Entrepneurial

Keelee Burkhardt

MGMT-3710-001: ENTREPRENEURIAL FOUNDATIONS

Dr. Eesley

Running a business is a hard thing to do. No matter which path you take there are always decisions to make that affect your employees. It is how you present the information affecting them that will determine what kind of company you are.

Something I thought Zappos didn’t do such a great job of managing is the amount of times they had to lay off people within the company. I understand that when you first get started you think you can expand quicker than you really should and can run into problems. You don’t think about what will happen when times get rough and be proactive. Financial hard times are difficult to predict but when they hit they hit hard and fast often giving companies little time to react. In 2008, when they had to do layoffs the second time they did a wonderful job of making the employees feel like they weren’t being completely abandoned. If they hadn’t given such hefty bonuses, they may have been able to make it through with little to no layoffs. People are happy when they receive bonuses but they are disgusted when because you received a bonus you are now being laid off. Zappos did a wonderful job being open and honest about their upcoming transition. They were proactive about the second round of layoffs and were able to take care of their employees by offering employees 2 months of severance pay, more for people that had been with the company for at least 3 years, in addition to reimbursing laid-off employees for up to 6 months of COBRA payments. Having a company that cares so much about its employees is hard to come by. Everything is so corporate and by the book that no one has the freedom to be themselves.

The speed dating program they are using to interview people is very unique. It gives an interested party a chance to get to know a little bit about the company. It shows their WEIRDNESS. They can tell if the interviewees are going to fit in with the company culture...