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Nasir and Matt talk about Amazon'soffer to employees to take cash to quit and answer a question on hiring employees to work remotely. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business. This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: This is Matt Staub. NASIR: And this is the podcast where we cover business legal news – well, actually, business news and we put in our legal twist. What else do we do? Oh, yeah, we answer legal questions that you submit, the listener, to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: It’s like you wrote that for yourself beforehand because you asked a question and then instantly answered it, but that’s all right. NASIR: It’s showmanship. MATT: Things get a little bit crazier on the Friday episodes. NASIR: That’s true. We’ve got to take it down a notch and get a little relaxed, right? Get ready for the weekend. MATT: We’ve got a good episode here and I like this story that we have. NASIR: Wait, wait, wait, wait. How do you know it’s a good episode already? MATT: Well, I think it’s going to be a good episode. NASIR: Well, let’s wait until the end and then we’ll comment on it. MATT: Okay. Well, I know it’s going to be good – well, I’m pretty sure – because the story we’re going to talk about, the first thing you see is it looks like a picture from your place because it’s a cat and an Amazon box which anyone who listens to the podcast knows that you love ordering things from Amazon and you love cats. NASIR: That’s true. Well, I don’t know if I love cats. I really love my cat but it’s my cat. MATT: Let me get in the actual details here. This is something that Amazon, I think, they’re going to do. They haven’t done it yet but they’re going to offer their warehouse employees money. NASIR: They’ve been doing this for a while, I think. MATT: Oh, they have been doing it for a while. NASIR: I think so because I read somewhere… Go ahead, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll be quiet. MATT: Anyway, they’re offering warehouse employees a cash incentive in order to quit. They call it the “pay to quit” program but it’s funny. They don’t want them to quit. They basically want people that are invested in Amazon in the long-term so that, even when they get this offer, it even says, “Please don’t take this offer.” It starts at $2,000 the first time and it increases by $1,000 each year until you hit $5,000. I really like this idea. It’s a really interesting concept. I mean, you know some people are going to take this and they’re going to take their $2,000 and run. NASIR: In fact, I looked this up on another website but it says fewer than ten percent of the employees who got the offer took it and left the company. That’s still ten percent. That’s still a portion of your business there. MATT: Yeah, and I imagine they probably have a lot of people that work for them. There’s a lot of Amazon packages going out and this is just warehouse employees so I’m sure there’s a lot of people. I mean, I know in Indianapolis, this past holiday season, they made a huge seasonal push and hired a ton of people. So, it’s probably for more long-term. NASIR: Yeah. In fact, I’m looking here, it looks like they’ve been doing this for a while but only for a portion of their employees. But, recently, in January, they rolled it out to 40,000 warehouse employees in January. What do you think about the concept? It’s pretty novel but, when you have that organization, you’re looking for long-term employees and people that are really bought into your industry. It seems like a pretty positive thing and something that has a lot of potential. MATT: You said 40,000 people were offered? NASIR: I think there were more people than that but the new people that were offered is 40,000 warehouse employees back in January. MATT: If we assume ten percent, that’s still $8 million which, to Amazon, that’s pretty much nothing. They probably do that in five seconds. But $8 million is $8 million. NASIR: Wait, how did you get to $8 million?