A report by a return to work social impact business has found, that, despite the increasing popularity of returnships, the career break penalty is still alive and strong.
Career Returner’s (CR) first survey of over 600 clients, 98% of whom are women, has found that 97% of people who have taken a career break find it challenging to return to work and 64% find it extremely challenging.
CR was founded by its CEO Jullianne Miles MBE in 2014 to bring returnships which are internships for experienced professionals who want to return to work after a career break to the UK, after being pioneered by Goldman Sachs in the US in 2008.
She said: “There’s no quick fix for this ingrained problem, however we have proven solutions having partnered with 170 leading employers to create supported routes back to work.
“However, the research shows we need to accelerate the pace of change.
“Far too many talented professionals are still being blocked from relaunching their careers by the bias against a CV gap and loss of self confidence.
“The career break penalty is alive and kicking.
“As well as changing individual lives, and improving the gender pay gap the potential economic gains are enormous.
The PWC Women in Work Report estimated that a 5% gain in women in employment could boost the UK’s GDP by £125bn per annum.
However, they found a quarter of those searching for jobs have applied for over fifty roles despite 93% believing they have developed transferable skills during their career break.
Melissa Schofield took an 18 year career break from her consultancy career at accountancy firm PWC to look after her son with special needs.
During this time, she completed a teacher training cause, a speech therapy course, gained a masters in environmental architecture and took in mother’s and babies through the foster system.
Nonetheless, when she started re-applying to corporate jobs, much lower in seniority than the peak of her consultancy career she simply couldn’t get a job.
Eventually she discovered CR, participated in some free CV workshops, and gained a place on insurance firm Gallagher’s returnship scheme.
She said: “Gallagher made it really easy to come back, it was scary but I was allowed to ask as many questions as I wanted.
“I’m not a confident person, and I was worried about being out of touch in terms of using computers and so on, and would often preface everything with sorry this is a stupid question.
“But they were incredibly patient with me, and have put together a six month Melissa plan and I feel like I’m thriving, my confidence is so much better.”
However, not all returners have had positive experiences.
Bhav, who before her career break was a VP at Citibank applied to over fifty positions before getting on the scheme at Lloyds through CR in 2014.
Of the experience she said: “HR just wanted to tick a box, I was the only brown face and this didn’t go down well.
She said it hadn’t been thought through, as there weren’t enough positions at the end of the three month program and she didn’t secure a role.
In 2023 Lloyds removed the cap on positions at the end of the scheme and won the most successful Returners Strategy at the Women in Banking and Finance awards the same year.
She said: “I was bloody good at my job, but my manager, saw me as a threat.
“There was a resentment that I had been planted at a level when other people had been climbing the greasy pole for years.
“He went on leave, and took on his responsibilities and did a better job than him and he didn’t like it.”
A Lloyds spokesperson said: “Returner roles are carefully selected to provide support and help people returning after a prolonged career break of 18 months or more.
“We advertise returners vacancies all year round, so that when it comes to returning to work, we have a range of interesting and diverse opportunities available.”
Bhav later found a role at Boston consulting group, where she loves her job.
On the dilemma that faces many parents of prioritizing their career when they have young children, she said: “We need children, we need children to be born and raised well, we don’t want them to be urchins running around a committing crimes.
“So something has to give.”
The Institute of Fiscal Studies found women are much more likely to give up work or go part time than men after they have children.
This remined the case even when they earned more before having a family, and their wages typically dropped by 13% if they continued to work.
Whilst men’s working patterns barely change after parenthood, female employment drops sharply from 90% to 75%, and those still in work reduce their hours from around 40 to 30 on average.
Wages per hour also stagnate for working mothers whereas men continue to grow- they argue that this is the crux of the gender pay gap which is minimal in junior roles.
Bilal Hafeez, who pioneered the returners scheme at Deutsche Bank, believes there is an untapped market of skilled professionals who have taken a career break.
Hafeez said: “I personally found returners were more efficient, productive and mature.
“Every second was accounted for and they wouldn’t put up with nonsense whereas some of their counterparts of the same age were less mature.
He acknowledged that there was resistance to giving, primarily women, special treatment.
Hafeez said: “If you do anything new you get resistance.”
He also noticed that returners who were also from an ethnic minority and not privately educated had a harder time fitting in.
One example was the argument that many relationships in banks are formed in pubs, which puts staff from a Muslim background at a severe disadvantage.
CR’s report found that 93% of returners felt skills gained during their break increased the value they could bring to their new roles.
Sarah Ellis had 14 years financial services experience prior to a six year caring related career break during which time she became certified as a Pilates instructor.
She secured a role on Handelsbanken’s UK Returners Program in September 2023.
Ellis said: “What stood out was how much I had changed and matured.
“The skills I’d learned teaching Pilates classes changed me more than I had expected and gave me the confidence to present and express myself in a different way, making relationship building so much easier.
A senior banker at one of Britain’s biggest consumer banks described the value he saw in returners schemes.
He admitted there was an element of ticking diversity boxes as the Financial Conduct Authority was applying pressure on big banks in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
However, he quickly saw the value in the scheme.
He said: “You want to plug your senior female hemorrhage but you are also plugging a maturity gap.
“Older women tend to be more mature, more risk averse – they assess risks in the medium and long term whilst men take short term risks.
“If you have only women or men in a room you are going to get an echo chamber.
“You want your organisation, especially when it is consumer facing, to reflect the demographics of society.”
The report also found that despite 75% of returners having upskilled, 88% think that a minority of employers value the skills gained and 89% say that their career break damaged their confidence.
Photo by Resume Genius on Unsplash
