Zappos
Human resource management (HRM) is the official system of creating comfortable and motivating working conditions and maintaining productivity an organization. Various companies have different methods of managing their employees that increase efficiency. For example, Zappos’ use of a wide range of approaches, such as an HRM system called Holacracy on-boarding orientation, and the like, has increased the productivity and enhanced the overall management of the company.
Primarily, it would be appropriate to spotlight the significance of the company’s culture including Zappos’ vision, mission, and values. Nick Swinmurn founded the company in San Francisco in 1999 due to the following prerequisite. One day, he walked into a mall and spent hours looking for the right shoe. There was a mismatch between the color he looked after and his size all along the mall stores; thus, he decided to go home and find the shoe online (Zappos, 2017). This experience prompted him to start his company that would have a wide variety of different types, colors, and sizes of shoes stocked and readily available. Therefore, the company prides itself with the mission to inspire the world by providing people with a wide range of shoes. It enables them to make customers, employees, the public, vendors, and shareholders happy simultaneously in a long-run (Glass Door, 2017). Therefore, the corporate values, vision and mission of the company are aimed at meeting specific needs of the all parties to the full extent.
Regarding management, the company replaced pyramids with circles, which is the primary structure of a Holocracy. The system distributes power and responsibility to different employees throughout the company as opposed to the traditional way of its concentrating at the top. It replaces the traditional vertical organizational structures empowering employees at different levels, thereby, bringing organizational accountability, agility, and transparency. It comprises of a circle that anchors the organization, typically the board, then the General Company Circle, which is made of the traditional company executives. In turn, the anchor circle partly includes the General Company Circle (Feloni, 2015). In addition, a sub circle is a group of individuals dedicated to a particular function of the company, for example, human resources, advertising, and production. The traditional job is broke down to specific tasks. Besides, an advertising responsibilities can contain roles managing social media, SEO, and the like. However, a position does not necessarily define an employee as one worker can have several roles while other positions may be expanded into a larger sub circle as they are difficult to be handled by one individual. Thus, in Zappos, every role is characterized by accountability. In turn, circles that have sub circles create mandatory roles for the representative and lead links to ensure the ease of coordination of activities between the circles (Noguchi, 2015). It is a sufficient structure evidenced by Jacqui Gonzalez’s experience. She once spent an hour and a half attending to a client on a phone. She does not need the manager’s approval in spending the company’s money in sending gift hampers and thank you cards to individuals whose grievances she has addressed (Noguchi, 2015). Therefore, Holocracy has considerably enhanced the management of Zappos, thereby, increasing its productivity and facilitating its development.
Furthermore, the company has a unique approach to Recruiting and Selection. They HR department of Zappos has developed interactive scenarios to interview new applicants; for example, a TV show set and the various new ideas that the employees suggest. After the application process, employees are then given a call to have a video interview after which the most creative and skillful applicants have a face to face meeting (Heathfield, 2016). The company selects cultural fit individuals that are fun loving and a bit weird. The hiring process is similar to a courtship as the recruitment team involves the recruits in a variety of social meeting (Gurchiek, 2011). They use these strategies is aimed to determine if the employee is a team player with strong communication skills. If successful, a recruit spends several hours manning the phones while core values of the company are taught to them. Then, the applicants is offered $3000 to leave the company if they feel they do not feel as a part of the family (Gurchiek, 2011). These practices ensure that Zappos works only with employees who cherish its culture and are not only focused on their personal success but also feel themselves as a part of the team.
Rewards and recognition, as well as creating a motivating work setting are achieved by means of specific activities in the company. For example. the promotion process in Zappos is based on performance evaluation as opposed to impressing a certain manager. The employee must be available at least for 80% of the calls (Feloni, 2015). The performance geared environment creates a sense of competitiveness encouraging everyone to develop. They have a program where an employee suggests who gets a $50 work bonus. There are many other advantages of working at the company, for example, the health, dental and insurance benefits, free or subsidized food, a huge amount of learning opportunities, and the generous nature of the whole enterprise (Feloni, 2015). Moreover, the management is expected to spend about 20% of its time on employee’s team building activities (Feloni, 2015). It makes employees more accepting of the culture. Besides, they have a clear and appropriate set of responsibilities as most of it them are perfectly distributed through the Holocracy structure (Feloni, 2015). All these show the diversity in management as every person takes the mantle of being a boss and the responsibility that comes with it. Thus, Zappos has applied the unique approach to managing diversity, rewards and recognition, creating a motivating work environment, which significantly contributes to managing stress and work life balance withing the organization.
Human resource management is essential activity, and in Zappos, it governs how people are organized in a company to provide them with the most comfortable conditions of work, thereby, motivating them to do their best. For instance, it applies Holocracy, the main feature of which is the decentralization of power and responsibilities and the divisions of jobs into roles. The company has an interactive hiring process as the work environment is both laid back and competitive. Working for the company is fundamentally different in terms of how people see their jobs and related responsibilities; it is evidenced by the number of individuals who refuse the $3000 offer to leave (Gurchiek, 2011). Therefore, using different HRM strategies has been the key success factor of Zappos.
References
Feloni, R. (2015, June 3). Here’s how the ‘self-management’ system that Zappos is using actually works. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/how-zappos-self-management-system-holacracy-works-2015-6?IR=T
Glass Door (2017). The Zappos family. Retrieved from https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-The-Zappos-Family-EI_IE19906.11,28.htm
Gurchiek, K. (2011, June 1). Delivering HR at Zappos. Retrieved from https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/pages/0611gurchiek.aspx
Heathfield, S. M. (June 2016). 20 ways Zappos reinforces its company culture. The Balance. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/zappos-company-culture-1918813
Noguchi, Y. (2015, July 21). A workplace where no one and everyone is the boss. Npr website. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2015/07/21/421148128/zappos-a-workplace-where-no-one-and-everyone-is-the-boss
Zappos. (2017). Company history. Retrieved from http://www.zappos.com/c/about-zappos
