Zappos’ CEO says company is going without managers
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, the man who wrote the book on delivering happiness, wants to deliver a call center without managers.
Hsieh has informed his workers and managers in a memo that Las Vegas-based Zappos, the downtown online retailer owned by Amazon, is going manager-free by the end of April and that managers or workers who don’t want in can accept a severance package.
Hsieh calls his manager-less work environment a “holacracy” and recently sent out a long memo explaining the transition.
Hsieh focuses on work culture at Zappos and workers are carefully hired for not only their skills but also their abilities to fit into a culture that emphasizes creativity, being humble and not being egotistical.
“As of 4/30/15, in order to eliminate the legacy management hierarchy, there will be effectively … no more people managers,” Hsieh wrote in the memo to more than 1,200 workers.
In an email to the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Monday, Hsieh explained, “We’ve been transitioning to holacracy for 1.5 years now so it’s just part of the process … It’s not for cost savings.”
The memo is long. In fact, Hsieh says so at the start of the memo and advises Zappos staffers to take 30 minutes to read it.
He includes a few articles on self-management, too, in the memo.
Hsieh tells his staff that going manager-free is “a little scary.”
“This is a new, exciting, and bold move for Zappos. Like all the bold steps we’ve done in the past, it feels a little scary, but it also feels like exactly the type of thing that only a company such as Zappos would dare to attempt at this scale,” he wrote in the memo.
“With our core values and culture as the foundation for everything we do, I’m personally excited about all the potential creativity and energy of our employees that are just waiting for the right environment and structure to be unlocked and unleashed,” he said. “I can’t wait to see how we reinvent ourselves, and I can’t wait to see what unfolds next.”
Offering severance packages to workers is not new at Zappos.
Zappos offered severance when the company moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas and regularly offers one month of severance to all new hires one month after their training.
“It’s just a way for us to make sure that employees aren’t in the company just for a paycheck and truly want to be a part of it,” Hsieh said in an email.
He said 2 to 3 percent of employees end up taking the severance offers.
Besides going manager-free, Zappos also is known for its zany videos.
Just last week, in time for April Fools’ Day, Zappos released a video titled, “Save Time For U” — STFU. Here’s the video.
Contact reporter Alan Snel at asnel@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5273. Follow @BicycleManSnel on Twitter.
