I have written in past blogs about cultivating an exciting environment at Eliza and how we as a company are always striving to innovate and improving upon what we know and do.

As an HR professional, I don’t claim to know it all, and one way we try to keep our edge is to check out what other cool companies are doing.

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One of my all time favorite places is Zappos (and not just because they have awesome shoes and fantastic customer service). The crew at Zappos has continued to be the industry leader in both people programs and figuring out how to make their company a really great place to work.

One of the programs they run for new hires really caught my interest - after about six weeks they make new employees an offer to leave. Basically it is a test of commitment - do you really want to stay here?  This should be more than just a job for you — did you make the right decision joining us? It gives the employee a chance to more easily remove themselves from a fit that they know won’t work longer term, and that benefits the company.

The Eliza team talked it over and decided that we would try out this concept as an experiment. We let new folks know that after a month or so at Eliza, we’re going to make them an offer: cash to walk out the door. Then when the time comes, we sit down together and explain: we love you and don’t want you to leave, but, if you want to leave today we will give you a significant sum of money - cash to walk out the door with no hard feelings either way.

To date we’ve done this fourteen times, with a decision to stay instead of take the money each time. After folks make their decision, we’ve asked them how they felt about it and their thoughts on the process. Feedback about the offer varied overall - some thought it was really great and others weren’t thrilled about it.

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Photo by bandita, used under Creative Commons Licence

One thing that resonated from everyone involved was respect and appreciation for the fact that we are not afraid to try new things. I think that above all else is the kind of culture we want to feed and nurture - and continue to build on.

Eliza employees are always trying to learn from others’ best practices, we are not afraid to try new things, and we are confident enough in ourselves to stand up and say “hey, we tried this and it didn’t work” or “hey, we borrowed this from somewhere else and have adapted it Eliza-style”.

Eliza style is just that. We practice what we preach and we preach what we practice:

Everything Starts with Integrity
Always Innovating
Great Talent - Our People are our Core
The Customer is at the Center of Everything we do

2010 is going to be a fantastic year for Eliza - I can hardly wait to see what comes next!