Good Jobs: Meeting Basic Needs

PAY & BENEFITS

How Good Jobs Strategy Choices Enable Better Pay & Benefits

Each of the four operational choices increases productivity and contribution of employees and hence allows companies to pay their employees more:

Focus & Simplify: Streamlining products and services allows employees to (1) be more productive, (2) make fewer mistakes, (3) be more knowledgeable about products and services to increase customer service and sales and identify opportunities to reduce costs.

Standardize & Empower: Standardizing routine processes and having clear expectations for performance improves employee productivity. Empowering employees to make decisions allows them to respond to customer needs and hence increase customer satisfaction and sales. Empowering employees to engage in improvement also allows them to reduce costs.

Cross Train: Cross-training ensures that employees are always busy and that they can contribute to higher customer service and sales by shifting between tasks.

Operate With Slack: Giving employees the time to improve allows employees to reduce costs and hence contribute more.

 

 Good Jobs Institute Aspirational Targets
  • All employees paid a living hourly wage
  • More than 50% of employees’ annual take-home pay above the poverty line for a family of four ($27,750) US Poverty line
Good Jobs Benchmarks

Costco: Minimum wage is $17 / hr (2021) with average wages of $25 / hour

Mercadona: New full-time employees all paid the same, regardless of position, 11% average annual wage increases in first four years and 25% of annual profits shared with employees (learn more)

QuikTrip: New full-time employees make around $40,000 a year to start, plus comprehensive benefits (learn more)

SCHEDULES

How Good Jobs Strategy Choices Enable Better Schedules

Focus and Simplify: Predictable product deliveries and promotions, with few last-minute changes, enable predictable schedules.

Cross-Train: Ability to shift employees between customer facing and non-customer facing tasks provides flexibility to manage traffic variability.

Standardize & Empower: Standardizing provides clear expectations and timelines for key tasks so schedulers can be more predictable and accurate about work load.

To learn more about how operational choices can improve schedules, read Give Service Workers Stable Schedules.

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  • Good Jobs Institute Aspirational Targets
    • Schedules given 3 weeks in advance
    • Zero last-minute schedule changes
    • >60% of employees full-time
Good Jobs Benchmarks
  • Mercadona: 85% full-timers with stable schedules, which are given 1 month in advance (learn more)

Mud Bay: 82% of frontline employees work more than 30 hours per week

CAREER PATHS

How Good Jobs Strategy Choices Enable Better Career Paths

Invest in People: Recruitment, training and development ensure companies hire the right people, train them well and provide ongoing development so they are ready to take on leadership roles.

 

Good Jobs Institute Aspirational Targets
  • 100% promoted from within
Good Jobs Benchmarks

Costco, QuikTrip, and Mercadona: All have promote from withn rates approach 100%

SAFETY & SECURITY

How Good Jobs Strategy Choices Enable Better Safety & Security

Standardize and Empower: Standardization provides clear standards and expectations which everyone understands and follows, which drives safety.

Operate with Slack: When employees have time, they are not rushed and don’t cut corners.

Values: Continuous improvement mean that no jobs are cut because of improvements.

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  • Good Jobs Institute Aspirational Targets
    • Zero safety incidents
    • No-layoff policy