Zeynep Ton > Quotes

“The answer is cross-training. Every new Mercadona employee goes through four weeks of training, during which he or she not only learns about the company’s values but also learns how to perform a broad range of tasks. The fruit and vegetables specialists, for example, are trained to help customers, manage product flow, order products, perform inventory checks for four to five hundred products to make sure that the physical inventory matches the system inventory, and regularly check their sections for product or process problems.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“excellence is much harder to achieve than mediocrity.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“Forging Relationships with Customers Requires Inspired Employees”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“Management’s attitude is that “if you are not going to have a way to inspect what you want people to do, then don’t bother asking them to do it.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“number of employees who left divided by the average number of employees during that year.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“I wrote this book for managers, executives, and entrepreneurs who want to offer good jobs but don’t think they can because controlling costs is so important to their business. You will see that offering good jobs can in fact reduce costs and increase profits as long as it is combined with operational excellence. If you want to offer good jobs and low prices at the same time, operational excellence is not optional, it is mandatory.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“There are three key assets in retail: real estate, inventory, and people.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“Despite all the investment in the scripts and technologies, the most important driver of customer satisfaction in a call center still seems to be the individual who takes the call and makes you feel like someone wants to help you, not just deal with you.”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits

“In addition to salary, all Mercadona employees, from the cleaner to the CEO, received an annual bonus if their individual and local goals were met and if the company met its overall targets. The bonus was two months’ salary for employees who had been with Mercadona four or more years and one month’s salary for those who had been there less than four years. In a typical year when company targets were met, about 95 percent of the employees qualified for the bonus because they had met their individual and local goals. If the company targets were not met, no one—neither the cleaner nor the CEO—would receive any bonus.4”
― Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits