People come to work at your place, you hire for fit, teach them the core value and functions of the job, generally get them fired up for a while and then what?

It’s a tough question, but one that is vitally important when it comes to marketing because happy, engaged, sold employees make far better brand advocates than the opposite.

In doing some research on referable companies for my new book The Referral Engine, I came across a policy used by the online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos. When Zappos makes a hire, no matter the department, they go through a training class that includes spending time answering customer call center inquiries. (That’s the job that the bulk of Zappos employees fill.) At the end of their training period they are made an offer to quit. They are told they will be paid for the training period + $2,000 if they want to quit.

I spoke with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh recently and he told me that initially they put this in place to weed out people that weren’t ultimately committed to the Zappos way of serving customers, but what they found was the more valuable attribute was the impact it had on the people that stayed. (By the way, few take them up on the offer.) People that turn down the $2,000, an amount that is over two weeks pay for typical call center job, go home over the weekend and think long and hard about why they want to stay. The net effect is that they resell themselves on making a commitment to the job at Zappos. (If you’re a blogger and want a free review copy of Tony’s book Delivering Happiness, due out in June, apply here.)

I don’t know that I have a host of answers for what or how you should attack this one, I just know it will pay off if you do.

Share your ideas for reselling your employees. How do you do it?

Image credit: charlie llewellin