Pod Insights How to Be a Better Human How to make every job a good job (w/ Zeynep Ton) About this episode Zeynep Ton believes that low-wage work (in childcare, customer service, assembly lines and other essential industries) is front-line work — and that pay should be adjusted accordingly. She makes the case that fair and competitive compensation for front-line workers is a better business model, with a nearly endless list of benefits for people and society at large. Listen in to learn how higher pay leads to higher productivity, better services, and happier people everywhere.
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0:01 Chris Duffy? Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. You know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover things like the smartest way to book flights without planning your trip around the cheapest days to fly, or the quick math for knowing when to pay with points or just swipe your card. It's like having a travel savvy tour guide right in your pocket to let you in on all the little-known tips and tricks to avoid all the hassle and extra costs that make travel so much harder than it has to be. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:25 Chris Duffy? Donate at N R D C dot org slash human, and your gift will be matched five times. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. We talk a lot on this podcast about what it means to improve your life and the world around you. But you know, one of the most obvious things you could do that would make your life better and give you time, money, and mental space to improve the world at large would be to have a good job, or even just to not have a terrible job. Today's guest, Zain Eptan, studies what makes work good, what makes it satisfying, dignified, and fair. She's a professor, a researcher, and the president of the Good Jobs Institute.
2:09 Chris Duffy? And here's a clip from her TED Talk where she's explaining what too often work actually looks like these days.
2:15 Speaker 01 Take Janet, a full-time hourly manager at a retail chain. Even as a manager, her low income didn't pay the bills for her and her son. So she had to have a second job. But she couldn't hold down to her second job because her work schedule changed all the time. One day, she might work from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The next morning, her shift might start at 5:00 AM. Just imagine her life and imagine how little time she had with her son. "My life is always in a turmoil," Janet told me. She couldn't sleep. Amazingly though, she still cared so much about doing a good job at work.
2:57 Speaker 01 But even there, she failed in front of her customers all the time. One day, she said to me, "Customers were yelling at her." Because the checkout line was too long. Some walked off, leaving their full baskets. The line was too long because there weren't enough workers at the store. And so many of the workers who were there were new. So they were slow and made a lot of mistakes. They put the wrong product on the wrong shelf. Or left the expired milk in the fridge. When customers caught mistakes at the checkout, cashiers had to call Janet for help every time. Because they weren't trusted to adjust prices or even solve the smallest problems.
3:42 Speaker 01 Controls like that drove people crazy and wasted everyone's time. Janet begged for more staff. But her stores' poor performance meant even a lower labor budget, which meant more mistakes and higher turnover. So she was always starting from square one. Rehiring, retraining, more firefighting.
4:09 Chris Duffy? We're going to talk more with Zainab about good jobs and how to make sure that everyone can get one in just a moment. But first, a quick break where I can do my job of having you listen to some podcast ads.
4:29 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.
5:12 Chris Duffy? In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
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7:04 Chris Duffy? Today, we're talking about what makes work meaningful, dignified, and fair with Zeynep Ton.
7:10 Speaker 01 Hi, my name is Zeynep Ton. I'm an operations professor at MIT Sloan, co-founder and president of the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute and the author of The Case for Good Jobs.
7:21 Chris Duffy? This is, I'm sure, a question that everyone asks you all the time. What is a good job?
7:25 Speaker 01 Well, a good job has to have the minimum condition of giving enough pay so we can have agency in our lives. Because when people don't make enough, regardless of how meaningful the job is, how much sense of belonging we feel, we can't put food on the table. So that's not a good job. So at a minimum, have agents in our lives by having good pay, good schedules, and career paths. And of course, a good job also has some higher needs that are filled, which is a sense of belonging, meaningfulness, and a sense of achievement.
7:56 Chris Duffy? And how common with that definition are good jobs?
