Zappos Organisational Culture

Zappos Organisational Culture

Introduction

Organizational culture is the fundamental views, norms, standards, and ways of relating to one another that subsidies the particular communal and mental setting of an organization. Organizational culture contains the company’s potentials, knowledge, idea, and ethics that guide worker behavior. It mostly built on shared insolences, beliefs, tolls, and written and unwritten procedures that have been made a long history of time that is vetted and considered to be genuine. It can include the organizational dream, norms, schemes, symbols, dialectal, assumptions, and conducts. The corporate culture will mostly dictate how things are done around the organization (Kummerow, & Kirby, 2013). Zappos has a fun organizational culture instilled with a set of values. Since Zappos is an online shoe and clothing retailer, it mostly uses the market corporate culture. In the market organizational culture, it is based on result-oriented. The study will investigate the nature of the culture at Zappos and how they go about their normal activities. There were several questionnaire questions asked to both current and recent employees of the company to help understand the organizational culture of the company. Since Zappos is one of the major companies in the united states, the study will also investigate what makes it stand different from other organizations in the country. The nature of an employee’s freedom also makes them feel like part of the company.

Company Overview

Zappos is an online company that deals with shoe and clothing retail located in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the united states. It was started in 1998 by Nick Swinmurn as shoesite.com. The company’s name changed to Zappos in July 1999, the idea behind its change was the Zapatos Spanish name, which means shoes. In 2000, venture frogs invested in the company, and Zippos moved into their office space. Hsieh came on board as the company’ co-CEO in 2001 with Nick Swinmurn. Between 1999 and 2000. Zappos made a profit of $1.6 million in the total gross sales. In 2001, it made a significant increase in profit from the previous year, which was at about $8.6 million. In 2004, the company moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Henderson, Nevada, after making $184 million total gross sales and getting $35 million for investment from sequoia capital. For the following three years, the company doubled its annual revenue reaching $840 million in total gross sales. In 2007, the company made advancements to start selling handbags, eyewear, and watches, which enabled it to hit $1 billion in total gross sales by 2008. In 2009, they were ranked among the top 100 companies to work for in the country. In 2000, the company had decided to move from the primary business model, where they did not have to manage any of their inventory. In 2015, Zappos was reported to have made $2 billion in excess revenue every year. The company worked tirelessly, pushing its brands across the market by doing several adverts. People also liked the services offered by the company due to their quality and fun sate of the employees.

Interview findings

Both current and recent employees were interviewed, and some other information was acquired from the Zappos website. The interviewees had right ranking positions with the organizations and had worked for quite good for the company, which enabled them to have good information about the company.

How Zappos reinforces organizational culture

At Zappos, the organization continuously decides what their philosophy wants to look the same. It strengthens and cares about the culture using human resource management exertion schemes, initiatives, and plans. The culture is defined using the central morals of the organization. The social resource management system, member job description, the engagement process, the exercise, and the daily job environment prompt and reinforce the essential values with workers, guests, customers, and associates. Some of the vital benefits at Zappos include do more with less, be self-effacing, be fervent and determined, make an optimistic team and personal spirit, chase growth and knowledge, embrace and drive change, deliver wow through services, and create fan a little weirdness (Turner, 2010). To be able to reinforce its culture, Zappos takes exact actions to maintain its lifestyle of an enjoyable office. They have to create a fun environment since they have a famous call center worker that works daily.  The fun environment created by the company enables the employees to feel free and see themselves as part of the company. The clients also get an easy time interacting with company management since they are made to feel welcomed to the company. Zappos ensures that its culture is followed strictly to enable the employees to stay in the line of duty and work as expected. Every new employee recruited into the company has to follow some orders to allow them to start working.

How Zappos teaches cultural values

Zappos has a training squad that trains new workers in every essential value of the organization. It makes every employee have the same organizational message, learn standards, and the conduct that is anticipated to animate the benefits of a daily basis workplace. The training team is accessible for training value breaches whenever they occur. It is through the training that new employees get to know what the organization expects of them throughout their working at Zappos. Any employees who do not follow what they were trained and seem not to catch up may be dropped. The training program at Zappos is to prepare employees for the future and the kind of work they are expected to do in the company. Every employee has to go through the steps put in place to enable them to understand the culture of the company and its working process. Employees that take the training program seriously turn out to be the best and productive for the company.

