ASU+GSV Summit 2021: David Blake on the ROI for companies who grow employees

Education and tech leaders gather to share innovative ideas about opportunity for employees
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Providing current employees with easily accessible online upskilling helps both the worker and the company, according to David Blake, co-founder and CEO of Learn In.

Businesses purchase the Learn In tech platform to gain access to vetted learning programs, affording employees the opportunity to gain targeted, in-demand skills without leaving their jobs.

Employer tuition assistance opportunities typically have a 3%-5% participation rate, says Blake. “You could take that as evidence that people don’t really care, but really what we believe is that it means there are barriers between most employees and their ability to engage in participate in these programs.”

Blake continues, “The biggest barrier is time. And the crazy thing about it is companies appreciate they need to upscale, and they are spending truly millions of dollars, often buying content, developing content, often just creating programs where they will subsidize or pay for, or reimburse education. And then they give zero time. And that is a crazy irony that they are willing to spend millions of hard cash dollars, but not willing to spend any soft time to let people upskill.”

Blake says Learn In is working to help companies understand the return on investment when it comes to growing their employees by teaching them new skills.

Click here to learn more about Learn In.

WorkingNation—a collaborating partner of the ASU+GSV Summit—talked with Blake in San Diego as part of our #WorkingNationOverheard social media series.

Hear from more innovators in education and tech in the public, private, and nonprofit spheres attending the ASU+GSV Summit 2021 here.

Follow the conversation on social media: #asugsvsummit #workingnationoverheard

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.