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As advances in technology continue to change the way we live and work, they are also changing the types of skills we need to get a good job. Currently, there are more than seven million open jobs in the U.S., and many business leaders say it’s because they can’t find enough men and women with the skills they are looking for to do those jobs.

I had a chance to sit down with Tom Finke, chairman and CEO of Barings, a $335+ billion global asset management and financial services company, to talk about how to prepare today’s workers for those high-skill jobs.

“We have demands for skills that are going unfilled. And it’s not just more computer science majors, it’s really across the board when you think of those able to service the smart appliances of the world. I think training and education and advancing it from what really is a 100-plus-year-old model to the future is important,” according to Finke.

Barbara Humpton, CEO of Siemens USA, agrees that looking at new models of education is important to bring workers up-to-date on the skills needed in today’s workforce. She believes businesses themselves need to take a more active role in providing that education.

“I really think life-long learning is what it’s going to be all about in the future. We’re spending a lot of time actually talking to colleges, community colleges, and universities about what they can be doing to engage with us as we build relationships and help prepare people, so they can come back into the academic environment, maybe throughout their careers,” Humpton tells me.

For Donato Tramuto, CEO of Tivity Health, many of his employees are already skilled in new technology since they are creating connective programs for health care and fitness.

“This company has been technology-enabled for many years. About 20 percent of my workforce are in technology. They’re developing the apps. They’re developing the interfaces. They’re developing how we implement the algorithms,” says Tramuto.

We hope you enjoy these conversations about the future of worker and the worker which took place at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2019 in Beverly Hills.

You can find Work in Progress, a WorkingNation podcast, anywhere you get your podcasts. Search Work in Progress and look for our logo.

Episode 106: C-Suite Solutions: Focus on the Workers
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, WorkingNation Editor-in-Chief
Producer: Anny Celsi
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

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.