The Case for Good Jobs with Zeynep Ton

Follow: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio or your favorite podcast player.

There is a link between people and operational performance: Higher employee turnover, understaffing, and lack of training contribute to operational problems. Zeynep Ton joins Kevin to talk about the blindingly obvious need for good jobs and a customer-centric approach. When you set your employees up for success, the entire organization benefits. Zeynep suggests that we can create good jobs with higher pay, meaning, and value and still get financial results. Further, she discusses the Good Job Strategy's four operational choices: Operate with slack, focus and simplify, standardize and empower, and cross-train.

Listen for...

00:00 Introduction
02:23 About Zeynop Ton
04:17 Connection Between Employee Satisfaction and Operational Problems
06:29 Importance of Being Customer-Centric and Front-line Centric
08:17 Connection Between Empowerment and Standardization
10:40 System-Wide Approach for Creating Good Jobs
17:02 Need for Urgency and Alignment in Making Changes
21:32 Impact of Pandemic on Organizations' Thinking About Good Jobs
25:33 Concern About Costs of Operating with Slack
29:53 Zeyneps' Book Recommmendations

Meet Zeynep

Zeynep's Story: Zeynep Ton is the author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits and her latest book, The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay and Meaning to Everyone’s Work. She is a professor of the practice in the Operations Management group at MIT Sloan School of Management. She is also president of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute, where she works with companies to improve their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors alike. Before joining MIT Sloan, Ton spent seven years on the faculty at Harvard Business School. Zeynep’s research explores how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously.

This episode is brought to you by...

The Long-Distance Team. Remote leadership experts, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, help leaders navigate the new world of remote and hybrid teams to design the culture they desire for their teams and organizations in their new book!

Learn More

Book Recommendations

The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work by Zeynep Ton
Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams by David Burkus
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

Related Episodes

Join Our Community

If you want to view our live podcast episodes, hear about new releases, or chat with others who enjoy this podcast join one of our communities below.

Leave a Review

If you liked this conversation, we’d be thrilled if you’d let others know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Here’s a quick guide for posting a review.

Previous Episode

Next Episode