8:01 Speaker 01 It's surprising how many people have bad jobs because their pay is so low. Just that basic condition is not met. Like before the pandemic, Brookings Institution did a great study. Fifty-three million Americans at the time, fifty-three million working people, had jobs that were low wage jobs with the median pay of less than $20,000 a year. So if you think about people that we meet regularly at the coffee shop, at the retail store, in hotels, restaurants, service workers tend to have, in general, pretty bad jobs because their pay is so low. Their schedules tend to be uncertain. They don't know from week to week when they're going to work.
8:44 Speaker 01 And they are given their schedules oftentimes one or two weeks in advance. So it's less common than we might think.
8:53 Chris Duffy? There's sometimes this idea, often by people who are wealthy and don't have to work these jobs, that jobs like service industry jobs, like retail jobs, have to be bad jobs. That they just are by nature. They can't really be a good, fulfilling job. And one of the things that I find so interesting about your work and your research is proof that that is actually not the case at all, that Many, many, many more jobs that are not good jobs right now could be good jobs.
9:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, the trade off between good pay and low prices is a false trade off. And you know, I'm an operations professor studying jobs because as an operations person, I saw how much companies leave behind by paying their workers so low, by treating them like interchangeable parts. Yes, they're not spending the money on labor, on pay, but they are spending the money on so many other things. All sorts of operational problems that reduce their sales, that reduce their, that increase their costs, that increases their productivity. So the cost of bad jobs are so much higher than we may think. And not only are the costs of bad jobs higher than we may think,
10:04 Speaker 01 there are companies out there who are able to provide their customers the lowest prices, making a ton of money for their shareholders and providing their workers good jobs.
10:15 Chris Duffy? I know one of the examples that you gave in your talk, and I know you like to talk about a lot is Costco, which I'm always hesitant to say how much I like, love a brand or a company, because you never know, like by the time this podcast comes out, some horrible thing might have been revealed about that company. But at the moment that this is being recorded, I'm a huge fan of Costco. I love to shop there. I feel like they have good products. It's, it's just an enjoyable experience. And part of the enjoyable experience for me is knowing that the people who work there are not being exploited.
10:43 Speaker 01 Yes, Jim Senegal, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Costco is coming to my class, my MIT class. And he, from the beginning, started paying workers so much more than other retailers. And when you ask Jim, why do you do this? He says, it's not altruism, it's good business. And he talks about how 70 cents of every dollar they spend to run their company goes to people. So if you don't do a good job managing people, then you're going to screw up pretty badly. So, so, so Costco is a fantastic example. And their success is not despite investing in their people. Their success is because they invest in their people.
11:25 Speaker 01 And it's not just investment in people, but they also design their work in a way that makes their employees, each hour of the employee worth a lot more than other companies.
11:35 Chris Duffy? The places where I've enjoyed working the most are where I have a sense of autonomy, a sense that like if I see something wrong or a system that could be better, I can proactively improve it, not just because I'm trying to like make more money, but because my day to day will be better if it's more, if it's less infuriating because things aren't working well. And a lot of jobs are structured, so there's an infuriating thing. And they're just like, well, you got to live with that. That's part of the job. But at places like Costco, they try and empower each individual worker more, right?
12:04 Speaker 01 Yeah. And Chris, over the last 25, 20 plus years, I have interviewed hundreds of frontline employees. And what struck me was how much they want to make a difference in somebody else's life, how much they want to be able to serve their customers, but they couldn't. In retail stores, in nursing homes, it was heartbreaking. In restaurants, but at a place like Costco, not only does Costco take care of you, but they create the conditions for you to take care of the customer. You're empowered to place the merchandise in ways that is best for your customer. If somebody buys something and drops it, you're empowered to change those eggs without asking your supervisor for help.
12:47 Speaker 01 And that type of empowerment enables the employees to shine in front of their customers because they can do something for them. And that type of empowerment also makes the job a better job. Because for a job to be good, it needs to, of course, create the conditions for people to have agency in their lives, take care of their families, find meaning in their work, but also the company has to make money. So it can't be like not working on Saturdays is not an option for a retailer or a restaurant, right? Even though it might be bad for workers to work during a weekend. So a good job has to work both for company and the worker.
