Making the Case for Good Jobs
Zeynep Ton is the author of the Good Jobs Strategy – which holds the honour of being the book I refer to the most when it comes to talking about work. The book is explicitly about supermarket jobs, but the discipline of reflecting on job design had a relevance to the rest of us. ‘The number one reason people stay at QuikTrip,’ said a senior leader at the business, ‘is not the pay. [The firm pays substantially above market averages.] It’s because their boss will do the same jobs they do’. That sense of cohesion is a vital lesson of successful cultures.
In that book Ton set about making the case for firms to create good jobs for their employees, not just for the moral reason but because it was a route to faster growth.
Now she returns with a new book, The Case for Good Jobs, which not only explains the reasoning for creating better working conditions for workers, but also how any firm can set about doing it. At the heart of the discussion is a recognition that workers want to do a good job – and often find obstacles in their way.
