My colleague Rob forwarded me this article today from BusinessWeek.com.  The gist of it is that e-tailer Zappos is finding great success with a practice of offering cash bonuses to new employees who complete a month's worth of training on their culture, strategy, and processes.

How much do they offer employees who feel they're not a good fit for Zappos?  $2,000.  They can take the money and run, as it were.

While about about 3% of hires choose to do this, the company comes out ahead, as Zappos' CEO, Tony Hsieh, told BusinessWeek.  The company is out $2,000 per person, as opposed to the 50-150% of their salary they could spend if it's determined later on that the same person is not the right fit.

Even without this practice, known internally at Zappos as "The Offer," the company must be doing a lot of things right when it comes to their recruiting processes.  The 97% retention rate post-Offer attests to this.

Entrepreneur and author Keith McFarland, writing for BusinessWeek, says that the Offer concept is taking off in other large firms.  I wonder how long it will be until the practice becomes widespread among small and midsized firms, considering 50-150% of a worker's salary is a much bigger hit to an organization the smaller it is in size.

If your recruiting efforts are more formalized and you have a budget that could allow for cash incentives for new hires who might wish to opt out – and you'd like to find this out now and not later – you might consider incorporating a form of The Offer into your employee engagement best practices.  The potential benefits to your workplace team building, productivity, and profitability seem undeniable.