13:22 Chris Duffy? Sometimes we hear companies frame these trade offs as though they're good for workers, right? Like an inconsistent work schedule is billed as flexibility or like you own your time. But in reality, if you're trying to pay the bills and make enough money to feed your family and pay rent, and you have to work from 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM one night and the next day from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM, it's very hard to plan a life. So like, that's kind of a nice euphemism to put on people, giving them an impossible way to schedule their life.
13:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely. And I'll give you another example. We'll pay for your college tuition. It's great to get an education. But if somebody is working two jobs, they're on their feet all day long, working with unstable schedules. At the end of the day, they don't have time to go to school. Right? At the end of the day, they're just so spent, so tired, so defeated. They don't have the energy. So, so why don't we give them what they need, which is enough pay to put food on the table, schedules that work for them so they can have a sane life? And let's not fool ourselves saying people want flexibility or I'll train them so they get a better job after here.
14:31 Chris Duffy? Yeah, it also makes me think that even the people who are the most, I would imagine, skeptical of your work and of like the push for good jobs for treating workers better. Those people seem to really believe that it's important to treat the person at the top the best, right? Like that if you treat the CEO well and if you pick a good CEO and a good executive team and a good board of directors, that that really makes a big difference for the company.
14:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think deep inside, you know, every executive, I think, and every leader believes that winning in anything requires a good team that's set up for success. At the executive level, they perfectly believe that. Yes, we need to have a good team that's set up for success. But I think, Chris, when it comes to the front lines, the assumption is that we can't afford to create that team because we must keep our prices low, because we must have our profits high. So the assumption is that we can't afford to do that. You know, for generations, we have taught business leaders that market pay is the right pay. So they think that anything other than the market pay is not the right thing. So for the CEOs, that's the market pay. We're completely comfortable with it.
15:42 Speaker 01 For the frontline employees, supply is very high, so that's the market pay, and we're comfortable with that, too.
15:47 Chris Duffy? Yeah, I've often heard people talk about high CEO pay as being affected by a ratcheting effect, where the way that they set CEO pay is they look at Quote unquote peer CEOs and then they give a slightly higher pay. And then the way that those peers get their pay set is they look at the peer CEOs and then they give a slightly higher pay. So it just keeps going up and up and up because of the way that they're calculating what is appropriate compensation. But that never seems to happen for the people who are doing the actual work, right? Like the people on the ground floor of these companies, they don't have the same ratcheting effect where it's like, we gotta go higher and higher and higher. In fact, it ratchets the other way. It ratchets down to the bare minimum that they can afford to.
16:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, oftentimes they look at what's typical in their industry. I teach my students, don't ever benchmark other mediocre companies. If you look at service settings, you'll find low pay and high employee turnover, which, which messes up businesses in so many different ways. Other, if you're a retailer, you're benchmarking other retailers on employee turnover, that's going to be a bad benchmark. Benchmark the best, but oftentimes, as you said, in those industries, they just benchmark the, the average and they just stay where they are.
16:57 Chris Duffy? One of my biases and something that kind of infuriates me is there's sometimes this narrative of like, people don't want to work. People just don't want to work. And I think that it strikes me that often the real story is that people don't want to work a terrible job for low pay. Like they don't want to work in conditions that are unworkable and unlivable. It's not that people don't want to have purpose and meaning and to be able to provide for their families, but often the, the options that they're provided are so horrible that they don't want that job. And that doesn't mean that they don't want a good job. It just means they don't want a bad job.
17:34 Speaker 01 Exactly. I mean, we see so many people in line to be working for Costco or HEB in, in Texas or Trader Joe's. If you provide the conditions that there are people who want to work and, and I, I think our assumptions about other humans sometimes get in the way. You know, if you look at especially the workers in, in, in lower wage parts of the economy, low pay hurts them in so many ways. Low pay hurts their physical abilities. So that low pay has an effect on heart disease, stroke, diabetes. Low pay hurts their. Mental health is associated with higher suicide rates. Low pay even affects their cognitive functioning. It's associated with a drop of 13 IQ points.
