Jeff Bezos
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos currently the world’s richest man valued at $100 billion has offered staff the option to quit for £3,700 ($5,000)… and never come back.
The annual ‘pay to quit’ offer is extended to 125,000 warehouse and shipping staff in America and Canada.
The Sun reports that every year the world’s richest man offers his employees a golden handshake of up to £3,700 to leave Amazon and never come back.
The unusual “pay to quit” offer is extended to all staff at the e-commerce giant’s warehouses and shipping centres in the US and Canada – known as fulfilment centres.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offers his warehouse staff an offer of around £3,700 to leave the firm every year
But, if workers do decide to take the money and run, they can never work for Amazon again, reports News.com.au.
The firm has 75 fulfilment centres across North America where more than 125,000 full-time employees receive the offer.
The giveaway starts at $2,000 (£1,500) in the first year of work before rising to by $1,000 each year up to $5,000 (£3,700).
It’s not exactly the largest golden handshake being doled out but for some workers, taking the extra cash could be tempting.
However, Amazon bosses insists they actually do not want people to accept the offer.
The unusual offer is extended to around 125,000 workers in the US and Canada
When workers receive the annual “pay to quit” ultimatum, the headline of the email reads: “Please Don’t Take This Offer.”
Bezos, who is estimated to have a fotune of $105billion (£78billion) making him the richest person on the planet, outlined the reasoning behind the unusual practice in a letter to shareholders back in 2014.
He wrote: “We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay.
“Why do we make this offer? 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.”
Amazon says only “a small percentage” of its staff take up the offer every year, reports The Atlantic.
The idea actually originated from a shoe company called Zappos, which Amazon bought in 2009, which would offer their staff just $1000 (£750) to quit.
After absorbing the firm, Amazon soon appropriated the idea and has been doing it ever since.“In the long-term, staying somewhere you don’t want to be isn’t healthy for our employees or for the company.”
And the experts appear to agree that the strategy is effective for big businesses.
Researchers at performance management firm Gallup found that publicly traded companies with 9.3 or more “engaged” employees to every one “disengaged” worker had 147 per cent higher earnings per share than their rivals, reports Inc.com.
A version of this story originally appeared on News.com.au.
The online giant hopes the offer will weed out the disengaged employees while retaining those who are passionate about their work.
“We want people working at Amazon who want to be here,” Amazon spokesperson Melanie Etches told CNBC this week.
