According to research by PwC, addressing the ‘career break penalty’ could provide a £1.7 billion boost to the UK’s annual economic output
To help plug this gap, the government last year announced career break returner programmes to help people back to work.
There are many reasons why someone has taken time off work, from maternity or paternity leave to serious illness and from mental illness to retirement and redundancy.
Randstad’s new ‘Returning to Work’ campaign explores the challenges our case studies faced getting back into the workforce as well as advice for employers on how to make that transition easier.
Untapped talent pool.
As many as 63,000 people with cancer today want to work but are unable to do so because they do not have the right support. Mixed anxiety and depression have been estimated to cause one-fifth of days lost from work in Britain.
A poll in 2016 revealed 50% of employers would not consider employing an ex-offender yet more than 11 million people in the UK have a criminal record.
Getting back into the workforce after a long absence can be a daunting experience and people face a number of barriers, from having an out of date skillset to explaining their a gap on their CV, to the prospect of returning to a different office environment.
New ideas to the table.
However, their diverse range of experiences and ideas can bring a new perspective to organisations and be of benefit to potential employers.
Anne Milton, Minister of State for Apprenticeships, Skills and Women said “Millions of us need to take time out from our careers, but it can be really hard to return. This is bad for the people affected, and the businesses who miss out on their talents.”
Watch our returning to work video series on challenges that people face when deciding to go back to work, and some tips and advice on how to decide when the time is right to go back and how to prepare for it.
