The Good Jobs Strategy

How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

By: Zeynep Ton

Narrated by: Tanya Eby

Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

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 audiobook 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.

©2014 Zeynep Ton (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Fantastic book

This book in the information she has gathered fantastic. I only wish more businesses would operate. This way.

Interesting especially if you manage retail

This was a very interesting book on best practices for creating a great workplace, especially for those who work in the retail industry.

Not easy, but companies can be "good jobs" company

There are not many companies that offer good jobs and low prices. Obviously, it's not easy to do. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing the "good jobs" strategy where both the employees are happy and the profits are high. The author looks closely at a few model companies (like Costco and Trader Joe's) to reveal how they are able to accomplish this. Some of the things that model companies do are: hire quality employees and invest them, maintain operational discipline to ensure consistency and quality of services and products, simplify offerings of products for lower cost and complexity, empower employees to make customers happy, and value solutions and ideas from employees.

great book

Any additional comments?

Its is sound business. I you take good care of your people they take good care of your customers. As Stu Lenard said " marketing is a surrogate for poor customer service.

Fantastic!

Great view on how to improve performance on the long term and have people on the center of your strategy.

empowered Work Force

Would you listen to The Good Jobs Strategy again? Why?

Yes. Good back ground and versed in multicultural ethics and practice.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Toyota factory walk through was great.

Which scene was your favorite?

Over all enlightening

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me aware of how we as society with proper steps, strong management, and implementation of the Good jobs Strategy can improve our lives. Everyone would benefit from this.

Any additional comments?

At times some topics seemed repetitive. I would point out with all the variations, strategy's, and multitude of examples this was hard to avoid. She did a good job of putting it all together. I enjoyed the narration as well.

Great book and great knowledge

I loved this book all the way. When I read its reviews, when I started listening and when I finished it. As an operations professional, I cannot stress the amount of knowledge it added to me. The numerous examples provided are more than adequate to explain the theory behind.

For me personally, my take on it would be the focus on retail business which is not my line. It would have been great if it tackled a number of disciplines, yet this is the focus of the book and it is meant to be like this.

Operating the company to a growing bottom line

Talks about how to use operations management strategies to turn the usual focus on cutting labor thin to bleed out profits to over staffing to build a happy, healthy, fully engaged work force that will drive profit growth.

Great content but a little bit repetitive

I think the ideas shared in this book are really valuable, but a little bit repetitive. Maybe these could be condensed a little bit.

Good for Big Retailers

I am sure this book would have been fantastic for big retailers. Companies that employ hundreds if not thousands of staff, particularly if they are under performing and not achieving the profits they desire.

There are a lot of lessons to learn from these mega companies that are covered in detail within this book. But, for me, there was very little and I couldn't complete the book because I operate a small service based business and was hoping to get insight into growth strategies, but it's simply was not forthcoming.

Honestly, if you have a big business and are underperforming, you need this book. If you have a small services firm and are not in a retailworld, think deeply about what you are looking for from an book and that reflection will either lead you to or away from this book.

I'm not saying it's not good, just not relevant for the person not looking for exactly what this book addresses.