Amazon has offered its employees an enticing proposition; to quit their jobs and receive $10,000 to help them start a business, delivering their packa
Amazon has offered its employees an enticing proposition; to quit their jobs and receive $10,000 to help them start a business, delivering their packages. The offer, announced Monday, comes as company seeks to speed up its shipping time from two days to one for its prime members. The company sees the new incentive as a way to get more packages delivered to shoppers’ doorsteps faster.
Amazon says it will cover up to $10,000 in startup costs for employees who are accepted into the program and leave their jobs. The company says it will also pay them three months’ worth of their salary. The offer is open to most part-time and full-time Amazon employees, including warehouse workers who pack and ship orders. Whole Foods employees are not eligible to receive the new incentives. The Seattle-based online purchasing company declined to say how many employees it expects to take them up on the offer.
The new employee incentive is part of a program Amazon started a year ago that lets anyone apply to launch an independent Amazon delivery business. It is part of the company’s plan to control more of its deliveries on its own, rather than rely on UPS, the post office and other carriers. Overall, more than 200 delivery businesses have been created since it launched the program last June, said John Felton, Amazon’s vice president of global delivery services.
One of the new startups, run by Milton Collier, a freight broker who started his business in Atlanta about eight months ago, has grown to 120 employees with a fleet of 50 vans that can handle up to 200 delivery stops in a day. It has already been preparing for the one-day shipping switch by hiring more people.
