6 Ways HR can help to encourage returners back into the workplace
Diverse teams make for diverse business outputs; it’s as simple as that.
Only with diverse teams can a business drive a better culture, enable innovation, increase its profitability and be more creative. And only then can it foster a happier workforce.
Why then, do we see that there is still an estimated two million people in the UK struggling to return to work after a significant period of time away from the workplace? And that 90% of these people are women?
Why then - according to The House of Commons Library research service team - have women in the UK seen a serious increase in redundancies and unemployment since the beginning of the pandemic? And why is it that we see mothers are 1.5 times more likely to have either lost their job or quit since the first lockdown?
Why too, did an additional 4.5 million people became unpaid carers during the pandemic (March 2020), meaning that 1 in 4 (26%) of UK adults were providing unpaid care to an older, disabled or ill relative and had to quit their jobs to do so?
It makes for pretty bleak reading regarding getting returners back into the workplace, doesn’t it? Not least because many of those who did have to leave their role during the pandemic have still not made it back into the workplace yet. Though I should stress that, for many, it’s not for the lack of trying.
Returners are defined as people with existing work experience who have taken an extended career break for caring or other reasons and who are either economically inactive or now working in lower paid, temporary or part-time work or in home- businesses or freelance roles.
Returners can be both male and female but have tended to be women in the main. That being said, returners do indeed come in many shapes and sizes. For instance, they might be people impacted by covid or another life changing illness, or those who have had a significant change of circumstances, such as a divorce or a death or debt and where they need to re-enter the workforce reluctantly. They may well be the sandwich generation, caring for both young children and older parents.
For businesses, creating a returner programme allows them access to an extra pool of talented people who either have the right skills or could easily be trained quickly to develop them. But not only does getting returners back to work help with the skills shortage and indeed overall UK productivity, returner programmes can go a long way to help to create more diverse teams too.
With this in mind, here are six ways that HR professionals can help to encourage returners back into the workplace.
Adapt the recruitment process accordingly.
Returners bring an impressive range of skills and depth of experience from before and during their career break. This coupled with greater maturity, a high degree of motivation and a fresh perspective can be a winning formula. The key here is to ensure your recruitment method works for those who may wish to return to work, for instance do you really need to run a formal interview process with multiple meetings and competency-based questions? Perhaps instead you could get the potential candidate in for an informal chat or do the first interview outside of office hours so that they can work around their caring commitments. Be sure to adapt and flex based on the candidate and avoid a one size fits all approach in your returners hiring strategy.
Consider creating interim positions for returners.
Interim positions can be a very useful way for people who have been out of the workplace for a while to transition back into the workforce. Interim roles can be a great testbed for new hires to see how employment fits back in with their lifestyle and skillset following a break and will ensure they are less anxious about their return. Not only does this benefit the employee themselves, but this approach can also be very beneficial for the employer too. The recruitment process for interims is often quick and economical, ensuring that valuable time and resources are not wasted.
Be sure to focus on flexibility.
It’s essential that you help people understand the benefits of working for you beyond merely the financial gains. What’s crucial here is talking about what flexibility you can offer a returner. Make it clear that you want to understand their motivations and can flex your rewards policy around these motivations (within reason). For instance, a new parent may well be interested in your childcare policies and flexible working, whilst someone who has been off on long term sick may be more motivated by understanding what healthcare benefits you offer. Once again take a case-by-case approach to this.
Regularly run inclusive recruitment and unconscious bias training.
Running and attending unconscious bias training alongside your hiring team is vital. Be sure that the training specifically highlights the biases towards those who have taken a career break and looks at the varying reasons for these breaks. Be sure to remind your team that returners come in all shapes and sizes and are not just limited to mothers. You would also do well to conduct your own Implicit Association Test (IATs) to reveal your own biases too.
Normalise career breaks and sabbaticals
Use positive language around returners within your workplace, not just within your team. Be sure that the language you use when it comes to returners is positive and cover off the benefits that these people can bring to the business. Ingrain this into your culture from the bottom up and the top down so that everyone is on the same page. Where possible include CV gaps (as an area not to discriminate against) in your equality statement too.
Offer mentors to help with the onboarding process.
Mentoring can open up avenues of conversation about bias and discrimination against returners. And because bias or stereotypes can change when people go through new experiences, it would be true to say that mentoring will usually help eliminate inaccurate perceptions of returners too. Mentoring can also help squash limiting beliefs that can exist in our everyday assumptions around career breaks and will of course help that returner ease back into the workplace too.
My key takeaway here; it’s ever so important for HR professionals to look beyond a gap in someone’s CV. I urge you to instead look towards that individual’s transferable skills, their commitment, their work ethic, their drive and above all their potential, to once again be a part of the workplace, and then to support them.
It’s time to normalise the concept of career pauses and welcome our experienced and energised returners back. With a potential recession around the corner, there are multiple benefits to hiring knowledgeable returner employees who are likely to hold skills and expertise that will no doubt be harder to find elsewhere.