18:17 Speaker 01 And people who have multiple jobs oftentimes, not only can they not focus on the job, but they have more tardiness problems. They have more absenteeism because of everything else that's going on in their lives. So, so many managers look at this and say, hey, those workers, I asked them to do a simple thing and they can't even do a simple thing. They don't show up on time. So their assumptions are, they don't want to work hard, they don't want to come to work on time, they don't want to take responsibility. But we need to change these assumptions because it's not that people don't want to work hard. It is that we've created the conditions for them to fail.
18:56 Chris Duffy? We're going to take a quick break and then we will be right back.
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20:43 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.
21:26 Chris Duffy? In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
21:37 Chris Duffy? And we are back. Today, we're talking with Zeynep Tan, and here's another clip from her TED Talk.
21:43 Speaker 01 Now, I'm an operations management professor at MIT. We can't stand waste or inefficiency in operations. So that's the reason that I began researching service operations 25 years ago. But then, when I met hardworking people like Janet, who weren't making it, their struggles got to my heart, especially as an immigrant who believes in the American dream. So figuring out how to improve company performance and jobs became my work mission.
22:17 Chris Duffy? Okay, I have a question, and I'm trying to think of how to word this. So much of your research seems kind of obvious. That's what I'm saying is like, like, if you talk to a cashier and say, "How could I make your job better?", they'll probably tell you, like, "Pay me more and make the job less annoying." Like, it's straightforward.
22:33 Speaker 01 The things that I'm talking about in this book, like focus on creating real value for the customer. Treat your employees, right? Empower them so they can serve the customer. Give them enough time so that they can do improvements, so that they can do their work well. And all of these things are obvious things. It's common sense, right? But the organizational forces oftentimes work in ways that make it very difficult for them to apply common sense. Because we have moved from a world of customer-centered systems decision-making to financial silo decision-making. So every decision we make, let's look at the, let's look at the effect on sales. Let's look at the effect on this. And that's how we make the decision
23:17 Speaker 01 versus customer-focused decision-making, or all else being constant versus systems decision-making. It is obvious if you think about it, but obvious doesn't mean that it's going to be practiced. And that's what, that's the status quo right now in our economy.
23:31 Chris Duffy? So, okay, I love that answer. And it makes me think that there's often this kind of sense of cynicism or hopelessness. And I think it's because people have this real gut feeling that the way things are working right now are broken and that they do not make sense and that it is obviously wrong. And I know that you have a lot of optimism about the ability to actually make things better. So I'm sure people who are listening have some of that cynicism and hopelessness. Talk to them and tell them what, what can actually happen to improve the system as it is right now.
24:03 Speaker 01 First, may I address that cynicism? Because it is so real. You know, if you are a customer, you have cynicism about the companies who are trying to fool you with coupons or discounts or, or, or, or charging you more or making you wait on the line if you're in a call center. If you're an employee, you have cynicism because you see all these corporate leaders talking about purpose, values, and, and they pay you unlivable wages, right? If you're a CEO, you might have cynicism too because, you know, you are being blamed for everything. But, but you see those workers not working very hard and you say, do you know how hard I work? And and even middle managers, so the cynicism is everywhere.
24:46 Speaker 01 And if we created more places like Costco, then we would have a much better functioning society. What keeps me optimistic is that I see companies changing. And yes, change is not easy, but we have seen it happen. One of my favorite examples is Sam's Club. It was a sixty billion dollar retailer. In two thousand seventeen, they got their fourteenth CEO in thirty four years, John Furner. So this guy is there for just a few years and he needs to show results. And Sam's Club is really struggling at the time. They're way behind their biggest competitor, Costco. By the way, Sam's Club is Walmart's membership-based business. Their productivity is low, their turnover is high, they're not doing well, they're closing stores.
