Zeynep Ton
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Articles by Zeynep Ton
Costco’s Jim Sinegal on Building a Company That Will Endure
Costco’s Jim Sinegal on Building a Company That Will Endure September 26, 2025, Updated September 26, 2025 History is rife with examples of highly successful companies that lost their footing after their founders or early leaders who made them great left or died. Their ranks include Ford Motor Company, Walt Disney Company, Apple after Steve Jobs was pushed out in 1985, Hewlett-Packard, and Starbucks.
Building a Strong U.S. Middle Class Requires High-Productivity, High-Dignity Service Jobs
Reviving manufacturing is a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s economic platform. A strong manufacturing sector is indeed critical to national security, innovation, and economic resilience—including its potential to create more working-class jobs. But manufacturing alone cannot restore broad-based U.S. prosperity. If the country is serious about rebuilding the middle class, it must turn equal attention to the jobs that already abound: frontline service jobs. Source link
Building a Strong U.S. Middle Class Requires High-Productivity, High-Dignity Service Jobs
By Reviving manufacturing is a cornerstone of President Donald Trump's economic platform. A strong manufacturing sector is indeed critical to national security, innovation, and economic resilience- including its potential to create more working-class jobs. But manufacturing alone cannot restore broad-based U.S. prosperity. If the country is serious about rebuilding the middle class, it must turn equal attention to the jobs that already abound: frontline service jobs.
The Hidden Costs of Working Multiple Jobs: Implications for Spending Behavior and Wellbeing
Across three studies, combining survey data, transaction-level analysis from 90,548 customers of a nationwide retail bank, and insights from the General Social Survey, we study whether people with multiple jobs spend their labor income differently than people who earn the same total income from a single job.
Books for Leading into an Uncertain Future
"It's not personal ... It's strictly business." This quote has echoed throughout capitalism since its infamous declaration in The Godfather in 1972. But roughly 50 years later that sentiment is shifting, which is evident in today's most influential business and leadership books.
Zeynep Ton: The case for good jobs
By Zeynep Ton Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content. By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy
Lessons from Costco on Sustainable Growth
Under pressure to grow, leaders often give in to two temptations that can hurt their business in the long term: Grow in a way that loses the focus on the customer. Examples include adding products and services to their offerings that are out of sync with their value propositions or increasing prices or adding hidden fees to grow margins. Grow more quickly than their organizational capabilities allow.
Optimiser la création d'emplois de qualité : un défi à relever
Dans les secteurs du commerce de détail et des autres services à faible marge prévaut l’idée que des emplois de première ligne aux conditions ingrates – bas salaires, horaires imprévisibles, faibles opportunités d’avancement – sont nécessaires à la compétitivité. Pourtant, cela fait des décennies qu’une poignée d’entreprises (comme Costco et QuikTrip aux Etats-Unis ou Mercadona en Espagne) démontrent le contraire. Partager
How the Food Industry Is Using Cross-Training to Boost Service
Cross-training employees on a variety of tasks can be a powerful tool for improving operations, as well as for attracting and retaining workers. When employees are cross-trained to perform a variety of both customer-facing and non-customer-facing tasks, they can adjust their work depending on demand and business needs. Of course, that’s good for the business, but it also makes the job better for workers.
Good Jobs Are Good Business Original
There’s a lot more to a good job than making money. But for more than 50 million Americans who work in low-wage jobs, pay matters a lot—more than those of us who make higher wages may think. Low and inconsistent pay wreak havoc on workers’ lives, leaving no margin for emergencies or unexpected expenses.
We need "good jobs" to restore trust and save capitalism
Excerpted from The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay and Meaning to Everyone’s Work by Zeynep Ton. Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Copyright 2023 Zeynep Ton. All rights reserved. The world is profoundly different today than it was nearly a decade ago when I first set out to convince companies of the value of good jobs. While good jobs alone won’t solve all the following problems, it is hard to see how they can be solved without good jobs.
The 4 essential choices in a good jobs system
MIT Sloan professor of the practice is an expert in operations design and management and how organizations can simultaneously balance employee, customer, and investor satisfaction. Almost a decade ago, Ton published "The Good Jobs Strategy," which drew from 15 years of research on companies that offered good jobs while creating value for all of their stakeholders.
