Upskilling and reskilling existing employees rather than seeking new hires from the outside might be one key to an inclusive post-pandemic recovery.
WorkingNation interviewed Learn In’s Yael Gilboa Kaufmann for #WorkingNationOverheard as a media partner with ASU+GSV’s Virtual Summit 2020, held September 29 through October 1+October 8. You can watch all of the interviews on our YouTube channel. Kaufmann is COO and co-founder at Learn In.
She says while it’s always been more cost-effective to cover the costs and allow time for existing employees to get new training and education as opposed to hiring externally, the pandemic has created a new urgency.
“We’ve found with the pandemic women or others who are caregivers in the home, the people who are left often to upskill on their own time and on their own dime, are not those who have existing support networks,” Gilboa Kaufmann says.
“We are big believers at Learn In of aligning all the incentives and unblocking all the barriers to upskilling, number one: time. People say they don’t have time to learn, and when we think about all of the additional responsibilities, whether it’s caring for those in your home or having to be an all-of-a-sudden school teacher at home, being able to upskill yourself on your own time, if your employer isn’t offering time, can be a huge challenge and a barrier to advancing within an organization.”
To close the skills gap, employers have traditionally looked outside their firm to recruit. But Gilboa Kaufmann says hiring and firing is expensive and “loses the inherent value that employees have with their internal domain expertise and knowledge.”
She said businesses stumble on this front because it is difficult to assess the landscape of a company, and to understand where the skills gap exists, and then to figure out how to close it. Learn In identifies the incentives for companies, and “helps equip HR leaders and leaders within various businesses in being able to say, ‘I’m going to put a dollar in and it’s going to be 10 times the value because I’m investing in my workforce and that workforce is then going to pay me a return on that investment by delivering on the business outcomes that we all care about.’”
Learn more about Learn In – https://www.learnin.com/
Learn more about the ASU+GSV Summit – click here https://www.asugsvsummit.com/
Follow the conversation on social media: #workingnationoverheard #asugsvsummit
© Copyright 2025 by Structural Unemployment, LLC dba WorkingNation
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.