Zappos hiring process

The hiring procedure at Zappos is like engagement than traditional employment. For instance, one has to appear in a merchandising squad acknowledgment conference and interact with Zappos workers in many social meetings for some time before they can be able to agree to the relationship. The courtship process may not be that vigorous before the organization hires an employee. They have to with many employees and attend some of the organization’s events. It is a way of allowing workers who are not contributing to conferences to be able to encounter other employees casually (Ybema, Yanow, & Sabelis, 2011).  Zappos takes the cultural suitability extremely and makes the hiring procedure slow. There is a significant gap in time between the first cultural fitting interview with a human resource recruiter and the real career offer. If a probable worker flops to go through the cultural fit interview, they are not bidden to encounter the hiring boss and other staff. Each meeting provides an exact response about the applicants; some hire requires consent after the interviewer, some poll. The cross-examining time is supposed to enter reply straight into a computer system immediately after the interview. They are supposed to answer exact questions shadowed by permitted forms that are used to give their views of the candidates’ fitting at Zappos. The hiring process is made in such a way that one has to familiarize themselves with the company before being recruited. The company also has to know the person better before they can bring them to the organization. The process is made to ensure that people being recruited are ready and willing to work in the company and already have a know-how about the company itself.

New employee onboarding at Zappos

In case one is appointed by Zappos, they are expected to devote their initial three to four weeks operating handsets in their call centers, knowing how to reply to customer requirements. It is an outline of the depth of the commercial, an applied method to serving clients all along. The culture of Zappos is that it cannot hire temporary staff in the demanding season; all the staff is anticipated to mark up for their alterations in the call centers to be able to grip busy times such as breaks. When the busy times come, every employee offers their ten hours a week in the call center (Elsmore, 2018).  Throughout the latter three to four days of staff waged at the call center, the newfangled staffs partake in a forager hunt to be able to encounter people and discover out new things about the organization. After the new employees have finished their call center spell and scavenger, they are invited for graduation. They graduate to the regular workforce, and qualification certificates are distributed on stage with the calming of their families. The process that new employees follow is to help them learn about the company and its daily operations at large. The initial action of employees working at call centers enables them to know how to handle clients of the organization to allow them to be productive. The process is also a way of gaging people who can be able to work in critical areas of the company and still be fruitful to the company.

promotion of employees at Zappos

For an employee to be promoted at Zappos, the promotion has to originate from developing skills and competences. The employee that passes the skill tests receives a pay increase. Raise does not come to be due to one knowing the mangers or other activities that are not assessable. For the call center staff, they are anticipated to be accessible at 80% for the client calls. If one meets these set standards, then they are bound to raise their salary and rank. Many of the employees who do not show any signs of improvements in their areas may be demoted or fired. The promotion and rise of employees are made to have specific procedures to enable the company to get to know who is working better and who is not. The hard-working employees are promoted and given a salary increase as a recognition of their efforts. For the employees who do not work hard, if the trend persists, then they may be replaced since they are productive to the company.

Employee empowerment at Zappos

Call center staff are fully authorized to attend the clients of the organization. The client service staff at Zappos do not want labor from a guideline and are fortified to practice their imaginations to ensure that clients are happy (Wanna, 2012). They do not need authorization from their manager to give the clients a wow aspect. It is through the empowerment and freedom of employees that the organization can run smoothly and efficiently. At the end of the year, the best employees are given presents to encourage other employees to work hard and make the organization better. The nature of freedom given to the employees ensures that they are free to work and interact with the clients freely within the organization. The company allows the employees to be free as much as they want but with the code of conduct of the organization to enhance mutual understanding and working. When employees are given freedom, they feel appreciated and seen as part of the company.

                                                               Recommendation                 

Zappos company has made several improvements and strives to improve its organizational culture and to make the working conditions of employees better. The organization is doing well in various areas, such as the training of new employees joining the company, giving employees working freedom, creating a fun environment, and promoting employees based on their working records. Although the company is doing well, it has some weaknesses in its culture, such as using unethical advertisement means to promote its products, theft of customer data, and making limited profit margins. The weaknesses make the organization have difficulties in its operations, which give the employees a hard-working time.