The four fallacies keeping leaders from creating good jobs
By Zeynep Ton The conventional wisdom in retail and other low-margin service industries has been that bad frontline jobs — with low pay, unpredictable schedules, and few opportunities for advancement — are necessary to compete. Yet for decades a handful of companies — including Costco and QuikTrip in the United States and Mercadona in Spain — have been proving that false.
Book Review | The Case for Good Jobs
Register for our next live-streamed interview: Dorcas Cheng-Tozun (June 6). Good jobs can be hard to find. But, as I learned early in life, they can also be found in the most unexpected of places. MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton has a new book explaining how they're created. The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work by Zeynep Ton, Harvard Business Review Press What defines a good job?
Come tenersi stretti gli operatori di frontline
Quanto costa trascurare i dipendenti meno pagati Sei errori che commettono le aziende - e come possono fare di meglio Joseph Fuller, Manjari Raman Nonostante tutti gli sforzi che hanno fatto dall’estate del 2021 per ricondurre all’ovile gli operatori di frontline, le aziende faticano ancora a riassumere e a riportare le operations alla normalità pre-pandemia. Di conseguenza hanno avuto problemi di consegna dei prodotti ed erogazione dei servizi, perso fatturato e deluso i clienti.
When Doing Less Adds Up to More
Topics Frontiers An MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Permissions and PDF Share Imagine that, as a new executive at a retail company with stagnating sales, you’re tasked with finding new ways to grow revenues. After studying the market, you propose a new line of products to be sold in all of your locations.
The Obstacles to Creating Good Jobs
The conventional wisdom in retail and other low-margin service industries has been that bad frontline jobs—with low pay, unpredictable schedules, and few opportunities for advancement—are necessary to compete. Yet for decades a handful of companies—including Costco and QuikTrip in the United States and Mercadona in Spain—have been proving that false.
U.S. Railroads and the Pitfalls of Systematic Understaffing
U.S. railroad companies’ refusal to grant paid sick leave to their workers has exposed a startling vulnerability in the American economy: Rail staffing levels are not high enough to allow employees to take time off when they are ill. While Congress has intervened to block a strike, the underlying cause of the labor dispute — systemic understaffing — will persist.
Give Service Workers Stable Schedules
Over the past several decades, the service industry has grown dependent on an always-available pool of workers willing to accept shifts on an as-needed basis. Thanks to forces unleashed by the pandemic, those days seem to be over. In a recent Pew survey, scheduling issues were three of the major drivers of the Great Resignation.
A Background Note on "Unskilled" Jobs in the United States - Past, Present, and Future
Abstract Since 1917, American jobs have been classified by their skill level. “Unskilled work” was said to, “require no special training, judgment, or manual dexterity, but supply mainly muscular strength for the performance of coarse, heavy workdexterity.” It was the largest category of work and included mostly non-white and foreign-born workers who were employed in farm labor, factory labor, servant occupations, and “other labor” occupations.
Opinion | The $15 Minimum Wage Isn’t the Only Way to Raise Worker Pay.
Demonstrators participate in a protest outside of McDonald's corporate headquarters on January 15, 2021 in Chicago. The protest was part of a nationwide effort calling for minimum wage to be raised to $15-per-hour. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Katie Bach is the former managing director at the Good Jobs Institute.
Why Reducing Your Offerings Pays Off
To ride out the pandemic, many retail and restaurant chains have streamlined their offerings. They are discovering something a handful of companies — including Trader Joe’s, Costco, In-N-Out, and Texas Roadhouse — had known long before: Offering a tremendous variety of items drives waste, mistakes, and training costs; reduces employee productivity; and makes it harder for employees to deliver great service. Covid-19 has significantly altered shopping and eating out.
Equality in the U.S. Starts with Better Jobs
halfdark/Getty Images Americans are demanding a reckoning. Incidents of police brutality and structural inequities that have caused the pandemic to hit people of color especially hard are sparking calls for racial justice. The precarious conditions endured by poorly paid frontline workers who have continued to stay on the job during the pandemic have generated calls for economic justice.
Rebuilding the Economy Around Good Jobs
In these difficult times, we’ve made a number of our coronavirus articles free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. In countries hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, customer-facing service businesses don’t just face a tough two to three months; they face a tough two to three years.
