‘Will 2023 be the year that we begin to make the most of age diversity in the workplace?’

Reflections on The Future of Work 2023 from WorkingNation Advisory Board member Marc Freedman

December 27, 2022

We asked our WorkingNation Advisory Board to share their thoughts on the most important issues and challenges facing the workforce and the labor market in the coming year.

Marc Freedman is the originator of the encore career idea linking second acts to the greater good, and is the founder and co-CEO of CoGenerate.

Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2023.

“There are almost equal numbers of people alive today at every age, from birth to 70 and beyond. According to a report from the Stanford Center on Longevity, “We’re living in the most age-diverse society in human history.”

Will 2023 be the year that we begin to make the most of age diversity in the workplace?

We have a ways to go.

So many workplaces, even industries, are age-segregated. Yet just 8% of organizations now include age diversity as part of their DEI strategy. “Of organizations that do address it,” write the authors of Gentelligence in the Harvard Business Review, “the strategy has often been to simply encourage those of different generations to focus on their similarities or to deny the reality of their differences altogether.”

Much more is needed.

We’ve established that increasing age diversity in the social sector is a win-win. Over the past decade, we’ve matched more than 2,000 seasoned professionals, most from the corporate sector, in paid, part-time assignments with nonprofits to boost capacity and build strong multigenerational teams.

While these Encore Fellows get an introduction to the nonprofit sector, they’re helping their host organizations make the most of the different skills and perspectives every generation brings to the workplace.

In 2023, I hope every employer realizes the importance of new strategies that meet the multigenerational moment – not just to be inclusive but to be competitive.”

You can read all The Future of Work 2023 articles from our WorkingNation Advisory Board here.

Opinion: Career mobility should not come with an expiration date for older women

‘If we aren’t careful, we could be setting ourselves up for a new type of caste system’

‘The tools for bridging the gap from education to employment are already out there’

‘Workforce development organizations are helping to bridge the gap by providing strong relationships with employers, skills training as needed, critical wraparound support’

Get the latest from WorkingNation

Our Mission

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.