Happy, thriving employees are good for business

A conversation with Dr. Angela Jackson, author of Win-Win Workplace, and co-founder of the Win-Win Workplace Summit

May 20, 2025

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In this episode of the Work in Progress podcast, Dr. Angela Jackson joins me fresh off the Win-Win Workplace Summit in Chicago. The Summit, co-founded by Jackson and Jamai Blivin, brought together business leaders from around the country to discuss how, as employers, you can better engage your workforce and give them a sense of purpose and dignity. The reason to do so? Thriving employees are good for business.

Here’s some of what we learned at the Summit and Jackson and I discuss in the podcast:

Employers are increasingly focused on getting more out of their existing workforce rather than just hiring new talent, recognizing employees as a powerful but underutilized asset.
Leading companies are using data and analytics to deeply understand their workforce, identify skills and growth opportunities, and create personalized development and support for employees.
Engaging and empowering frontline managers is crucial, as they have the biggest impact on employee experience and retention.
Employers that address employee needs beyond just compensation, such as commute times, caregiving responsibilities, and work-life balance, see benefits in terms of higher productivity, engagement, and loyalty.
Measuring the return on investment of investing in employees, through metrics like turnover rates and asset growth, is key to justifying these strategies at the business level.

You can listen to the entire podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Dr. Angela Jackson’s new book is Win-Win Workplace. She is also the founder of the Future Forward Institute

WorkingNation was a media partner on the Win-Win Workplace Summit.

Episode 365: Dr. Angela Jackson, author, Win-Win Workplace
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
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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.