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Upskilling will be more important than ever after COVID-19 pandemic

A conversation with Jake Schwartz, co-founder & CEO, General Assembly
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It’s too early to say what the economic recovery is going to look like on the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic. A few weeks ago, economists were predicting a quick V-shaped recovery, a bad Q2, but a return to economic activity in Q3. Now, CEOs and CFOs are talking about it differently as they watch what is happening in China and other overseas countries.

“We don’t know how deep this is going to cut. We need to do everything we can to keep this pandemic as short as possible,” says Jake Schwartz, Co-Founder & CEO of General Assembly in this episode of Work in Progress.

“Rushing back to work certainly will not make anything better. Doing everything we can to control (the pandemic), getting testing, getting treatments and vaccines up and running, making sure we have the infrastructure to make and build these things–that is what is going to, in the long run, help this economy recover. In the short-run, we are all going to have to have a lot of empathy for not just people losing their jobs, but people losing their businesses.”

Jake Schwartz, Co-Founder & CEO, General Assembly (Photo: General Assembly)

General Assembly was started in 2010, just after the Great Recession ended. Through a combination of online and in-person training, the company addressed the needs of a recovering economy. “G.A. was really set up to help people access the opportunities in parts of the economy that needed the help and where (employers were) constantly complaining that they couldn’t get enough skilled people. That’s our spot in this system, to help accelerate and help reduce the friction of people reskilling and upskilling in higher-growth careers.”

Schwartz says he is not seeing 100 percent of companies stopping their upskilling efforts, but he is seeing companies that were thinking about it putting those thoughts on pause. “I don’t blame them. They are trying to figure out how to save their companies and how to humanely treat hundreds of thousands of workers that are probably going to file for unemployment soon.”

Still, he believes that when we come out of this slowdown, you will start seeing employers “dip their toe back in the water” and upskilling is going to be even more important. “We are still in this massive secular expansion of technology, and the leveraging of technology and data for all sorts of purposes.”

Schwartz had much more to say about where he sees the workforce in the coming months. You can listen to the entire Work in Progress podcast here, or download it and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 126: Jake Schwartz, Co-Founder & CEO, General Assembly
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
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.