As a business owner or leader, you are more than likely looking to recruit the top talent for your organisation. This of course can be a real challenge, especially as a small or medium sized business, you may feel you can’t compete with larger corporations and their attractive salaries and benefits packages.
If you look in your local area at who is seeking work, can you identify who the talent might be? Perhaps in the past you have been put off by someone who has a gap in their CV, for example someone who has taken a career break to raise children or be a carer for another family member. Something to consider here is that these people can be highly skilled, and given the opportunity could become a real asset to an organisation. Have you ever considered offering someone like this a returnship?
What is a returnship?
A returnship is a paid work placement which is aimed at experienced workers who have taken a career break, but are now wanting to go back to work in their sector. Often this is associated with women who have raised a family and taken a career break to do this. However, it is not solely women, with Shared Parental Leave, over the coming years we may well see a shift with more men taking career breaks too.
When someone has a gap in their CV it can be particularly challenging to get back into work. Returnships can be highly beneficial to the employee, allowing them to update their skills, knowledge and CV. Equally it can be beneficial to an employer, as it gives them a highly skilled worker on a fixed-term basis whilst exposing the business to less risk, compared to recruiting a permanent member of staff. The paid work placement will be for an agreed period, perhaps for three months and doesn’t necessarily have a guaranteed job at the end of it.
Who offers returnships?
As part of closing the gender pay gap, the government has announced new programmes that will help people back to work after taking a career break. The returner programmes are part of the £5 million fund which was announced in the budget this year, these schemes are across the public sector and will provide training and support to people who have taken a career break.
Private sector organisations are also offering returnships, particularly in the financial sector but other sectors such as telecommunications are also developing returnship schemes. Currently they are more likely to be offered by larger corporations in the bigger cities. But are smaller organisations in other locations missing out on a local pool of talent by not offering returnships?
How can you offer a returnship?
If we look at an example, of women who are seeking to return to work after a career break to raise their family, they are often looking for flexibility and to work closer to home, reducing both their travel time and travel expenses. This could make your organisation very attractive to them, particularly if you are also willing to offer flexible working.
Probably the biggest hurdle in implementing a successful returnship scheme are that these schemes can seem difficult to implement in terms of resourcing. For example, managers are more than likely very busy, and mentoring can take time away from an already full schedule. However, when planned and implemented well, investment in these schemes can really pay off in the long-term by finding new talent for your organisation.
Begin by identifying areas in your business that could benefit from having a resource in place. Is there a project that hasn’t got off the ground because a manager doesn’t have the capacity to take it on, but they may have time to guide someone else? When you have identified this, you should assign a mentor to the returnship role, setting clear and measurable objectives with a realistic timescale that the project can be achieved.
People that have had a career break can still offer a wealth of expertise and with a little training can sometimes be up to speed in a matter of weeks. A returnship can be an excellent opportunity for both an employee and employer. Businesses around the UK stand to open the door to a talent pool that has previously found getting back into work very challenging.
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