Art-Bilger-RealVision

Art Bilger on Real Vision: Advocating a new way of thinking about employment

In an episode of Real Vision's The Interview, our founder and CEO Art Bilger explains how the lessons he learned have led him to advocate for a new way of thinking about employment.
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Art Bilger Real Vision interview

Despite the strong recent employment numbers, is a labor crisis lurking?

In an episode of Real Vision’s The Interview, our founder and CEO Art Bilger shares some incredible stories from his career and explains how the lessons he learned have led him to advocate for a new way of thinking about employment. He walks Alex through the four variables he sees converging to create a potential jobs crisis and why relying on traditional employment metrics can be misleading.

WATCH: Is a jobs crisis coming?

“[T]he numbers you’re referring to are totally misleading. They’re not representative at all. The workforce participation rate is at one of the lowest levels that it’s ever been in. And if you’re not a participant, if you haven’t looked for a job within some period of time, you are not counted in the denominator,” Art explains. “We’re sitting with millions of people who are either not counted or are considered to be employed, but they’re not fully employed. That individual who used to work 40 hours a week on some assembly line. And all of a sudden, that assembly line’s gone, and now, they’re working 20 hours a week driving Uber, or whatever, they are considered employed. And so, the 3.7, or 3.9 — I don’t know what number they’re talking about now totally misrepresents what the reality is out there today.”

WATCH: Witnessing the Rise and Fall of Drexel

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.