Art Bilger responds to NYT’s ‘Invitation to Dialogue’ on jobs

When WorkingNation Founder Art Bilger joins the conversation for The New York Times' "Invitation to Dialogue: How to Create Jobs."

By WorkingNation Editorial Team

December 4, 2016

Art Bilger founded WorkingNation to expose hard truths and work towards solutions about the looming unemployment crisis and bring the country together to create new jobs for a changing economy. So when he saw The New York Times‘ Invitation to Dialogue: How to Create Jobs to help respond to a letter to the editor, it was only natural to jump at the opportunity to join the conversation.

You can read Bilger’s response to the letter below.

One of the major problems with the discussion around the changing world of work in this country was on display when President-elect Donald Trump and Carrier announced a deal to reverse course and save 1,000 Indianapolis-based manufacturing jobs.

While we can all be happy for the Carrier employees in Indiana who will be keeping their jobs, the decision by Carrier is by no means a systemic solution to dwindling U.S. manufacturing jobs. In fact, it does nothing to reveal a sustainable strategy to address the very real challenge of dramatically shifting employment demands.

U.S. manufacturing jobs will continue to be sent abroad or turned over to robots and computers. As rapid advances in automation continue, the same effect will spread beyond manufacturing into other sectors and workers are alarmingly unprepared. We are already seeing the phenomenon in transportation, retail, and even some white-collar professions.

Make no mistake, many of the 1,000 Carrier employees who have avoided unemployment now still desperately need a new and different long-term employment plan to secure their future, to say nothing of their children.

Mr. Bjelland was correct to suggest that it’s time to demand that political and business leaders effectively address unemployment.

To solve the problem, it will take a collective effort from all stakeholders – business and corporations, local governments, educational institutions, non-profits and grassroots organizations, and workers themselves.

American businesses must adopt a vision of their employees as “adaptable, life-long learners” and build programs to train and retrain them for the types of skills that future jobs will require.

Public-private undertakings can indeed help to employ young adults in important community service roles. Similarly, grassroots efforts that equip workers with new skills in growth industries such as healthcare and green technologies must be supported at the local level and rapidly scaled across the country.

At WorkingNation, we are highlighting organizations that are on the ground working to prepare the American workforce for the future.

– Art Bilger, Founder and CEO of WorkingNation

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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.