Zappos made a $9 Million investment in their culture yesterday. Yes $9,000,000 in just one day. They actually do this four times a year!

Every quarter, Zappos closes all their locations for a few hours to have their quarterly “All Hands” off-site meeting. Click the photo here to read about this.

According to this article they use these times to:

• Have clear communication and transparency with locations across the Country.
• Learn more about the talent of their employees so employees feel appreciated.
• Celebrate wins and losses (transparency) and boost morale.
• Increase employee engagement.
• Connect with the leaders.
• Inspire.

Zappos earns about $9 Million a day yet takes everyone offline to celebrate and strengthen their culture. That means they pass up the potential to earn $36 Million a year so they can keep their culture growing strong. Who does that?! Zappos does.

Some business owners might say “We are not as profitable as Zappos and can’t afford to do that” but what that tells me is they never will be!

What is YOUR culture worth? 

Many of the Business Owners and CEOs I meet struggle with the idea of taking the team away from their work to invest in “soft skills” like communication or leadership development. These seem hard to quantify the ROI and so they often get ignored.

However, all of our businesses are run by PEOPLE working with PEOPLE and if we invest in our PEOPLE they will work better with other PEOPLE which makes our PEOPLE more efficient and that goes to the bottom line.

Oh yeah, and when people like working for us, they work harder, have better results, stay loyal to the team, and actually enjoy their job. Seems to me that you really CAN’T afford not too invest in your team like Zappos does if you ever want to reach your full potential.

The good news is that when you do take the team away for a day you’re only loosing the potential of a few thousand dollars and not $9 Million. Read more in this article “How Much Is Your Culture Worth?”

Just make sure when you do this that you have a focused plan so you achieve your goals and your team feels like you genuinely care about them. I’ve taken lots of team for off-site events and can help you make this a productive time, so call me when I can help.

Robert Hunt