25:31 Speaker 01 And John Furner comes in as the CEO and says, you know what? For us to grow and survive, we have to be loved by our customers. For us to be loved by our customers, we have to be able to give them good products, good services. For us to be able to do that, we have to keep our turnover low and our people need to do a good job. He saw the connections between like his workers, their work and being able to deliver value for the customer. And he went through an entire transformation. They raised pay five to seven dollars an hour for people who are making around fifteen dollars an hour. That's a big deal. Like for someone whose pay is increased that much, now that person doesn't have to work two jobs, right?
26:14 Speaker 01 They created block schedules, which is stable schedules. So now people know when they're going to work. And they made all sorts of work-related changes that enabled their employees to be more productive. They empowered their employees to be able to serve their customers. And the result was not only much better jobs for their employees, but much better service for their customers and better results for the company. And by the way, they announced more pay raises and they're on a virtual cycle now and they're investing more and more. My hope, Chris, is that other leaders will have the courage to do the same, right? They will have less fear. Now there are so many reasons for them to be afraid of making big system change.
26:57 Speaker 01 Creating good jobs and offering low prices in a competitive environment, where you have all sorts of investor pressures is not that easy, right? It's not easy and most CEOs don't get rewarded for investing in their people, right? They get rewarded for doing other things, investing in technologies, doing this or that, but not investment in people. So I hope this will give permission to a lot more leaders, seeing examples like Sam's Club, Quest Diagnostics, Mo's Original BBQ, the list goes on. That's the reason that I still work because I am optimistic, because what's the alternative?
27:32 Chris Duffy? You know, something I've heard you talk about and read in your book and in your work is, one of the biggest things that we can do, just on the like purely like emotional psychological level, is to have people in their jobs when they see a way to make it better for themselves, for the customer, for the company, to not smack that idea out of them, to not say like, you are just supposed to follow exactly as it is and execute like you are an emotionless robot. But instead, giving people ways to feel empowered and to be, to improve the job for themselves, but also for the whole experience. Because I think many people find that their worst jobs are the jobs where the message is, we just want you to shut up and do the work.
28:13 Speaker 01 When you look at companies that are operationally excellent, Toyota comes to mind, Four Seasons Hotels, one of the reasons why these companies do so well is because they have their frontline employees improving their work every single day, end up creating a huge gap between them and their competitors. And if we don't take advantage of the knowledge, skills and abilities of our frontline workers, we will not do well. People who are closest to the job know the job so much better than others. So why not empower them? So one of the things that unlocks that empowerment is having low employee turnover. But if those employees are there for just two weeks or four months, it's hard to trust them. Trust is what enables empowerment.
28:58 Speaker 01 And without low employee turnover, without people who are experienced, who have been there for a long time, it's really hard to create that type of trust.
29:06 Chris Duffy? I've noticed that throughout this interview, you use the term frontline workers. Can you talk about why you use that term?
29:12 Speaker 01 These are the workers in the front lines delivering the service or producing the goods.
29:17 Chris Duffy? But you don't say like people at the like bottom of the organization, right? It's like you're not framing them as like at the bottom, instead they're at the front.
29:24 Speaker 01 They are for service businesses. They are the brand for the company because they are the ones who are doing the work and serving the customer every single day. In a manufacturing business, they are the ones making the products. So they are the most important people in organizations. So how can I call them low wage workers or lowest paid workers or bottom workers? They are the frontline workers. We should take care of them. We should set them up for success and we should make them feel valued and be proud of creating a lot of value because that would be great for our organization and for our society.
30:02 Chris Duffy? I think the fact that you are putting frontline workers at the center and the heart of your work is really important and is sadly not the norm. I'm curious, like if I'm the CEO, I understand how I can make a strategic choice to differentiate my business by treating my workers better, by paying them more, by giving them more staple schedules. What if I'm someone who's in the middle? What if I am not the boss boss, but I'm not the frontline worker? How can I make jobs better jobs in my organization and for myself and my peers?
