Beyond The Zero-Sum Game: Worker And Business Success Go Hand In Hand

Forbes

24-03-2025

From the industrial strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the relationship between workers and business is often framed as a zero-sum game in which gains for one side mean losses for the other. This long standing tension has fueled a widespread perception that to be pro-worker is necessarily to be anti-business, and to be pro-business is to be anti-worker.
In an era of historically polarized politics, this binary viewpoint seems – on the surface – to be as prevalent as ever. But it doesn't take much digging before the policy and political divisions start to become more complicated, from the Republican party's inroads among union voters to the former CEOs who staunchly opposed the Trump campaign. As is so often the case, the perspectives of workers and businesses are never quite as clear-cut as they seem.
Not only is the zero-sum game artificially narrow, it's also counterproductive. It's a false divide that has stalled progress, stagnating efforts to agree on the means to achieve common goals and limiting policy solutions and business strategies that could strengthen the economy for everyone.
Consider the question of job quality. Well-intentioned researchers have, in some cases, defined job quality through the lens of income, arguing that 'payment, after all, is a primary reason why people work.' While compensation is an important lever, focusing entirely on payment makes it even easier to fall into zero-sum thinking: more money for workers means less money for employers and vice versa.
The reality is that, like so many other debates, the quality of a job depends on more than just income, and the question of what policy or business steps to take to improve job quality is a 'yes, and' more than an 'either-or.' At the end of the day, businesses thrive when workers do. Research shows that safe workplaces, fair scheduling practices, and yes, competitive wages, don't just benefit employees — they also have the power to improve retention, productivity, and long-term economic competitiveness. Being a good business, in short, is good business.
Instead of falling into the trap of treating job quality as a tug-of-war between worker advocates and business leaders, it's time to focus on solutions that achieve our shared goal: a stronger economy built on quality jobs. Getting there will require not just acknowledging the multiple factors that shape job quality – including policy, economic conditions, and business practices –but also finding common ground to drive meaningful change. That means identifying politically 'agnostic' solutions to expand quality jobs that both workers and businesses can get behind, including:
Measuring what we want to monitor
Peter Drucker famously argued that what gets measured gets managed: if you don't have the information, it's impossible to know what works or to make changes to improve. In the words of Rachel Korberg, co-founder and executive director of the Families and Workers Fund, "The U.S. measures job quantity all the time, but we still do not systematically measure job quality—that is, not just if someone has a job but rather if that job enables them to pay their bills, train and advance in their career, and take care of their family."
Everyone stands to benefit from data that can supplement the country's existing focus on job quantity with a deeper understanding of job quality. A clearer articulation of how wages, hours, and benefits translate to worker retention or productivity can help businesses make investments that increase both the quality of their jobs and their bottom line. Further proving the links between upskilling and retention can equip employers to quantify the return-on-investment of training programs. Knowing where quality jobs exist – and where they don't – can empower policymakers to invest in the regions that need it most.
Quality training for quality jobs
Investing in workers through on-the-job training can boost retention and job satisfaction while also enabling companies to save on costly churn. Workers value the opportunity to learn, and that value shows up for the bottom line: one analysis found that for every dollar that employers spent on an education benefit program, they generated an additional $1.29 in savings — a 129% return on investment.
'It's clear from the data that workers value the opportunity to learn and grow on the job,' says Jason Tyszko, senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. 'What's becoming increasingly clear is that providing high-quality training creates better job opportunities for employees and measurable benefits for employers. That's shifting the role of the enterprise training function from a cost center to a strategic investment.'
No one-size-fits-all approach
Expanding access to quality jobs also depends on recognizing that 'quality' is not a uniform definition. Policy, economic and political dynamics vary from state to state, region to region, and industry to industry — and to individual workers, quality can depend on everything from wages to vacation days to intangibles like a sense of fulfillment or respect on-the-job. That, again, is where better data comes in. We may understand the broad strokes of what constitutes a quality job. But the more we understand how worker preferences – and business priorities – vary by industry and region, the easier it will be to develop tailored approaches that reflect the many meanings of quality at work.
In many ways, focusing on the adversarial relationship between workers and employers is an understandable position. Human beings are hardwired to choose sides. But to solve a challenge as multifaceted as the need to help more people access quality jobs, policy and business leaders must go beyond the zero-sum game. Building a stronger economy will depend on identifying what we have in common, finding solutions we can agree on, and bridging all-too-common policy and rhetorical divides to reach the goals of prosperity and opportunity that so many of us share.