Guardian Chair Aims to Close Worker Skills Gap: The Agent's Bookshelf

Deanna Mulligan, the board chair of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, is coming out with a hardcover book about the state of workers’ preparedness for work.

In “Hire Purpose: How Smart Companies Can Close the Skills Gap,” Mulligan shares her ideas for how to educate workers, and how to train and retrain workers for the jobs of the future.

Columbia Business School Publishing is preparing to start selling the book Oct. 27.

Mulligan, who was a principal at McKinsey & Co. before she joined Guardian, offers ideas based on what she has learned during her own career, and on stories about worker education, training and retraining efforts at other companies, such as Abbott Laboratories, AT&T, Costco, L’Oréal and Shahi Exports.

Mulligan recommends steps such as bringing the classroom into the workplace, supporting gig economy workers, and embracing alternatives to college degrees, such as skills-based certifications.

In other insurance community publishing news:

Abby Schneiderman and Adam Seifer, the co-founders of Everplans, have written “In Case You Get Hit by a Bus: A Plan to Organize Your Life Now for When You’re Not Around.”

Workman is preparing to publish the book, in paperback and electronic book versions, in January 2021.

Workman is also the publisher of the popular “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book for new parents. The company is positioning the Schneiderman-Seifer book as a kind of “What to Expect When You’re Mortal” book, for people who are unlikely to live forever.

The authors talk about subjects such as creating an estate plan for account passwords, documenting bank account information, and documenting any life insurance policies and beneficiaries.

Ken Dychtwald, the founder of Age Wave, and Robert Morison have written ”What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age.”

Dychtwald, who has been talking about the retired baby boomers of the future for decades, provides an update on how he thinks the needs and demands of baby boomer “third agers” will affect everything.

Dychtwald and his co-author address question such as how youth and age can get along, and how society can help boomers from outliving their financial resources.

Wiley published the book this past summer.

Bryan Kuderna, a financial advisor who has written articles for ThinkAdvisor, is self-publishing Anoroc, a book he wrote about teenagers on another planet, who are facing limits on resources and the threat of war.

Kuderna says the COVID-19 shutdown gave him some time work on his own writing.

Kuderna is publishing the book in paperback and electronic book formats, and he says he will donate a portion of the book sales revenue to libraries.

For links to the books’ publisher websites, see the slideshow above. Wiggle your pointer over the first slide to see the slideshow control arrows.

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