I wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m., two hours before it’s necessary to leave the house for the office. Those unscheduled hours are when I have time to think, reflect, and work on hard problems. On many of those early mornings, I’ve worked on drafts of this book—jotting down ideas and notes on what the findings of our research mean for leaders in the public and private sectors.
In one of my first notes, I recognized that my company has the benefit of long time horizons and substantial resources. We are compulsively driven by our values: we do the right thing; people count; we hold ourselves to very high standards. One important outcome of these values is that we prioritize the retraining of our people. We offer a wide range of opportunities to re-skill and upskill our team to meet future demands.
But I also started to wonder: what about companies that can’t do that? What about employees who work in places where they won’t be prepared for the future, and what about people who are unemployed? What is our responsibility to them? What’s our role in society, and as leaders of society, to think about how to retrain and re-skill everyone? I don’t know a Fortune 500 CEO who isn’t deeply concerned about this issue and whose company isn’t trying to help solve this problem.1
A result of these early morning musings—and more than a few late nights and weekends—is the book you hold in your hands. In the preceding pages, you’ve read about my Guardian’s continuing digital transformation and the accompanying workforce training that it has required. You’ve read about a wide-ranging set of strategies that society is pursuing, from internships and apprenticeships to digital skills training, tuition supplements, adult education, and paid family leave. In the final section we looked at business and industry’s role in this endeavor.
Through this journey I’ve identified five strategies that I hope you take away from this book.
Understand the Problem, Don’t Dismiss It
What is the urgency, some might argue? Where is the crisis? After all, as we moved into 2020, The New York Times lead story proclaimed, “U.S. Job Growth Stays on Streak, Soothing Jitters.” In the business section, another story told readers, “the economy is stronger than it looks.” The Labor Department reported that 266,000 new jobs had been created the previous month. With 3.5 percent unemployment, November 2019 was the twenty-first consecutive month with unemployment at 4 percent or lower.
But a closer look revealed cracks in the foundation. Wage increases remained stubborn, and it took longer for those seeking work to find it.
Fortuitously, from November 22 to 26, 2019—during the very month these job numbers were reported—my team fielded a survey of American job seekers, workers, and business decision makers who were in charge of hiring new staff. Guardian Life commissioned HarrisX, an offshoot of the nation’s long-running Harris Poll, to run a nationally representative survey of more than 2,000 American adults (18 years and older), including 1,000 business decision makers across enterprises of every size. We surveyed 500 current job seekers and 500 managers who had recently hired or planned to hire. The survey looked at the perceptions of these audiences on the importance of soft skills (collaboration, for example) and hard skills (for instance, programming) in getting hired and succeeding in the workplace, including attitudes from job seekers and managers across different generations as well as employees and employers operating primarily in the gig economy.
The results were instructive, especially in the context of such a rosy national employment picture. Yes, the number of jobs was growing, but U.S. adults felt more negative about their companies’ ability to prepare them for the future. Small companies—which constitute a considerable proportion of employers in America—were less likely to anticipate changes that will impact their business. Fewer than one-third of U.S. adults felt that their current job had prepared them very well for advancement.
From a macro perspective, young business decision makers in America seem to be more positive about the U.S. economy than their older colleagues. That stands to reason; if you’re a young manager at a growing enterprise, you’re excited about the digital future. But what about the American population overall? Well, it turns out that older Americans are more optimistic than younger Americans about the future of the economy. Perhaps they’ve endured the ups and downs of automation long enough to believe that things will get better. But what does it mean for society when its younger workers—its future workforce—are pessimistic? The appendix to this book contains detailed results of the survey.
The first step in addressing any problem is understanding it.
Formulate a Plan Now for What Your Workers Need to Be Prepared for in the Future
As insurance professionals, we must care about digital transformation—a lot. We need to become experts at understanding labor and education trends, both at the client level and at the macroeconomic level. If we are slow to understand how people and their work are changing, we will be slow to understand health outcomes and morbidity.
But digital transformation will affect every workforce in every industry. LinkedIn data shows that 60 percent of job openings for developers are outside the tech sector. We are all undergoing digital transformations. Automation is increasing, and that means our workers today will become workers of the future as well. To transition existing workers and attract new workers with the right skills is hard work and requires a mindful plan.
The Public and Private Sectors Must Align Behind a Theory of Change That Is as Ambitious as the Enormity of the Challenge
Our experience in workforce development has led us to advance a theory, or approach, outlined in chapter 3. It is designed to accomplish a set of outcomes for the next generation of workforce development. Experts have their favorite language for these theories—for example, “theory of change, “change model.” I think of it as an equation that, if executed properly, could produce the near- and long-term outcomes we seek.
We call for an alignment of missions and resources behind public-private investments in education and training. We envision individual workers, business leaders, policy makers, and educators working together to modernize, strengthen, and integrate workforce development by leveraging three major public-private investments:
1. Education and training—This is formal, traditional classroom-based approaches in K–12, postsecondary, and out-of-school time at home or with a supplemental tutor.
2. Workplace training and skills development—These are more informal settings for education and training including on-the-job training.
3. Existing workforce—Whereas the first two sets of investments largely target the emerging workforce, this one is aimed at adult education within the existing workforce. It includes lifelong learning.