30:30 Speaker 01 If you look at front lines and their work, their work is influenced by the decisions made by so many other functions. So if you are working for a retailer and your job is logistics, I'm making this up, right? And you're a logistics manager. Don't just think about your cost, but think about the deliveries into the stores. How do they enable the front lines to have better schedules? How do I make their work better? So every time you're making a decision, think about how does this decision affect the work of the frontline employees and their ability to have a sane life and their ability to deliver for the customers? So that will be one thing that everyone in the organization can do tomorrow.
31:15 Chris Duffy? How much of that do you think is affected by people not having direct personal relationships across levels of the company? You know, if you're the CEO of a massive global retailer, you may never sit down and have lunch with the person who's working the cash register at one of your stores.
31:33 Speaker 01 Yes, and my other answer would have been, you know, spend time in the front lines. Jim Sinigal, who ran Costco for so many years, every year he would spend 200 days in the front lines at the stores. Why? Because that's where the work is done. Spend time in the front, but don't just ask, give surveys and ask them how they feel like. Spend time with them and you'll get to hear so many things. Spend time in the front lines with the people who are doing the real work.
32:01 Chris Duffy? Your research is really focused on individual companies and the choices that organizations can make. But it does seem like when we're talking about some of these basic needs and in some ways we're talking about like a social safety net. So I can imagine that in a country like the United States, if you didn't have to worry about healthcare because it was not tied to your private employment, if there was a public free healthcare option for everyone, a lot of jobs would kind of instantly become better because you wouldn't be in medical debt. You wouldn't have to fear that piece of it. How much of a role do you think government has in providing rules about like where the floor for pay should be? Rules about hours, rules about healthcare?
32:44 Chris Duffy? Do you see the changes happening at the government level? At the business level? Both or neither?
32:50 Speaker 01 Oh, both. And it's not just government. It's also labor and the business. It's the whole ecosystem. Of course, higher minimum wages, better scheduling laws, of course, better healthcare. These would all be beneficial for the workers, but none of these would provide the meaning and dignity that workers need on the job, right? Pay doesn't give you that meaning. So companies need to both show the world that higher pay doesn't ruin their business, right? Higher pay doesn't mean higher prices for customers. Higher pay can be quite beneficial for customers and their bottom line. So companies need to show that. And companies are the only ones who can design the jobs that every day people feel good about themselves.
33:34 Speaker 01 People feel good about doing a good job, but it's not companies alone. It would have been so much nicer if we had higher than 725 as the minimum wage. I mean, Walmart's lowest pay is $14 an hour and they work in small towns. Our federal minimum wage is 725. So think about that.
33:52 Chris Duffy? We talked about like what people can do if they're at the middle, if they're kind of in the middle of an organization. We've talked a little bit about what people can do at the top. What about if someone is a frontline worker? How can they make their job a good job? And how can they encourage their company to make jobs good jobs?
34:09 Speaker 01 That's a tough question. I think at the company level, it's hard for them to design the work. It's hard for them to show the cost of what a bad job is.
34:19 Speaker 01 Some of the frontline workers are organizing, right? So they're joining unions and that's one way. That has been challenging in this country for decades. But sadly, as much as I advocate for empowering the frontlines and all that, this is not so much in their hands. They don't have much power to be able to make the choices that need to be made.
34:44 Chris Duffy? At least not individual power. Certainly, there's collective power if you can unionize and can have a labor movement. But
34:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, but we have much less than 10% of the private workforce unionized. I mean, it's so low that it doesn't make a difference in the lives of many workers.
35:02 Chris Duffy? What's a job that has felt like a really good job to you? That you have personally held?
35:06 Speaker 01 Oh, I have not held a bad job so far. I've been so lucky. I mean, I work at MIT Sloan. I have a great job. I get paid well. I get to interact with MBA students. The mission of our institution is to develop principled innovative leaders who will improve the world. And at the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute, my job there is a wonderful job as well because I get to work with my former students who took my course and who are working with me to spread the good job strategy across different organizations. And we get to spend time with frontline employees. They get to spend time with with company leaders.