How Can’t-Close Retailers Are Keeping Workers Safe
picture alliance/Getty Images We’ve made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. Workers at grocery stores, pharmacies, convenience stores, and other “can’t close” retail businesses are working overtime and risking their own health to keep the rest of us in food, medicine, and toilet paper. The companies they work for need to take care of them in order to keep both them and us safe.
If Higher Pay Is Profitable, Why Is It So Rare? Modeling Competing Strategies in Mass Market Services
The authors thank several organizations and their employees for allowing us access and sharing their data and insights with us. They also thank Matt Amengual, Emilio Castilla, Greg Distelhorst, Michael Jacobides, Sarah Kalloch, David Keith, Erin Kelly, Tom Kochan, Rogelio Oliva, Paul Osterman, John Sterman, and Ezra Zuckerman for their valuable suggestions.
Why So Many CEOs Don’t Realize They’ve Got a Bad Jobs Problem
HBR Staff/Mint Images/Getty Images Last month, while moderating a CEO panel at a conference in Washington, D.C., one of us asked whether the Business Roundtable’s recent statement on a corporation’s purpose would convince business leaders to improve job quality for hourly workers. The panel argued that CEOs already focus on frontline job quality — much more than people assume. Looking at the facts, that’s hard to believe.
Service Jobs Should Be - and Can Be - Middle-Class Jobs
America is losing its one-time healthy middle class and desperately wants it back. But how? Some say reviving manufacturing jobs. Some say redistributing existing wealth. Some say a universal basic income. Academics are fond of upskilling and lifelong education. Even U.S. CEOs are now saying that they need to create more higher-paying jobs. But what almost no one talks about is how we can improve the low-wage jobs — mostly in the service sector — that already exist.
The Financial Case for Good Retail Jobs
Huber & Starke/Getty Images Many retailers have been operating in mediocrity for decades. Their focus on minimizing labor costs has led to bad jobs, high employee turnover, and unreliable attendance. This labor instability — combined with out-of-touch decisions from the silos at headquarters — leads to poorly run stores. There are too many products, pilots, tools, and changes. Employees have little to no empowerment.
Raising Wages Is the Right Thing to Do, and Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Your Bottom Line
Jason Schneider The “working poor” are a growing problem in America — one that is increasingly embarrassing to the corporate elite. Business leaders who are morally inclined to do the right thing should and can play a stronger role in solving this problem by raising wages to a level where their employees’ earnings cover the cost of living.
Higher Wages Aren’t Enough to Turn Mediocre Jobs into Good Ones
Image Source/Getty Images Facing a tight labor market as the holiday shopping season approaches, many retail companies will undoubtedly consider following the lead of Amazon, which recently announced that it is raising its minimum hourly wage for all of its U.S. employees, including those working at Whole Foods stores, to $15 — $7.75 above the federal minimum wage. Higher wages are good for retail and other low-wage service workers.
The U.S. Needs a ‘Good Jobs’ Revolution in Retail
There’s widespread agreement that stagnant wages are a big problem in the United States. Which industry could really help do something about it? Retail. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two largest occupations in the United States are retail salesperson and cashier. In 2014, their median hourly wages were $10.30 and $9.20, respectively. Both are below the poverty threshold for a family of four, even for someone working full-time.
4 Reasons Retail Jobs Are About to Get Better
There’s widespread agreement that stagnant wages are a big problem in the United States. Which industry could really help do something about it? Retail. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the two largest occupations in the United States are retail salesperson and cashier. In 2014, their median hourly wages were $10.30 and $9.20, respectively. Both are below the poverty threshold for a family of four, even for someone working full-time.
If Retailers Want to Compete with Amazon, They Should Use Their Tax Savings to Raise Wages
Walmart announced today that it is raising its starting wage in the United States from $9 per hour to $11, as a result of the recently enacted tax reform. It is part of Walmart’s broader effort to create a better experience for its employees and customers. The new tax law creates a major business opportunity for other retailers as well — if their leaders are wise enough to take advantage of it. The U.S. corporate tax rate is dropping from 35% to 21%.
The GJS Can Take Lessons from TPS
The Good Jobs Strategy, or GJS — an approach to improving productivity and customer satisfaction in retail and other service industries — works. But the system, which involves paying frontline workers more, providing them with predictable schedules, offering them career opportunities, and supporting them with a specific operations model, is not easy to implement.
