Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

200 accept buyouts at Zappos after management changes

Zappos Downtown Las Vegas Tour

Steve Marcus

A view of the Zappos headquarters in the old city hall building downtown Monday, Sept. 9, 2013.

More than 200 employees have accepted buyouts offered by downtown-based retailer Zappos after the company detailed plans to transition to a new management system, the business said.

About 14 percent of the company's workforce, or 210 out of 1,503 employees, have taken buyouts, Zappos spokeswoman Catherine Cook said.

Accurate information on the number of buyouts per department at the online retailer was not yet available, she said.

CEO Tony Hsieh announced in a memo last month obtained by Quartz that the company was eliminating managers and attempting to make Zappos "a fully self-organized, self-managed organization by combining a variety of different tools and processes."

The move to self organize involves the adoption of Holacracy, a system of governance that emphasizes the distribution of authority.

As of April 30, "people manager" positions at Zappos would be eliminated, the memo said. Employees were given until then to accept the new system or take a buyout, according to Quartz.

Hsieh spoke today at the Collision technology conference and mentioned the company's effort to move "in the direction of self-organization" and away from hierarchical structures.

Zappos, founded in 1999, was acquired by Amazon.com in November 2009. The company, which began as an e-commerce site for shoes, now sells clothing, shoes, accessories and more.

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