by Phillipa Geard
In the dynamic landscape of today's workforce, career trajectories are no longer linear. Often, women step away from their careers to raise children, and when the children are of school-going age, these women wish to resume their careers without starting at the bottom and working their way back to their mid-to-senior levels. Returnships are short, paid internships for professionals who have been away from work for some time and are now ready to return to mid-to-senior level positions. Women with skills can start over in their careers by choosing a returnship with a company that knows how valuable work experience is, especially in the tech industry. Returnships enable women to swiftly reenter the workforce, brush up on their skills, and get the required mentoring while resuming their management roles. A few businesses that are effectively using returnships to reintroduce tech skills into the workforce are IBM, Deloitte, and Paypal.
RecruitMyMom interviewed full-stack developer Tamsin Bamford, who just finished a returnship with a Western Cape-based tech company. With a focus on the strategic use of information technology in business, Tamsin pursued a BComm in Strategic Management. Tamsin was recruited by a tech company through a graduate recruitment programme after completing her studies, and this is where she went on and developed her programming skills. Tamsin worked for many years before welcoming her first child. “After having my first child, I realised I wanted to take some time off to be a mother.” Tamsin took a twenty-year break and decided this year she wanted to return to the workforce.
Returnships are not so much a ladder as they are a bridge to reenter the workforce. Restarting at the bottom of the organizational ladder would be unsettling and demotivating for most women who have held mid-to-senior positions in the past.
“Getting back into the workplace was admittedly a huge hurdle, especially in the tech industry, but I was so wrong,” Tamsin says of her return to work. “Technology had changed a lot, but the fundamentals of a project had not.” She claims that the problems and the project flow are the same and that learning one programming language makes learning another simple. Women have the opportunity to update their technical skills in the workplace through returnships.
Returnships offer huge benefits for businesses, especially when hiring at higher levels of management. Even though a person may have been out of work for several years, the expertise and skills they acquired before their career break are extremely valuable.
Employers can tap into a talent pool that is frequently disregarded by implementing returnships. After raising children, many competent women want to return to the workforce, but they are reluctant to do so or are unsure of how to proceed. Despite having achieved professional success, these people lack the confidence to return to the workforce and need to update their technological skills. These women take less time to adjust to the workplace and require minimal training. Returnships typically last three to six months, but Tamsin's lasted two months before she felt comfortable enough to take on her own projects.
These women are willing to accept lower wages or no wages for the term of the contract, so employers save not only on training costs but compensation too. Tamsin admitted that her unpaid returnship took the pressure off as she upskilled to where she needed to be as a full-stack developer.
There is also no pressure on the employer to hire the employee on a full-time basis after their contract ends, meaning this is a low-risk option for employers.
A further upside to returnships is the increase in diversity, equity and inclusion. In 2021, the food delivery app Grubhub introduced a returnship programme. The programme notably increased their diversity and their bottom line. Last year, PepsiCo Beverages introduced a returnship programme aimed at recruiting women who had taken time off to care for their children. This year, PepsiCo has expanded the programme as a result of the unprecedented success seen in the first year. This is great news for women and employers alike.
With a wealth of knowledge and work experience, maturity, and composure, talented women in their forties and fifties who have taken a career break and are rejoining the workforce bring a wealth of experience and crucial soft skills. Working side by side with younger staff members, mature women foster a positive work environment and a diverse team.
There is an opportunity for reverse mentorship through returnships, which is invaluable in closing the skills gap. Tamsin shares, “Having worked in a large corporate environment, I had so much experience on what can go wrong on a project and what is required or expected - that is something I could bring to my younger team.” She goes on to share an example where she enlightened her young colleague as to what the term “scope creep” meant while busy with a project.
Read: Tapping Into The Skills Labour Pool Of Working Moms
If an organisation has the proper support systems in place, it will run a successful returnship programme. This is an excellent tool to have if you are having problems finding candidates with specific skill sets or if you want to reach as many people as possible.
RecruitMyMom is committed to assisting skilled women to find success both professionally and personally through integrating their careers into their lives by offering a variety of jobs and returnship programmes. Speak to us if you are looking to hire top female talent for gender diversity jobs.
Phillipa Geard is the Founder and CEO of multi-award winning company RecruitMyMom.co.za, an innovative online recruitment agency for forward-thinking companies, looking for top-calibre female skills. Skills that value flexibility, either hours or location. More recently she launched RecruitAGraduate, an online platform designed to make the hiring of graduates and interns effortless. Both are full service agencies. She is a wife, mother and a social entrepreneur at heart.
More articles by Phillipa
