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Job training for the most vulnerable workers

A conversation with Gary Officer, president & CEO, Center for Workforce Inclusion
By Ramona Schindelheim
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For older adults, there is much to be concerned about in connection with COVID-19. Not only are they at greater health risk from the virus, they are also being hit hard in the unprecedented wave of unemployment connected to the pandemic.

More than 23 million people were out of work in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A good proportion of them are over the age of 55. Older workers oftentimes are the first to lose their jobs and the last to be rehired.

“Older Americans are the most vulnerable segment of our community and the workforce. Many of these folks occupy the lowest positions—they are the folks who are working retail. They’re the cooks. They’re the drivers. After the last recession (the Great Recession of 2008), older job seekers only had a 40 percent chance of finding a job within 18 months,” says Gary Officer, President and CEO of the Center for Workforce Inclusion.

In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, Officer tells me that “we have to find ways to take people back into the workforce. If you lost your job in 2008 you would transition to being an Uber driver in 2007-2008 up to the current day. The gig economy was the place many of our older and motivated folks transitioned into to earn supplemental income and in some cases to replace lost income. That’s no longer for the time being an easy option.”

New Name, Expanded Mission

For the past 60 years, the nonprofit has been building pathways to employment for low-income, older job seekers through funding of job-training and education programs. More than 470,000 people have been aided by the organization, which was known as Senior Services America until this week.

We talk candidly about why the leadership felt it necessary to change the organizations name after six decades of good work.

“I have found great resistance in the marketplace among non-federal non-government stakeholders, funders and donors with the use of the word ‘senior’,” says Officer. “And that really is a statement about our culture, it’s a statement about how we view our older populations, and it affected our ability to participate in important policy conversations, economic discussions around workforce development.”

Officer says it will be very important in the coming months—and years—as the workforce ages. “They will return to a world of work with increased competition, fewer employers, and a need for different skills. The Center for Workforce Inclusion will lead the way to ensure that older, low-income workers are included in our national discussion on economic recovery.”

The mission is to help not just older adults, but all vulnerable members of the workforce.

“We changed the name in part to provide an easier pathway into those conversations to influence influencers on the needs of Americans, older Americans, marginalized Americans, ex-offenders, veterans, folks living in a rural communities. We have a much better platform to engage in those conversations with the name, the Center for Workforce Inclusion.”

You can listen to the entire podcast here, or you can download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Episode 133: Gary Officer, President & CEO of the Center for Workforce Inclusion
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

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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.

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