‘The worker and the work will not just magically find each other’

Reflections on the big issues shaping our workforce in the coming year from our WorkingNation Advisory Board

December 10, 2023

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 2024.

Chike Aguh is the former innovation officer for the U.S. Department of Labor, where he led efforts to use data, emerging technology (AI, quantum computing, etc.), and innovative practices to advance and protect American workers.

Here are his thoughts on The Future of Work 2024.

“I think an issue that we don’t talk about enough is how the worker and the work find each other. Let’s say we’re able to figure out exactly what the work is that needs to get done, the jobs that need to be filled. Let’s say we figure out how to get workers of all stripes in all communities the work that they need.

“There is an assumption that workers will simply know where the jobs are that they’re qualified for, and we’ll just find them, and that’s that. We know that’s not how the economy works.

“We know by the data, for example, that the majority of jobs are filled without a job posting. So if you think about workers in communities without social capital who don’t have an aunt or an uncle who can hire them themselves or tell them when the job is going to get open, how will they know in the economy where there’s a job that fits their skills?

“Similarly, on the company side, people who have their jobs, how exactly do they know who has the skills? And that is a huge issue.

“That information asymmetry or, at times, the barriers around college degree, around prior incarceration that keep workers from the jobs that they can do, we have to solve those. And we don’t talk about that enough because the worker and the work will not just magically find each other.

“We have to make sure that they find each other, not just because it’s right, but because it’s smart. So that I think I’ve said a lot is that in this case, the right thing and the smart thing are the same thing. And that is very much true here.”

Good-paying jobs and people with the skills to do them don’t magically find each other
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. Chike Aguh is the former innovation officer for the U.S.

Watch Chike Aguh on The Future of Work 2024

Read more from our WorkingNation Advisory Board members on The Future of Work 2024.

Strength in numbers: How to build a stronger rural America through economic partnerships

What’s next for workers at a California refinery shutting down at the end of the year?

Solutions to the workforce challenges faced by women impacted by the justice system

What states are doing to roll out the welcome mat for veterans

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.