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. They remain market leaders in their very competitive industries without the bad jobs on which those industries supposedly depend — and it’s no secret how they do it: by adopting “good jobs” systems. Meanwhile, in a tight labor market, organisations with bad jobs are finding it hard to stay open because they can’t attract and retain workers.

If good jobs can make companies more competitive, more resilient, and more humane, why don’t more companies create them? I see doubt, fear, and a lack of imagination — which stem from misguided views of the value of frontline workers, how to make business decisions, and the risks of system change — as the reasons. The purpose of this article is to dismantle those views and give more business leaders the courage to choose a good-jobs approach.

The good-jobs system and its outcomes

In my earlier work I have found that companies that continually improve the value and service offered to their customers and the productivity of their employees operate in a system with two key — and mutually dependent — components: