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Amazon plans to invest $700 million to retrain workers

Upskilling 2025 is expected to reach a third of the Amazon workforce or about 100,000 workers.
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Amazon says it’s committed to investing $700 million over the next six years to help its workforce adjust to the changing skills needed in this tech-driven economy. Upskilling 2025 is a voluntary training program expected to reach a third of its U.S. workforce or about 100,000 workers.

There is a growing shift from labor-intensive to knowledge-based jobs as automation and AI play a bigger role in the workplace. According to the online retail giant, their goal is to help arm its employees with new skills, whether they want to stay with the company or not.

“While many of our employees want to build their careers here, for others it might be a steppingstone to different aspirations,” Amazon said in a statement. “We think it’s important to invest in our employees and to help them gain new skills and create more professional options for themselves.”

The company says that, for example, warehouse workers interested in working in IT could get training through an Amazon Apprenticeship program or through its cloud computing program created with local community colleges.

“Through its Upskilling 2025 pledge, Amazon is focused on creating pathways to careers in areas that will continue growing in years to come including healthcare, machine learning, manufacturing, robotics, computer science, cloud computing and more,” the company said in a statement.

I asked WorkingNation President Jane Oates what she thought of the announcement. “According to two recent surveys, one from Rutgers University and the other from Northeastern University and Gallup, people have this sense of urgency that their jobs are going away because of automation,” Oates explained. “This is a great example of an employer taking the lead in helping prepare workers for the future.”

Oates told Gizmodo that “the first and perhaps most important step is to ensure that the training is part of the workweek. ‘People are busy—making this as easy to get to as possible will determine its success.’ Amazon should also ensure they cover the tuition in the programs outright.”

Oates also spoke with The Wall Street Journal, adding that “I don’t know how we make people robot-proof, but I certainly think this reskilling, and taking it on in partnership with your employer, has a lot less risk than taking the task on yourself.”

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.