Zapoos.com Case Solution

The culture at Zappos has been both employee and customer-centric and celebrated both these stakeholders. They focus on brand building through their strong work ethic and culture identifying it as an important way to long term sustainability, growth, and success. 

The core values that the company highlights forms a basis for it s strong culture. The ten core values all create this urgency amongst employees to perform and enjoy working in the organization. As employees portray on their website “culture is jumping out of bed because you are excited to get to work”. This statement in itself reflects how happy employees are in the organization. The essence of the ten core values that form a structure for a happy culture. Through this, the organization has been able to encourage creative and out of the box thinking, and, more importantly, being themselves. This level of comfort amongst employees breaks down communication and hierarchical barriers that many organizations are striving to eliminate. In line with this culture, it is also important to ensure the cultural fit of potential employees who would contribute positively towards the culture and can adjust to it. The culture at Zappos is also to ensure that the right people are hired who would adjust with the work environment and adopt the core values of the company. Casual interactions go hand in hand with seriousness in operations that balance the equation for employees. The cultural values follow a theme that limits organizational control over employees and encourages them to be themselves and grow both personally and professionally. The company culture values the innate needs of employees of today regarding their growth needs, their passions and their creative or adventurous needs. The core component of the culture according to analysis is that the WOW factor applies to employees and customers both, and if a company can do so it is poised for success. 

2. How is this Culture Effective? 

The success of an organization’s culture can be measured through the level of satisfaction amongst employees. Culture is maintained and built at an individual level as Zappos, and this is one of the core factors for its success. The employees are all considered as unique individuals with a unique set of needs and requirements. Organizational cultures are not standard sets of core values that every organization can adopt. It is important to understand the type of environment an organization operates in and create a culture that fosters the organization’s growth in that environment. Zappos has been able to utilize the fast paced online marketing environment into its culture very well. Zappos aim is not be become a large corporate, rather be at a level where they are comfortable with themselves and enjoy being who they are as an organization. The fact that the company has shunned away the professionalism of the past and adopted an unconventional way of doing this has been a reason it‘s culture is so effective. Being able to give employees that freedom to be weird and funny and incorporate elements of happiness and fun into their daily work routines has been welcomed by employees thoroughly and boosted employee satisfaction and morale.

The culture at Zappos has several purposes. Primarily, the focus has been employee and customer satisfaction. Therefore, a light-hearted and friendly environment has been created by the company that would translate into happier employees and thereby happier customers. The values such as being adventurous, creative and open-minded, although very unconventional have been able to set the company apart from the competition. Challenging the status quo has been an integral part of the organization as it believes that this would be an element that enables the organization to stand out. Daring to be different has been a purpose for the organization, and they take measures through their culture to achieve this. All the core values contribute towards this purpose for the organization in a unique manner for e.g. idea generation from the bottom up is encouraged which is a concept many organizations fail to incorporate or understand. The concept of servant-leaders and the emphasis that these are the best leaders is one way the organization accomplishes its cultural goals and objectives.