Deanna Mulligan: how smart companies can close the skills gap

The world faces a global shortage of technology skills, according to experts, and in our latest interview Deanna Mulligan, former chief executive of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, reveals how the crisis might be addressed.

Mulligan speaks about her new book, Hire Purpose: How Smart Companies Can Close the Skills Gap, which spells out how a corporate purpose focused on lifelong learning in the workplace can address the shortage.

She says we have learned much from the pandemic in how to address the issue. “One of the things we learnt is that companies can be much more flexible and adaptable than perhaps they have been in the past or thought they would be,” she says. “And we saw employees learning new skills on the fly in order to help with this crisis.”

She adds: “We are continuing to function as a society in really dire conditions we hadn't really anticipated. And the reason we've been able to do that is because companies have been able to adapt. As this crisis hopefully subsides, we will be able to use those skills to really attack this skill gap.”