Harris, C. G. (2015, February). The effects of pay-to-quit incentives on crowd worker task quality. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (pp. 1801-1812). ACM.
Kopelman, R. E., Chiou, A. Y., Lipani, L. J., & Zhu, Z. (2012). Interpreting the success of Zappos. Com, Four Seasons, and Nordstrom: Customer centricity is but one ‐ third of the job. Global Business and Organizational Excellence , 31 (5), 20-35.
Moriez, D. (2016). Amazon Pays to Quit!. In International Fragmentation (pp. 121-130). Springer International Publishing.
Schmittdiel, H. (2016). Paid to Quit, Cheat, and Confess (No. 667).
