There Still Aren’t Enough “Good Jobs”

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Companies around the world are struggling to fill open positions, while millions of unemployed people look for work. What's going on? Zeynep Ton, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says that organizations need to start offering better jobs. While old-school management thinking argued for paying workers only as much money as the market dictated and squeezing every last bit of efficiency out of them to maximize profits, the 21st century requires a new approach. This starts with higher wages but also includes more predictability and flexibility. In the wake of the global pandemic that brought essential workers to the forefront, Ton explains what companies have done - and can do - to create more good jobs in society.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR IDA cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Allison Beard.
0:42.6	Walk around any American city or town today, and you'll see help-wanted signs everywhere.
0:53.8	There are currently 10 million jobs unfilled in the United States, and lots of businesses
0:57.9	are struggling to operate at full capacity. Western Europe is also seeing record-breaking
1:02.3	job vacancies with companies reporting that they lack skilled workers, and it's a similar
1:06.9	story in Asia, troubling turnover. Why are so many people leaving their jobs, or not
1:12.6	going back to the ones they had pre-pandemic? And why do we see some who have stayed employed
1:17.0	now striking or trying to unionize? Our guest today would say it's because they're
1:21.4	sick of working along, inflexible, and sometimes unpredictable hours for not nearly enough
1:27.0	pay-in-benefits. They're leaving bad jobs. She argues that the only way to fix the problem
1:33.1	is to start offering good jobs. She wants more companies to realize that people at any
1:37.9	level deserve good pay-in-benefits, security, flexibility, and work that feels engaging,
1:44.3	and she's designed a strategy to help employers make that happen.
1:47.9	Zayn Optan is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Zayn Opt, welcome.
1:52.8	Thank you so much for having me also.
1:58.0	Okay, so lots of companies have been guilty of offering bad jobs for a while. Who are
2:03.1	some of the worst offenders, and what have they been doing wrong?
2:06.5	Well, we can find the worst offenders in lower wage sectors, retail, food, fast food,
2:14.7	restaurants, call centers, senior living. These are the places where recently we have
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