Amazon employees who want to leave the company and start their own business have good news. The e-commerce giant is offering as much as $10,000 to its employees if they want to set up their own start-ups centred on delivery services. On top of this, the company said that it will pay these employees the three-month equivalent of their current salary if their start-ups benefit Amazon.
This is in-line with Amazon’s ‘Pay to Quit’ program announced in a shareholder letter five years ago. Basically, the company doesn’t want employees who don’t want to work at Amazon. But it still wants to encourage setting up their own business if Amazon sees any advantage for itself in those independent businesses.
The program is also consistent with Amazon’s recent efforts to ramp up delivery services. For example, in June 2018, the company launched its ‘Delivery Service Partners’ initiative which pursues independent business owners put up Amazon stickers on their vans even if they are working for other companies like FedEx (FDX) or UPS (UPS).
Since its establishment, the initiative has been able to help create 200 odd small businesses that have hired many local drivers to deliver packages to Amazon customers. This year the company plans to extend this initiative by supporting more employees to turn into business owners. The program has also been introduced to employees in UK and Spain.