Business Doing Good, Engaging Women and Elevating Communities
by Shannon Deer and Cheryl Miller
Outlines six principles and best practices for hiring and retaining women with challenging backgrounds
Recently, business leaders have shifted their focus from a profit-only mindset to considering the impact of their businesses on all stakeholders. At the same time, the United Nations set aggressive Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) to improve our world by 2030. These SDGs address all major needs facing our world today, such as: eradication of poverty and hunger, access to clean water, gender equality, and decent work and economic growth. These are significant problems facing the world that have in the past largely been left to nonprofit organizations and governments to solve.
Investors and customers have higher expectations for companies to make a positive social and environmental impact. They want to know business can do good. Following suit, today’s business leaders are starting to recognize we will never fill the gap between where we are and where we want to be if businesses do not also do their part to contribute sustainable solutions to these enormous social problems. This book provides a guide for businesses to make a significant positive impact while also benefiting their businesses.
Business Doing Good outlines six principles business leaders can implement to effectively hire women who have experienced incarceration, poverty, addiction, and/or engagement in the sex trade. While making a difference to both these women and communities, businesses benefit from the women’s resourcefulness, resilience, ability to motivate, and other unique skills and perspectives only available to someone who has overcome difficulties. Investments in women, in general, are exponential as they are more likely to return that investment to future generations. The impact is endless. If we are going to end poverty and create economic development, women who have overcome challenging pasts cannot be excluded.
About Cheryl and Shannon
Cheryl Miller owns Cheryl Miller Consulting, LLC, providing transformative training in several areas: nonprofit leadership, economic development, conflict management, and restorative justice.
Dr. Shannon Deer is the Assistant Dean for Graduate Programs for Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. Her research focus is primarily to seek sustainable solutions to challenging problems. Her work has focused on three UN Sustainable Development Goals: 1) decent work and inclusive and sustainable economic growth, 2) gender equality, and 3) ending poverty in all its forms everywhere.
“Texas A&M Business professor Deer (Financial Accounting & Reporting) and Miller, owner of Quantum Circles Consulting and Training, offer an eye-opening exploration of how businesses can benefit by hiring “women our society has marginalized,” including those who have been incarcerated, worked in the sex industry, and recovered from addiction. The authors offer six business concepts that leaders can foster to elevate women while at the same time benefiting the organization’s bottom line. Those principles include an experiential learning model in which employees can learn things on their own; immediate leadership opportunities in which mistakes are part of the process; entrepreneurial culture that encourages creativity; restorative justice in workplaces to address conflict and harm; partnerships between women, businesses, and nonprofit organizations; and a process they call “translation,” wherein lessons gained through “typically marginalized experiences” are translated into work skills. An insightful chapter on solutions to specific challenges in the workplace rounds things out—companies can consider hiring women with criminal backgrounds, they write, and train managers for a no-gossip policy—and powerful stories along the way illuminate how strong and resilient women can make substantial contributions to an organization when given the opportunity. The result is a survey as inspiring as it is convincing.”
-Publishers Weekly
“Business Doing Good provides a compelling business case and practical road map for companies to rethink their hiring profiles. By hiring women who have escaped the bonds of drug addiction, domestic violence, and even human trafficking, businesses can benefit both society and their bottom line.”
—Michele Thatcher, SVP Chief Counsel Global Human Resources PepsiCo
“When companies develop their hiring pipelines, they do not take into account the value that nontraditional candidates can bring to their businesses. Here, Deer and Miller describe how companies can have a significant social impact by investing in women who have historically been marginalized. Women who have overcome addiction or transitioned from sex work, for instance, bring translational skills that make them assets to businesses. The authors outline the ways that companies can encourage and support survivors, such as offering experiential learning opportunities and encouraging entrepreneurial culture. These structures allow women to gain confidence, achieve financial stability, and become leaders themselves. Deer and Miller also describe challenges and structures needed to implement different types of impact-oriented programs. Drawing on Deer’s research into survivors' experiences transitioning from the sex trade and Miller’s work in economic development for marginalized communities and restorative justice, Business Doing Good provides actionable ways that for-profit and non-profit organizations can work together to have an impact on the lives of women who are often overlooked.”
-Booklist
A Four-Video Series on
Business Doing Good, Engaging Women and Elevating Communities
Episode 1 - Shannon Deer and Cheryl Miller discuss the idea behind the book
Episode 3 - Crisis to Stability, The Calculated Risk & Translating a New Mindset
Episode 2 - Why Women Overcomers Make Some of the Best Employees
Episode 4 - Restorative Justice & Building A Safe Environment For People To Take Responsibility