Analysis: Tapping into the returners talent pool

Research shows quite clearly that women are disproportionately impacted by time away from a career, with hundreds of thousands wanting to return to the workforce, and that more needs to be done to support them.

People have career breaks at different ages and for different reasons. Along with looking after a young family, these might include caring for a relative, to deal with stress or mental health issues, volunteering for a charity, exploring a new challenge and more. And with working lives now stretching to 50 years, the likelihood is that more people will need or want to take a career break in the future making it a growing issue.

Allianz has been running a formal programme for ‘returners’ since 2018. Targeted at those who have been out of work for at least two years it has brought on 13 people to permanent roles through the scheme so far.

“We have tapped into talent that perhaps we wouldn’t have seen in other circumstances,” Graham Gibson, chief claims officer at Allianz Insurance told Post.

Gibson, who sponsors the programme at management board level, noted that the provider has not limited itself to people with insurance experience.

“It is about unearthing skills that perhaps we are a bit short of,” he says citing data and change management as two examples among many where it has been successful.

Working alongside return to work experts Women Returners, each year the insurer hosts an event with presentations, breakout sessions and interaction with senior managers to tell potential recruits about the opportunities available. During the course of the year the HR department is also tasked with spotting CVs that would sit in the programme.

Those who begin working with the company get a structured package for their personal circumstances and three coaching sessions as part of the onboarding process.

“We have brought folk in that have given us a different view of the world and have worked in different organisations and are highly skilled,” he continued.

“In a world where getting hold of talented people is really difficult, ignoring a cohort just because they have had a career break is a bit bonkers. Our experience was there was an untapped talent pool but you need to know how to dig it out. That gives us an advantage over an organisation that isn’t doing this.”

Programme

It certainly appears that Allianz has been ahead of the pack with its prominent support for ‘returnships’ and structured programme. Convex too (see box, right) has already been working with Women Returners.

However, this March, nine firms consisting of brokers, insurers and long terms savings and retirement businesses (see box below for list) revealed the creation of a programme to enable career break professionals to find employment with the insurance industry.

It has opportunities open across all disciplines, including underwriting, broking, claims, actuarial, exposure management, risk and some corporate functions.

Open to women and men returning from a career break the organisers use a tailored assessment process which looks for potential, acknowledges the full breadth of a candidate’s experience and understands that breaks should not be career limiting.

Successful candidates will be offered a six-month paid placement in one of the participating organisations, a thorough training, onboarding and induction process as well as one-to-one specialist coaching.

The programme, currently open for applicants, will offer successful candidates the chance to start work in September on six-month contracts, with the aim being to transition to a permanent role at the end of that period.

It has been launched by diversity and inclusion consultant Inclusivity Partners and aims to tap into the “forgotten army” of experienced women who want to return to work after a career break, according to Inclusivity Partners founder Stephanie Dillon.

“Across the professions we see women dropping out, often due to caring responsibilities, only to find that when they are ready to return their way back is blocked. Men do take career breaks too, but we know that these issues disproportionately impact women,” she said.

Research in 2016 by PWC, in conjunction with the 30% Club and Women Returners, found that around 427,000 female professionals, including directors, engineers, scientists, researchers, doctors, lawyers and accountants, on a career break wanted to return to the workforce in the future.

Three in five professional women (or around 249,000) returning to the workforce were likely to move into lower-skilled or lower-paid roles, experiencing an immediate earnings reduction of up to a third, the analysis showed.

More recently, data released by the Association of British Insurers in February revealed that although 55% of people entering the industry are female, that proportion drops to 29% at board level and 24% at executive level, with a steady decline from manager upwards.

Speaking before the latest programme with Inclusivity Partners was announced, Caren Thomas, HR director at the Chartered Insurance Institute, observed that there is “a whole pocket of people, particularly women, who have been out of the workplace for some years and really looking for opportunities to get back”.

Adding: “The talent pool is small and it feels as if we have an untapped resource there particularly with women who have had some years off work.”

She hailed returnships as an opportunity to deliver programmes similar in nature to graduate schemes with the chance to move around organisations. She backed up Gibson’s point that they did not have to be just for people who had started their careers in insurance.

A switch of career is an advantage, she underlined and recruits would, like graduates, bring new found skills and experience.

“The business case is really clear,” she stated listing resilience, communication skills, perseverance and organisational traits among the skills and behaviours that returners can offer.

In Thomas’ view being an inclusive profession includes having a variety of experience.

“Encouraging returners enables you a greater diversity of person,” she pointed out noting they will help challenge ‘group think’ at their employers.

The best approach to allowing this talent to flourish is to treat each person as an individual and develop them accordingly through a blended approach engaging line managers, HR teams, peers and buddies, she set out.

Insurance has long prided itself on having a variety of careers available. However the industry still needs to go further in promoting itself to this untapped market in the first place rather than remaining a hidden secret that people generally fall into.

“Are we doing a good enough job of attracting candidates that are outside of the sector?” Thomas questioned. “I don’t think we are yet.”

Outreach programmes, working with schools and universities is part of the solution to appeal to different types of people. For returners working with agencies that look for potential will be key.

“The business case is absolutely there,” Thomas concluded. “The talent, diversity, flexibility and skills that returners have are absolutely there.”

Flexibility

While nobody would have wished for the coronavirus pandemic, one silver lining has been the increased level of flexibility and remote working on offer. It is hoped that this will be a further support for those returning to a career.

“The past year, particularly in the insurance broking industry, has smashed down all of those barriers that existed historically around remote flexible working,” HR director at Brightside Kerry Goodman summarised.

While Brightside does not have such a formal programme for returnships it has followed the mantra of treating applicants on an individual case-by-case basis and benefited from people joining after career breaks, Goodman confirmed: “We have people that have career breaks and we welcome them back.”

Continuing: “It is important that firms are able to offer the right work placement support packages for people that do return to the business. Mentors are incredibly important and have huge benefits, not just for career but for personal goals as well.”

Reasons for the break have ranged from having a family through to travelling the world. “[Staff have] gone away to broaden their experience levels and rejoined in more senior roles,” she said.

Goodman joined the dots on the flexibility point underlining that for returners and all staff it is important that people have the flexibility to have balance in their life. In addition to the day-to-day Brightside also offers sabbatical leave (see also Gallagher in box below).

“There is no reason why we would not consider any application for sabbatical leave. It is important that as employers we are inclusive. We will never get diversity if we are not inclusive as employers.”

Fantastic

The last word goes to Gibson and Allianz’s formal programme.

Applicants have included people with breaks of 10 years on their CVs, he detailed. “The over-riding thing we hear is about confidence,” Gibson counselled when looking to assist people in a structured scheme he defined as “brilliant” and a “breath of fresh air”.

“This isn’t just bringing someone in because it is a nice thing to do,” he added stressing the people have worked hard and proved their worth with successes in programme management and claims leading to winning industry awards and promotion.

He concluded: “Having a really good returners programme where you are bringing quality people back into the workforce in a supported manner is fantastic.”