Amazon Paying Up To $5K For Employees To Quit

In a move that will immediately leave people confused, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, has instituted the “Pay To Quit” Program via his letter to his shareholders recently.

According to the details of this new program, this program pertains to warehouse employees. Newer employees are offered $2,000 to quit. The plan is to increase that offer by $1,000 each year until the amount hits $5,000. Mr. Bezos stated that “The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want and in the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”

Apparently the company has played around with this program in the past, but rolled it out to its 40,000 warehouse employees in January, according to a company spokeswoman. Fewer than 10% of the employees who got the offer took it and left the company.

Amazon is in the process of adding warehouses so that it can cut delivery times to customers. Today is has 96 such locations. Company filings show it had 117,300 full-time and part-time employees at the end of last year, up by nearly a third from its employment level a year earlier.

According to data gathered last year by career website Glassdoor.com, Amazon pays its warehouse workers an average hourly wage of about $12 an hour, which comes to just about $25,000 for a full year. Its full-time workers also get stock grants which Amazon said last year had averaged about 9% of employees’ pay.

Thanks to CNN Money for this information.