The outcomes these investments are designed to drive forward, including job readiness and job placement today, but also greater career mobility, lower unemployment, and a widening middle class in the long term. These outcomes promote increased productivity and economic growth and reduced inequality. The barriers, of course, are many, including lack of funding, a fragmented workforce development pipeline, and a lack of scale and capacity among those most qualified to do the work, which results in a failure to expand evidence-based programs that work.
Business and Industry Can Lead, But We Also Need to Support a Smart Set of Policy Changes
Businesses of every size can do a great deal to prepare workers for the future, but our combined efforts as a society are also essential. This means participating in the creation of informed public policy. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, cochaired by Ivanka Trump and Secretary Wilbur Ross, is making an important contribution. Its focus is on ways to encourage the private sector and educational institutions to combat the skills crisis by investing in and increasing demand-driven education, training, and retraining, including training through apprenticeships and work-based learning opportunities.2
There are several areas in which business and public sector leaders should agree.
To begin, leaders should prioritize modernizing the Higher Education Act (HEA) as part of its reauthorization, incorporating reforms to increase access to high-quality, affordable education and on-the-job training for America’s students and workers. As the Business Roundtable notes, building a “tomorrow-ready” workforce requires modernizing federal policies to strengthen education and training pipelines so America’s youth and working adults can secure fulfilling jobs and sustainable career paths.3
Even with such efforts, a traditional college education for some is failing to meet the needs of the next generation. This will require deeper and better-informed partnerships between businesses and community colleges so they can distill essential skills and continue lifelong learning relationships.
Again, the Business Roundtable has provided principles for reauthorization of the HEA that should be heard:
Streamline and Simplify Rules, Regulations and Programs
Allow Employer Partnerships
Promote Innovation by Expanding the Meaning of “Postsecondary Education”
Drive Quality and Decision Making Through Better Data
Hold Programs and Institutions Accountable for Relevant Outcomes
Address College Affordability 4
Finding smart approaches to resolve student debt is also critical. Though a four-year degree might not be for everyone, we know that some fields require a college education and even an advanced degree. Many students are saddled with significant debt, which hurts them over the long term. Under today’s system, employers might make matching contributions to employees’ retirement plans, but only if employees are also making contributions. Understandably, recent graduates often forgo their 401(k) or other defined contribution retirement plans because they prioritize reducing their student loans. Guardian has advocated that the 1986 tax law be changed so that employers can make matching contributions to the 401(k) accounts of employees who are paying off student loans but otherwise wouldn’t receive a full match. A bipartisan bill by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) shows progress. Guardian also would like to see Congress make it possible for employers to give tax-free student loan assistance up to $5,250 per year, mirroring the amount of tax-exempt tuition dollars. This could allow employers to tap into underrepresented groups to provide for a more diverse workforce.
The Student Aid Improvement Act of 2019 is a bipartisan legislative package with substantive proposals from committee members to address reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The main focus of the legislation is to provide a long-term solution to funding Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), along with other minority-serving institutions. It also sweeps in numerous provisions to address pressing issues within the HEA program, such as simplifying the federal student aid form and increasing Pell Grant funding and its use.
Additionally, as I’ve argued in this book, we could work very hard to improve America’s education system but still not achieve the goal of a next-generation workforce if we fail to address broader issues, notably paid family leave. The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which provides up to twelve weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees, became law in December 2019.5 The United States significantly lags other countries on the issue of paid family leave. Though the new law is not a comprehensive leave program enabling the 2.1 million federal workers to care for ailing parents or family members, it is an important first step. I am confident that this will show the benefits to both employers and employees and make the private sector take notice of this essential benefit.
Supporting young families in this way will help to ensure, now and into the future, that business and industry can attract and retain a broader, more diverse proportion of society’s intellectual horsepower. This must happen at every level of a company, including in roles such as the one I have had the honor and pleasure to hold since 2011. The Rockefeller Foundation set a goal to have women CEOs at 100 of the Fortune 500 companies.6 The goal is at once both bold and modest, given that women make up over 50 percent of the American workforce.7 The number of women added to the ranks of CEOs in the last year alone ought to be encouraging, but it cannot allow progress to slow, let alone stall.8 Boards and sitting CEOs also must recognize that increasing the number of women at the top levels of executive leadership is a sign of corporate health.
Measure and Monitor Progress (or the Lack of It)
Legendary venture capitalist John E. Doerr admonishes readers to Measure What Matters. How will we know if we are succeeding or failing without objectives and key results? Just as we measure unemployment, we need to better understand the re-skilling of America for the work of the future.
As I close this book, I am inspired by what I see within the digital transformation that we set in motion at my company. In the final days of 2019, we had our first Leader Learning Day for Guardian managers, who are so critical to helping workers move along the journey I’ve written about in this book. Managers were encouraged to think about a “Career by Design”—how they, their role as leader, and the organization can merge to become a catalyst for the growth of those who report to them.
Whether you read this book from the perspective of a business leader, an educator or trainer, a policy expert, or an elected leader, remember that we all need to bring a growth mindset to imagine what’s possible. A fixed mindset, after all, tells us that we lack skills. But a growth mindset encourages us to embrace opportunities to learn, to grow, and to work hard.
I hope you will continue this discussion by joining me on LinkedIn. And thank you for reading.