Almost one in four American working adults has a job that pays less than
a living wage. Conventional wisdom says that's how the world has to
work. Bad jobs with low wages, minimal benefits, little training, and
chaotic schedules are the only way companies can keep costs down and
prices low. If companies were to offer better jobs, customers would have
to pay more or companies would have to make less.
But in The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton, a professor at the MIT
Sloan School of Management, makes the compelling case that even in
low-cost settings, leaving employees behind--with bad jobs--is a choice,
not a necessity. Drawing on more than a decade of research, Ton shows
how operational excellence enables companies to offer the lowest prices
to customers while ensuring good jobs for their employees and superior
results for their investors.
Ton describes the elements of the good jobs strategy in a variety of
successful companies around the world, including Southwest Airlines,
UPS, Toyota, Zappos, and In-N-Out Burger. She focuses on four model
retailers--Costco, Mercadona, Trader Joe's, and QuikTrip--to demonstrate
the good jobs strategy at work and reveals four choices that have
transformed these companies' high investment in workers into lower
costs, higher profits, and greater customer satisfaction.
Full of surprising, counterintuitive insights, the book answers
questions such as: How can offering fewer products increase customer
satisfaction? Why would having more employees than you need reduce costs
and boost profits? How can companies simultaneously standardize work and
empower employees?
The Good Jobs Strategy outlines an invaluable blueprint for any
organization that wants to pursue a sustainable competitive strategy in
which everyone--employees, customers, and investors--wins.
