Minimum wages? Living wages? Zeynep Ton, author of The Good Jobs Strategy describes her approach to combining increased wages with operational changes to create more value for customers AND create ‘good jobs’.
We discuss the shift in mindset and a practical need to treat frontline workers as key parts of the customer experience and brand and invest in them rather then seeing them as costs to be managed. We need more good jobs from both a business productivity and from a societal point of view.
Professor Ton teaches at MIT and also heads the not-for-profit the Good Jobs Institute.
Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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References & Resources:
Zeynep Ton's profile, MIT Sloan - https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/zeynep-ton
Zeynep Ton on Twitter - https://twitter.com/zeynepton
Ton, Z. (2014). The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt USA.
Conscious Capitalism main website - www.consciouscapitalism.org
Timothy Henry's Website - https://www.arete-mgt.com
Raj Sisodia's Website - http://rajsisodia.com
Mackey, J., Sisodia, R. (2014). Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. Harvard Business Review Press.
Sisodia, R., Henry, T., Eckschmidt, T. (2018). Conscious Capitalism Field Guide. Harvard Business Review Press.
About Zeynep Ton:
Zeynep Ton is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Zeynep's research focuses on how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, and the Harvard Business Review.
In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. The book draws on 15 years of research to show that the key to offering good jobs to employees, great service to customers, and superior returns to investors is combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation.
After her book was released, company exeutives started reaching out to Zeynep to understand how to implement the Good Jobs Strategy in their organizations, or to describe how they were already adopting the strategy. Zeynep cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute to help them transform through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.
Prior to MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years at Harvard Business School. She has received several awards for teaching excellence both at HBS and MIT Sloan.
Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the US on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University. She received her BS in industrial and manufacturing engineering there and her DBA from the Harvard Business School.