Making ethical advertisements

Advertisements make the basis of any organization, but the nature of making the advertisements should be ethical enough to make the organization grow effectively. At Zappos, there is a culture of making advertisements that are unethical to promote their products. The company does not care whether the advertisements made will affect other organizations or how society views the organization through the use of unethical adverts. Sometimes the company does adverts that directly counter the products of other companies, which is unethical practice. There is the freedom to compete, but the competition should be free and fair for everyone. That kind of culture should be discouraged in all manner to make the organization a better place and free from any form of abuse to other organizations and people. People like to be engaged in activities that do not harm others and should be educative in all manner.

The advertisements made by the company should not be made to look like they are directly inflicting on other organizations or products. They need to be as neutral as possible to enable lift the name of the company and put it on the map. The adverts dome should not use images that are not pleasant to people. The young people may not have problems with the images, but other people, especially the aged, may find the content not to be good to them. For example, advertising clothes using a young naked lady may promote the product to young people, but the society will see the company as being unethical. By making ethical advertisements, many people will like the organization and promote its name into society by being ethical and morally upright. The people involved in the advertisement process should be of a suitable age and mature enough.

Keep customer data confidential

It has become a trend at Zappos that there is theft of customer data, credit card information, and their online system raises many questions. Several people have made claims about the nature of the online systems being used by Zappos and how their credit card details keep being used to withdraw money from their accounts. The concerns make people not to trust the company and may keep away from using its products. No one will like to be associated with a company where there are trust issues with the information given to them. The company will, therefore, lose many of its clients of the culture continues at Zappos and may to its total fall. No one would like to see their company fall due to something that can be controlled within the organization. Organizational fall due to fraud is something that can happen within a short period and lead to complete closure of the organization.

There is a need to keep customer data confidential as possible. Everyone should not be allowed to have access to customer data since it is a very sensitive part of the company and its clients. For example, the information regarding user credit cards has to be handled with much care and not accessible on the online system of the company. Very minimal and trusted people with a company can only have access to the information, and they should also keep it confidential at all costs. By keeping the user information confidential and safe, clients will gain trust with the organization and know that they are dealing with the right people. The company’s clients will bring other people on board too because they have trust in the organization.  The management and the workers will also have an easy working time because there will be minimal issues that concern the organization, which will make its operations easy.

Improve company management

For a long time, Zappos has been making limited profit margins, which have become a trend at the company. The limited profit margins have become like an organizational culture at Zappos, which has made the company to face many problems due to lack of funds. The sales made cannot cover the expenses of the company. There are many allegations of fund misuse at the company due to poor management. Poor management can lead to the decline of a company and its constituents either permanently or for a long time. There is a need to ensure that the company makes good progress by having good management procedures in place and pushing the company forward. By having proper management, the company will have excellent and smooth operations in place to enable it to move forward. From the interviews done to the company employees, there is poor management within the organization that lead to low profits

There is a need to have good management within the organization that will help it to realize its goals and make good profits. Proper management can be achieved by having the right people on board and teaching them the ethics of the company. For the company to realize its goals, proper management is critical, and good profits can only be made when the management is proper. The organization can sort to hire management services if they do not have the best people for management. They can as well divide the organization into departments and allow each department to be operated independently to make management easy. The good practices are to make the organization be at good par.

Conclusion

The organizational culture is what keeps it moving. If an organization has a good culture, then higher chances are that it will succeed in the future. Zappos took a keen look at its culture to ensure that employees meet the required standards and that they are in the proper line of duty. The hiring course at Zappos is made to follow the culture of the organization to ensure that they have the right people for the required job. They empower their employees to ensure that they give their best to the customers. The new employees are passed through the necessary process for them to adapt to the workings of the organization. The organizational culture at Zappos makes it possible to stand out from the many different organizations around the country and enable it to have a competitive advantage. From the study, it is evident that Zappos employees are all treated well and taken care of, which gives them the psyche to work efficiently. They are also given the freedom to make decisions that make them feel like part of the company and able to work without any restrictions.