WOMEN SPECIAL..WELCOMING SECOND-CAREER

A Ready Talent Pool Firms Can’t Ignore

The world of women’s careers is attracting a lot of attention these days. I say this because I am witness to the journeys begun by several organisations in making their workplaces more welcoming for women. And it is a great feeling that change in this regard is happening in India.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development embarked on this voyage a good number of decades ago, following the Scandinavian countries which constantly figure in the top 10 rankings of the Human Development Index. India, I am proud to say, has been seeing a steady and sustained focus on engaging with more women through different avenues. To name a few:
• Hiring entry-level women professionals in large numbers
• Providing training and workshops for retaining women at middle and senior managerial levels
• Re-engaging with second career women across different segments. 

While the first two have been active ever since the service industry took off in the early 1990s, it is the last piece that was slow to catch on in the Indian context. Amidst several mixed reactions to re-engaging women, the Indian workplace has seen quite a bit of traction recently and rightly so. Here’s why: Indian workplaces have about 12 million women populating them. Every year, an average of about 2.5 million women will enter the workforce, but 18% of the total typically attrite. Over the past two decades, the segment of women who have quit the workplace due to work-life reasons and sought second careers after an average break of between three and five years, has reached about 1.5 million: a seriously considerable number which can help companies of different sizes and verticals in a plethora of ways. A focus group study conducted by AVTAR in early 2011 on second careers shows that companies which engage with women who re-enter, have listed four major benefits of doing so:
• High level of organisational loyalty: When second-career women re-enter after a break, they are aware of the organisational dynamics of their re-entry and thus are happy about being given a chance (to some, this might sound patronising on the part of the company, but in my opinion, it’s a good start)
• Second-career women raise the level of maturity in the organisation, thereby making it easier for managers to elicit their support in handling teams
• Cost arbitrage is a key factor for small and medium enterprises that obtain access to highquality returning talent who prefer flexible working rather than top compensation    
• For large hirers, second career women are a large source of talent, difficult to ignore Organisations such as GE, Hindustan Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Deutsche Bank and IBM have invested significantly in identifying and re-skilling women who seek career re-entry. Long gone is the view that this is a box ticked under your corporate social responsibility agenda. Instead, it is a clear focus on sustainability to help our society in multiple ways, some of which are amazing in their simplicity and clarity. But, more on that later. Yes, the numbers are pretty significant. You can call it by many names – threshold level, critical mass, tipping point. It just means one thing – the sooner your company puts in place a mechanism for engaging with women seeking second career opportunities, the earlier it will reap the benefits of a ready talent pool.

The writer is founder-president, AVTAR Career Creators and FLEXI Careers India

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