Winning with Underdogs: How Hiring the Least Likely Candidates Can Spark Creativity, Improve Service, and Boost Profits for Your Business

How do we end workplace exclusion, boost businesses profits, strengthen our communities, and make significant inroads toward social justice? By changing the way we regard, manage, and engage our current and future employees. This book shows how.

In today’s workplace, too many marginalized groups—the disabled, ex-convicts, senior citizens, the shy and anxious, various minorities—are underrepresented. And yet, workplaces often struggle to find enough employees to sustain their growing needs, putting massive pressure on HR hiring teams to fill the demand. In Winning with Underdogs, Winch reveals that the pool of excellent candidates is much larger than most hiring managers realize and that the least likely candidates could be highly productive and engaged employees who stay for the long term. However, for businesses to successfully tap into this hidden reservoir of talent, they will need to adjust their corporate culture, as well as their screening, training, and onboarding processes. This includes caring for employees’ emotional needs and addressing any instances of workplace bullying and harassment. Doing so will allow many potential (and much needed) workers who do not function well in emotionally harsh environments to join and thrive. It will also greatly reduce work-related stress, anxiety, loneliness, and depression among employees, resulting in higher engagement, productivity, and profits.

Acclaimed organizational consultant and entrepreneur Gil Winch provides everything you need to know, including:



Who comprises the pool of potential excellent candidates and where to find them
How to screen, train, and onboard candidates correctly for positions that match their skills
How to care for all employees in an inclusive way that empowers them to be highly productive and engaged in their work
How to transform corporate culture into one that prioritizes employees’ emotional health



This strategy works. Winch has used it in his own business, and today, he offers a proven way to help leaders make the workplace not only more diverse and equitable but more productive and successful—in a systematic, strategic manner.