Offer Employees Incentive to Quit

Matthew Gates http://notetoservices.com 2m 557

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

How much would you pay your employees to quit?

It seems like a far fetched idea as to why any company would want to pay their employees to quit, whether in the form of lump sum monetary compensation, vacation package, or even a specific amount per month for X amount of years. Why would any company want to offer their employees any kind of incentive in order to get them to quit and why would they even consider doing it? There are many companies that have started such initiatives to get employees to quit, but why?

Every year to every few years, a company will hire, fire, and lay off a certain amount of employees. Whether it is to save money, establish new leadership and energy, or just let go of bad apples, companies are faced with the reality that all of their employees are expendable and any company has the right to self-preservation, especially if it finds its employees are unproductive, unmotivated, and unengaged.

In the United States, employees are hired At-Will. At-Will means that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences. The majority of companies can normally fire without reason, but more often than not, are respectable and will come to certain agreements with the employee for laying them off or firing them.

Companies may not realize it, but there are job sites where former employees can review companies – what it was like to work for a particular company, what they did at the company, starting and ending salary, and how they ended their relationship with the company. While a company may not care about its reputation of hiring and firing people, the fact is: There are former employees who will write both good and bad reviews for a company they worked for.

A good review may work in the company’s favor for finding new and motivated employees, while a bad review may prevent potential employees from wanting to work at a company. It is in a company’s favor to often maintain a professional relationship with their employees until the end of the employee’s termination.

If a company has a fair amount of employees and is looking to downsize and lay off employees to save money, it may want to consider going after employees with an incentive: Pay employees a reasonable amount of money to quit. While the company may think it is losing money, it most definitely is not, if you consider the long-term effects.

Not only will a company find out who is on board, loyal, and motivated to stay and support the company, but rather than let good employees go who actually want to remain with the company and deserve to stay; the people who do not really want to be there will take the money and run rather quickly. For those who quit, the company still remains in favorable view with the terminated employee. What better way to end a relationship with a former employee than to offer them incentive to quit the business?

Matthew Gates is a freelance web designer and currently runs Confessions of the Professions.

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