Getting Started on Good Jobs
Zeynep Ton’s Good Jobs Scorecard can help you understand how jobs in your company measure up. Watch below as Ton walks you through how to use it. Ton outlines how to tell whether you’re meeting your employees’ and customers’ needs and how to assess the impact of those needs on your operational performance. By the end of the session you should be able to start the process of implementing a Good Jobs Strategy.
How to Build a Business on Good Jobs
A growing number of service companies that have long offered frontline workers low pay, few benefits, unpredictable schedules, and dead-end careers are abandoning or at least questioning their model.
The Case for Good Jobs
Yes, there are millions of jobs at retail stores, restaurants, call centers, hotels, and day cares — but most of them are lousy and have been for decades. They offer low pay, few benefits, and no career paths. Conventional wisdom holds that bad jobs are the unavoidable price of low-cost service. They are not — and some companies are realizing that the way they run their operations, including treating their employees as replaceable commodities, is not sustainable.
Transforming Today’s Bad Jobs into Tomorrow’s Good Jobs
All eyes are on the future of work and the impact that automation and machine learning will have on U.S. jobs. The blizzard of conferences, initiatives, articles, and reports on how to prepare for the changes technology will bring to our economy is important. But so is today — and it feels to us like the futurists are leaving behind what’s happening now. Work currently does not work for millions of Americans.
Why CEOs Should Follow the Market Basket Protests
Somebody must have done something really right at Market Basket. Thousands of the supermarket chain’s employees have organized rallies at their local stores and at the company’s headquarters during the last week. Were these employees rallying for higher wages, better benefits, and predictable schedules — the needs so many retail employees face? No, they were demonstrating to help their ousted CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, get his job back (he was fired in June after coup led by his cousin, Arthur S.
How 4 Retailers Became “Best Places to Work”
HEB, Costco, Trader Joe’s, and QuikTrip all made Glassdoor’s 2017 “Best Places to Work: Employees’ Choice” list, released in early December. These retailers pay better than many others and that counts for a lot in a low-wage industry like retail. But they also score higher on culture. What is it about their cultures that makes them such good places to work?
How Low-Paying Retailers Can Adapt to Higher Minimum Wages
Fifteen states have increased their minimum wage this year, with more on the way. In Seattle, for example, large employers will have to pay a $15 minimum wage by January 2017. These increases will seriously affect low-wage employers such as retailers and restaurants, which means investors should be asking some tough questions to see which low-wage employers in their portfolios will benefit from the wage hikes and which will lose: How are you increasing your labor productivity?
A New Way to Rate Retailers on Providing Good Jobs
Executives have a choice in how they run their operations. They can run them in a way that uses people as interchangeable parts. Or they can run them in a way that leverages a skilled, capable, motivated workforce. Both ways can be profitable. But the employee-centered way is a better way — even in low-cost retail. In my research, I’ve found that retailers using an employee-centered operations strategy, which I call the good jobs strategy, have two strategic advantages.
Why “Good Jobs” Are Good for Retailers
Retailers such as QuikTrip, Mercadona, Trader Joe’s, and Costco instead create a virtuous cycle of investment in employees, stellar operational execution, higher sales and profits, and larger labor budgets.
The high cost of labor efficiency -- and the 'Good Jobs' alternative
Sep 1, 2014 5:17 PM EST Editor’s Note: Is treating employees well, minimizing costs and earning a high return for investors, all at the same time, too good to be true? No, says MIT Sloan School of Management professor Zeynep Ton, author of “The Good Jobs Strategy.” On this Labor Day, Ton speaks to Making Sen$e about how paying workers low wages and scheduling their hours on the employer’s terms is a choice; it’s far from a business necessity.
4 New Business Books to Read This Month
Grow Don't Be an April Fool: 4 New Business Books to Read This Month Spring break is over, so get back to work with these books bound to give you a leg up this month. <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/">Shutterstock Images</a> Spring break is over and school is back in session.
Why “Good Jobs” Are Good for Retailers
Retailers such as QuikTrip, Mercadona, Trader Joe’s, and Costco instead create a virtuous cycle of investment in employees, stellar operational execution, higher sales and profits, and larger labor budgets.
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