35:49 Speaker 01 And we see people's lives and companies' performance change. So it's been a privilege. I've been so lucky to have good jobs during my career. And in some ways, feel Guilty that I have been this lucky. You know, I came to the United States, I was eighteen and in Turkey, where I grew up, US was always seen as the place where you can turn the corner. If you work hard, you can do a good, you know, you can do so well here. And that happened to be true for me. But when I started doing my research in late nineties, it was a huge surprise to see how the America that I experienced was so different than the America that so many workers were experiencing it.
36:33 Speaker 01 And, and that was a huge part of the reason why I started studying this, because it was heartbreaking to see how many hardworking, intelligent, like capable people were not making it.
36:47 Chris Duffy? I, I certainly consider myself to have a great job. I, I love my job. And I think people who are happy with our work and, and do have our basic needs met. So many of us have that experience of, of looking around and feeling like, this is so unfair. It, it doesn't make sense that people have jobs that are bad. And yet, sometimes it can feel like, well, what could I possibly do?
37:08 Speaker 01 So if you are a customer, go to places that provide good service. Those places that provide good service will have better jobs. So spend your money at companies that provide their employees good jobs. So that's something that we can do. When we go shopping, when we're at a cafe, when we're at a restaurant, at a hotel, at a, you know, interacting with frontline workers, look at them in the eye, thank them for their work and just be a kind human. Because that spreads, that makes a difference. Many of the workers I've interviewed told me about how invisible they feel at times. So, so, so make them feel more visible. We can also change the way we talk about workers. We could change the way we talk about wages.
37:49 Speaker 01 Let's, let's stop our obsession with market wages and say, what is a living wage? Let's make sure that we at least pay workers a living wage. And then we can think about what others are paying. Those are some small and bigger things that we can all do.
38:04 Chris Duffy? Something that I, I experience a lot is when I talk to people who are. Highly educated, very driven, people who are, you know, doing well, successful people. There's often this so much stress or anxiety or challenge around having their identity so tied to their job, like people who wish that they, when they introduce themselves, didn't just say like, here's what I do, and that they were judged by more themselves as a person rather than their work. What you just said is an interesting way for people, regardless of their job, to put that into practice, right? Is that when you interact with someone, whether they are making more money than you or less money than you, to see them as human first and job position not even second, right? Like 14th.
38:47 Speaker 01 Yeah. And even when you asked me to introduce myself, I thought, okay, my professional introduction is this because, you know, my real introduction is not my titles or the books I wrote or, or the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute. The first thing we lead with is our jobs and our occupations. And there is a whole other world outside our, our jobs.
39:11 Chris Duffy? Okay. Well, can you introduce yourself again? And this time introduce yourself as you do want to be introduced.
39:16 Speaker 01 Well, I'm Zeynep Ton. I'm from Turkey. I have four children, have been married for 25 years, have a fantastic husband. I feel lucky to be his wife every day. And I also have a great job at MIT Sloan, teaching MBA students, doing research, and I lead the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute.
39:34 Chris Duffy? Well, Zeynep, it has been truly such a pleasure talking to you. I think that the work that you're doing is so important, and I really am glad that people are going to get to listen to this interview and hear it. So thank you for being on the show.
39:44 Speaker 01 Oh, thank you so much, Chris.
39:49 Chris Duffy? That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Zeynep Ton. She runs the Good Jobs Institute. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a team that makes my job really good and really easy and really fun. On the Ted side, we've got Daniela Balarezzo, Ben Ben Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Alani Lott, Antonia Lei, and Joseph DeBryan. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas. Who only say good job when I provide full factual documentation. On the PRX side, we are working with the Costco of audio producers because they do it in bulk and they do it better than anyone else.
40:31 Chris Duffy? I'm talking Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gourville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave us a five star rating and review. Maybe in the review, you write, good job on the podcast. Please share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. Help us spread the word about the podcast. It really, really, really helps us. We will be back next week with even more how to be a better human. Until then, thanks for listening and take care.
41:06 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.
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