Zappos Case Study Questions
1. There are a couple of quality of life changes which Zappo could implement to help it further motivate its employees and improve its organizational structure. For example, it could help to provide the sort of work environment which is found at startups in the technology industry which caters to young employees. Such companies frequently have relaxed dress codes, and have even been known to allow employees to work in their pajamas. They also offer frequent breaks and let employees meander about as they work. Zappos should incorporate some of these ideas.
2. Other means that organizations use to motivate employees besides those used by Zappos include attractive compensation packages. Many of these packages include options for owning company stock. For a company which is as highly regarded as Zappozs, the opportunity to own stock in it would likely help motivate employees to want to work for this entity or to work harder for it. Perhaps the principal means of motivating employees is with extrinsic motivation, such as salary and benefits packages. By paying employees more Zappos could help to motivate them.
3. Some of the potential organizational changes which might result from the Amazon acquisition include an abdication of the company’s...
Amazon could choose to impose its own values on Zappos and require the company to adhere to them simply because the former now owns the latter. Additionally, Amazon might require Zappos to no longer offer employees multiple thousands of dollars to quit during its 5-week training period. Amazon could also make Zappos reduce this lengthy training period to one more conventional.
4. There are a couple reasons why Zappos’ approach is not more often utilized. Still, the main challenge to its unconventional techniques would likely be overhead costs. Most companies cannot give employees the luxury to receive thousands of dollars just for quitting them. Moreover, they certainly cannot afford to do so after they have invested more than a month training them. Overhead costs preventing this sort of expenditure in other less successful organizations include the costs of finding new people to hire, training them in the wake of those who left, and paying those who have already left.
5. Zappos offers a $2,000 incentive to quit to root out those employees who are serious about the company—and working for it—from those employees who are not. It is better in the long run for Zappos to have employees that are genuinely committed to its organization.…
