In MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton’s game-changing book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits, she discusses how companies such as Costco offer good jobs to workers, low prices and excellent service to customers, and great returns to shareholders all at the same time. What makes good jobs not only possible but very profitable—even in low-cost service businesses—is a set of counterintuitive choices that transforms the company’s investment in workers into high performance. What are these choices? Offer less, combine standardization with empowerment, cross-train, and operate with slack. It’s a combination that lowers operating costs, increases worker productivity, and, as “The Good Jobs Strategy” shows over and over, puts workers — yes, even cashiers and stockroom workers—at the center of a company’s success. In this strategy, “everyone — employees, customers, and investors — wins.”
In this discussion, Zeynep Ton and Richard Galanti, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Costco Wholesale Corporation, explore how the strategy works in a company like Costco and the implications for creating better jobs in our economy.
This is a framework for helping business owners understand three main ways to transition a business to employee ownership: worker cooperatives, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and management buy-outs. This tool may also be used by practitioners who work with businesses — especially small businesses — to increase awareness of employee ownership as a tool for transitioning businesses as owners retire. It can also help inform employees seeking to join or push for values-based workplaces.
The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, guarantees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to covered workers and has been used over 100 million times since its inception. But since this leave is unpaid, many cannot afford to take it.
In addition, only a little more than half of the U.S. workforce is covered by FMLA since establishments with 50 or fewer employees are not covered by the law, and workers need to meet job tenure and hours worked requirements before becoming eligible. This situation is not only bad news for workers and customers, businesses themselves may experience decreased worker productivity and increased worker turnover when employees must put work ahead of health and family. As this issue gains attention, a number of states and localities are implementing or exploring paid sick or family leave laws.
In this conversation, panelists will discuss challenges faced by workers, parents and employers in managing this issue and explore ideas for practices and policies that can better support the workforce, families, and the economy.
In MIT Sloan professor Zeynep Ton’s game-changing book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs & Boost Profits, she proves that it is possible to offer good jobs to workers, low prices and excellent service to customers, and great returns to shareholders all at the same time. What makes good jobs not only possible but very profitable—even in low-cost service businesses—is a set of counterintuitive choices that transforms the company’s investment in workers into high performance. What are these choices? Offer less, combine standardization with empowerment, cross-train, and operate with slack. It’s a combination that lowers operating costs, increases worker productivity, and, as The Good Jobs Strategy shows over and over, puts workers—yes, even cashiers and stockroom workers—at the center of a company’s success.
In this book talk, Ton discusses The Good Jobs Strategy and its implications.
In the United States today, roughly 25 million workers, over 16 percent of all workers, are foreign-born. Immigrant workers contribute skills, knowledge and labor to the U.S. economy through employment in a diversity of sectors, including hospitality, construction, information technology, health care and others.
Foreign-born workers also start businesses at higher rates than native born workers, contributing to economic growth and job creation. While some immigrant workers and business owners achieve great economic success, others operate marginal businesses or are employed in jobs where wages are low, working conditions are poor, and safety standards are disregarded. For foreign-born workers that wish to improve their education and upgrade their skills, other barriers may stand in their way, such as limited English skills or poor access to financial aid. Millions of these workers have toiled in the shadows of the labor market, but soon, the nation may have opportunities to both improve job quality and offer ways for these workers to build their skills. These opportunities can help improve employment for the labor market and economy overall in ways that benefit all Americans.
Panelists discussed the immigrant workforce in the U.S. today, focusing on its past and potential economic contributions, opportunities for gaining skills as well as the implications of immigration and immigration reform for job quality. This is the third conversation in the Aspen Institute’s Working in America series that highlights a variety of job quality issues affecting low and moderate income working Americans.
In this brief, we provide an overview of work in the direct-care industry and profile PHI (Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute), an organization dedicated to improving job quality in the industry. Our goal is to offer information to those involved in workforce development about the challenges of work in the direct-care industry and the strategies PHI uses to promote job quality improvements.
As one of our nation’s strongest training models, apprenticeship provides individuals the unique opportunity to work and develop their skills at the same time through a mix of paid on-the-job training and classroom instruction. In this report, Aspen WSI examines completion and cancellation rates in construction apprenticeship, the challenges apprentices experience in completing their programs, and strategies that are being used to support the success of these individuals. The report is based on national and state-level analysis of apprenticeship completion rates and dozens of interviews and focus groups with apprentices, journey workers, union representatives, construction contractors, pre-apprenticeship program leaders, and other stakeholders in the industry.
This report details the state of low-wage work in the restaurant industry and provides a profile of Restaurant Opportunities Center-United, an organization striving to empower low-wage restaurant workers, employers, and consumers to collectively improve job quality in the industry.
This report details the dynamics and challenges of the residential construction industry and provides a profile of the Workers Defense Project, a non-profit and membership-based organization based in Austin, Texas that seeks to provide low-wage workers, particularly those in the construction industry, with resources to improve their working and living conditions
In May, we celebrate Mother’s Day, a holiday created by Americans to honor our moms and their influence in society. With the presence of women with children in the workforce increasing, mothers are not only the glue that holds our homes together, but they are also the fuel helping to drive our economic recovery. Two-thirds of women with young children now work and nearly half are the primary breadwinner within their family. As more moms enter the workforce and “lean in” to build a successful career and household, however, the affordable, quality early care and education system their families need to lean on is noticeably absent. The women and moms working in the early care and education industry also face significant challenges. Low wages, few benefits and limited training or advancement opportunities are widespread in the early care and education industry, which contributes to high worker turnover, further eroding the quality of care.
In this event, speakers discuss how we can have both an early care and education system that provides good jobs and quality, affordable care.