Successful retailers thrive by creating good jobs, and making the operational choices that enable those jobs, along with great customer experiences and sales performance. Zeynep Ton wrote the book on this topic, "The Good Jobs Strategy." What started as a look into supply chains led to the discovery that many problems in retail occur in the last 10 yards of the supply chain — and most of that could be remedied by adjusting labor practices. Following her appearance at NRF 2020 Vision: Retail’s Big Show in January, Ton sat down with the Retail Gets Real podcast team to share her story.
"I came to the United States from Turkey and I thought this country was the land of opportunity. If you work really hard, you do great things," Ton says. "But then, I started meeting a lot of people who were working hard and not making it. ... And at the same time, customers are losing, investors are losing. I thought, 'There has to be another way, because everybody seems to be losing in this situation." That led me to some other companies like Mercadona of Spain, Costco, Trader Joe's, QuikTrip, the convenience store chains. And once I learned how they were able to thrive by creating good jobs, I thought, 'I have to communicate this to others.'"
Listen to the full episode to learn more about how to create an operating system that produces good jobs, low turnover and high productivity. And to learn more about what happened at NRF 2020, head over to nrfbigshow.com.
