Training and upskilling older workers is crucial in the recovery

A conversation with Ramsey Alwin, president and CEO, National Council on Aging

April 6, 2021

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In this episode of Work in Progress, my guest Ramsey Alwin, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging, and I discuss how to make sure older workers aren’t left behind in the post-pandemic economic recovery.

The soaring unemployment over the past year has hit many workers hard, especially older workers, who often face discrimination, even in boom times. “It’s really taken a toll. Low-wage jobs (held by older adults were) the first to experience the closures, the furloughs,” says Alwin. Many of those workers were people of color and women, given the disproportionate occupational segregation into some of those low-wage jobs and service industry jobs.

1.1 million older workers age 55 and older have left the workforce during this past year. “Many have given up on continuing to search for work given the challenges they’ve experienced—not only the ageism in the workforce, the lack of job opportunities—but being scared for their own health and well-being in going back to work,” she explains.

Older Workers are At Risk of Being Left Out of the Economic Recovery

Alwin and I discuss why older adults are at risk of being left behind when hire kicks up again.

“The challenge with this pandemic is that we’re still in limbo with the vaccine rollout as to how and when people will feel safe in coming back. And we’re very, very aware of state-sanctioned age discrimination, and very carefully watching employers’ activities as well,” she tells me.

“Because there is a concern about older adults and their susceptibility to the virus, it should be their choice as to when they come back. However, employers are cautious, and there may be some inadvertent discrimination that we need to watch-dog, in terms of making sure the older workers that want and need to go back to work have those opportunities, and are not prevented just because of their age.”

Investing in Upskilling and Training is Crucial

Alwin and I go into depth about what can be done to make certain older workers are not left out of the recovery.

Chief among the solutions is investing in upskilling and training so that older workers—especially during this recovery—have the skills and the tools that make them eligible when new jobs are created.

She adds that we need to make sure that “equitable recovery initiatives—whether they be infrastructure or service industry—includes some intentionality around making sure there’re mature, worker-friendly opportunities, and we aren’t discriminating, and we’re doing the right advertising and promotion for these opportunities so that it brings all ages and talents to bear.”

Alwin breaks down these ideas further in the podcast, which you can listen to here, or you can download it wherever you get your podcasts.

Read the transcript for this episode of Work in Progress here.

Episode 177: Ramsey Alwin, president & CEO, National Council on Aging
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.

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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.