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Jane Oates, WorkingNation president (Photo: Jonathan Barenboim)

The world of work is changing at a pace that we have never seen before and nobody feels that more than business.

Keeping up with technological innovation so that a business can remain competitive is at the front of every CEO’s list of concerns. But in the last few years, the race to remain at the front of the line technologically has been surpassed by the war for talent.

Businesses of all sizes are experiencing longer ‘days to fill’ numbers in jobs across the spectrum.

Because of that, business are beginning to create solutions that will revolutionize education and hiring. The talent mismatch, or skills gap, has created an environment of disruption and innovation in the school-to-career model and the most visible changes are in the redefining of public-private partnerships.

Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) are quickly moving from simply listing job titles to listing the skills and competencies required for jobs and working closing with education partners to create curriculum and delivery mechanisms that result in more direct hiring. Both the Business Roundtable and the Business Higher Education Forum have developed replicable baccalaureate models in digital and cybersecurity that offer graduates a direct path to employment and business with a rich and ready pool of talent.

Community colleges, often recognized as the most nimble post-secondary institutions, have continued their strong reliance on industry councils to inform their clinical and technical curriculum but have now moved into offering flexible models of instruction.

Many offer hybrid models that blend in-person and online classes to accelerate and customize learning, evening and weekend programs and boot camp-style programs that compress the learning time by operating in a 40-hour week model for less than a traditional semester. Most have expended their offering beyond an associate’s degree to include short and long-term industry-recognized credentials that can often be stackable to a degree.

Innovative community colleges have already expanded where they offer their classes, moving into communities to expand accessibility and mitigate time and transportation concerns. Now employers are also open to offering classes on the worksite.

This offers convenience for their current workers, but also gives the colleges access to the current tools on the workplace and allows the employer to see first-hand the quality of the instruction and the talent of the students who could soon be members of their potential hiring pool.

Registered apprenticeships have a long history in the building trades but these learn-and-earn models have seen unprecedented growth in recent years.

Over 10,800 new apprentice programs were created between 2013 and 2018 in sectors like insurance, manufacturing, and health care, as well as construction. In many cases, apprentices are able to earn college credit while they are employed as apprentices, enabling them to combine academic and technical work to allow a broader array of career options.

Many employers have begun to rely on staffing firms to recruit talent, offer customized training, and select employees from that pool as permanent hires. This try-before-you-buy method allows both the employer and the employee to test drive the job to see if it’s a good fit.

Ryan Craig, co-founder and managing director of University Ventures, has written about companies like Revature and Talent Path using this model to reduce ‘hiring friction,’ the lack of work experience that often results in the quick turnover of new employees.

Large employers like Walmart and Amazon have made public commitments to train incumbent workers to qualify for in-demand jobs within the company and in the regional workforce. While I don’t want to diminish their good corporate citizenry, these efforts are grounded in a sound business need for talent that is continuously learning.

Smaller employers don’t have the financial resources to stand up their own programs or the number of vacancies to warrant special attention by local institutions so they have used intermediaries. Workforce investment boards and local trade associations have created consortia to train for skills needed across a sector, train for those skills and then help with placement. Whether using Manufacturing Extension Partnership, retail consortia, or state technology associations, these intermediaries have had become real solutions to talent shortages.

Solutions are being created across the country, built on dialogue about the skills needed to qualify for jobs and the most efficient and affordable programs to accelerate job seekers into those positions. All of these solutions require transparency and open communication about salaries, roles, and job benefits as well as the qualifications for those open jobs.

The churning and change in the workforce are not temporary challenges, they are instead a picture of the future of work.

Our goal at WorkingNation is to highlight solutions to build the conversation around what is working across the country and present those ideas that could be customized to meet the needs of your community. I hope you will join us by sending your stories and solutions that can be shared with others.

Building a diverse, vibrant mosaic of solutions that create an inclusive lens for talent is what will maintain our standing as the best-trained workforce in the world with companies that continue to innovate into the future.

Jane Oates is the president of WorkingNation.

You can share your examples of programs that are helping solve the talent gap in your community to [email protected].

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.