With its focus on faster delivery of orders, Amazon, the e-commerce marketplace, has come up with a very unusual proposition for its employees. The Company is asking its employees to quit their jobs so that it can help them set up their own business — that of delivering packages for Amazon.
Amazon is aiming to reduce its shipping time from two days to a single day, for its Prime members. In order to achieve this goal, it has turned to its own part-time and full-time employees, including packers and other warehouse staff who help ship orders. It will be paying three months’ salary to the employees who are willing to quit and get into the package-delivery business. It will also be covering about $10,000 of start-up expenditure for these staff members.
This offer is part of an initiative that was launched in 2018, that allowed employees to apply to start an independent Amazon-delivery business. Over 200 Amazon delivery businesses have been born since June, last year. Through this programme, Amazon will be able to handle the majority of its deliveries by itself, instead of depending on other carriers.
In addition to the minimum amount of $10,000 towards start-up cost, the interested individuals will also be allowed to lease blue vans carrying the Amazon smile logo.
One employee who had grabbed the offer, was able to grow his business in less than a year. In fact, his workforce grew to 120 in just eight months and he also managed to expand his fleet to 50 vans, handling 200 deliveries a day.
