Microsoft Offers Chinese Factory Workers a Lumia Phone to Quit

This reminds me of a tactic Zappo used on its new call center staff – at the end of the training camp, each employee was offered some sum of money (somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 I think) to quit on the spot. The reasoning being that Zappos would be better off without anybody who would rather have a few thousand bucks than work there. The goal was to have low performers self-identify themselves (whether or not you agree that taking this offer predicts low performance).

In this situation, Microsoft has announced that layoffs will be coming soon anyway, and presumably they want to get rid of the low performers. How do you identify which are the poor performers for something as commoditized as factory workers? Offer them a phone if they quit – the poor performers probably can identify THEMSELVES as poor performers, and so they see their termination as imminent anyway. So they'll take a free phone if they can get it. The people who think they're doing a good job won't take the offer.

Maybe these techniques are based on faulty assumptions about human nature, but they are logical.