The Case for Good Jobs, Zeynep Ton
The Case for Good Jobs, Zeynep Ton
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The Case for Good Jobs
How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work

Author: Zeynep Ton

Narrator: Machelle Williams

Unabridged: 8 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 07/11/2023

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

From healthcare facilities to call centers, fulfillment centers to factories, and restaurants to retail stores, companies are struggling to find or keep workers, because the jobs they offer are low-paying, stressful, and provide little chance for growth and success.

Workers want good jobs, and many leaders want to provide them. But they don't think they can offer higher pay and more motivating work without hurting the bottom line. Most business leaders want to win with customers, but their companies are hobbled by a host of service and operational problems largely driven by high employee turnover—turnover that's partly driven by low pay.

It is indeed a vicious cycle, and Zeynep Ton is here to show you the way out: why good jobs combined with strong operations lead to higher productivity and increased competitiveness for the business. As the leading scholar on good jobs and president of the Good Jobs Institute, Ton has helped executives at many companies implement a good jobs system. With expertise drawn from spending time on the front lines with workers and their managers, she knows what's keeping most companies mired in mediocrity and how implementing a good jobs system makes them more competitive, more resilient, and more likely to attract and retain loyal customers and dedicated employees.

About Zeynep Ton

Zeynep Ton is an adjunct associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Previously, she was on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. Ton received numerous awards for teaching excellence at both schools. Her work has been featured widely in the media, including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and The New Yorker, Bloomberg TV, and MSNBC. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and four children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Adriyana on May 30, 2024

The book mainly talks about how to create a good work place for the industries: supermarkets, hotel, call centres, support. The main operational choices are: focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train, operate with slack. But some of the points can be applied in general. My main insigh......more

Goodreads review by Hasta on January 20, 2024

What uou can do: 1. Focus and simplify 2. Standardize and empower 3. Cross train 4. Operate with slack Vicious cycle: 1. Your first instinct is to fix people 2. You hire smart managers Managers are often unaware of how mediocre their system is. Corporate disability: 1. You can’t hire the right people or trai......more

Goodreads review by Chris on January 15, 2024

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. There are many business academics out there who make a career out of kissing the butts of C-suite executives and getting high-paying speaking gigs by telling them what they want to hear. I started to feel like that was the direction this book was heading, and......more

Goodreads review by Lance on August 05, 2023

We live in a world with declining unionization and businesses that like to hire for the lowest possible wage and with the least possible job security. The result, as most of us have seen in friends and family, or experienced first hand, is under employment, rapid employee turnover and loss of instit......more

Goodreads review by Amber on September 24, 2023

This was on the FT’s summer reading list, and I really enjoyed it. Ton lays out the case for paying workers more, and investing in them more, *as a means of improving customer service and thereby profitability* rather than the typical altruistic justifications. She has several in-depth case studies......more