Classes of 20 participate in goal-setting programs, and upon graduation they write their achieved goals in a special hall of fame. Inside Zappos, life and work mesh together, so the company employs a full-time life coach to consult workers on business and personal issues. The one discretionary item employees have to pay for is Red Bull. Need a snack? Cookies, candy bars and ice cream also are free and plentiful, almost like a convenience store with its doors wide open. Lunches are served free every day, including drinks, sandwiches, soups and salads (a hot lunch will cost $3). Where’s the boss? Hsieh’s desk is on Monkey Row, covered in jungle vines. Employees decorate the conference rooms, and they take frustrations out on Bob, the mannequin punching bag. Workstations are marked with overhead license plates that carry the worker’s name and hire date. If the employee does not feel Zappos is a good fit, he or she can take the money and leave, no hard feelings, no questions asked.įor creative employees, Zappos encourages personal expression in many ways. So in the third week of training, each trainee gets “the offer” to leave Zappos (the offer varies from a few hundred to a thousand dollars). Tony Hsieh wants all of his workers to be a good fit. Instead, all employees voluntarily take customer calls for 10 hours. And because each Zappos employee is trained on the phones, the company does not need to bring in extra labor during peak holiday periods. So while I recently listed the 10 loyalty lessons I picked up at Zappos, today I will follow up with the 10 ways Zappos engages its 1,400 employees – 650 of whom work in its call center.Įvery Zappos employee, regardless of department, goes through four weeks of on-board training across various departments, including the call center. Among the many things I learned, I saw that at Zappos, customer intimacy begins with employee loyalty. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, I was able to tour the Zappos’ headquarters and call center. This is why Zappos made Fortune Magazine’s list of Best Places to Work in 2009, 2010, 20. Such numbers are the result of a simple but pure philosophy, of founder Tony Hsieh, to create a company he not only is happy to come to every day, but that he loves. This year it expects to take 30,000 applications for 300 openings. Last year, Zappos’ took 25,000 applications for 250 job openings.

Those are basically the odds of landing a position at what is one of the most popular retailers today. Getting a job at today is more than a dream for many it is a one in a 100-person opportunity.

Zappos happiness