A fascinating article in BusinessWeek looks at the unique culture of online shoe retailer Zappos. The company, founded and run by Tony Hsieh, and now part of the Amazon retail empire, believes it has a unique corporate culture that in itself is a marketable commodity. Visitors pay to tour the companies offices and get an insight into the DNA of the company.
As on online business, all you have is your reputation. You have no physical presence. So Zappos goes out of its way to show a human side to the organisation.
Lots of companies like to make out they’re wacky places to work in order to disguise actually how drone like the work is, and where Zappos fits in this picture is uncertain. It’s definitely not something that would come naturally to a British or European company.
If there is anything to learn from Zappos, is that making a unique company culture can be not only good for staff loyalty but also PR and marketing. Motivation systems have a part to play in building a unique company culture, by rewarding the behaviours you want to encourage.
Progressive companies can target certain actions, for instance internal show-and-tell sessions that help staff communicate and build understanding, and reward good presentations. Prizes for internal company team competitions, logged on an online leaderboard, can act to focus everyone’s attention on key issues and create a healthy competitive atmosphere. Many organisations suffer loss of staff morale when employees do not get a sense of the bigger picture and their place in it, and what else is going on around them, Instead, cliques, petty politics and internal dogfighting – negative competitive aspects – undermine the organisation.
A big part of what Zappos do is to try and make work like play. At IncentiveDirect, we believe a more powerful concept is to try and make work like a game.