The background: The Untapped Talent Pool
The skill gap
Opportunity for the local business community
Returning to work: “The confidence issue”
The Launch of Capability Jane

The background: The Untapped Talent Pool

The back-drop today is that women today are better educated and have high career expectations and therefore often delay having children until their early/mid thirties in order to sustain a full-time career. As a consequence they return to work post-motherhood with a significant number of years of previous professional experience.

When we started doing our research we found that that nearly 70% of highly qualified professional women in the UK, who took time off for maternity, do not return to their previous roles or companies. The reason for this was primarily due to a work-life imbalance (source: DTI Oct 2005). We found this figure astounding.

Furthermore, in a survey of 500 professional women who had left their careers to have children, nearly 70% of them subsequently wanted to return to work-positions that offered flexibility with respect to their family commitments (source: WSJ, Centre for work-life policy). Overwhelmingly the major issue preventing their return to work was the lack of channels to market for these women to access these types of positions.

The Government has recognised that there is a brain-drain of professional women who remain an untapped workforce resource for the business community (source: DTI report, Women and Men in Great Britain, 2006).

Our own research found an abundance of former directors, senior managers, managers, executives in sales and marketing, HR, PR, supply chain, design, project management, accountancy and law, to name a few.

The bottom line is that there is clearly a huge untapped pool of highly-talented women with years of professional working experience who are available and actively looking to return to the workplace on a flexible basis.

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The skill gap

When talking to businesses, both large and small, we found that a significant number wanted to recruit high skilled employees on a flexible basis but found it difficult to source them.

We also found that there were many companies, often young ones with ambitious growth strategies, that had a desperate need for experienced, capable people but couldn’t afford them full time - but who would jump at the chance to hire them on a part-time, flexible, job-share or freelance/project basis.

We found companies who were keen to source skilled people with experience in sales, marketing, HR, accountancy, project management…..law firms who wanted part-time lawyers, accountancy firms needing part-time accountants.

We concluded that there was a definite skills gap in the market for experienced flexible resource, so we decide to solve it.

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Opportunity for the local business community

Given the fact that these women have a significant amount of business and professional experience, many companies assumed that they would demand high salaries to entice them onboard. We have found that this is not so.

The lure for these individuals is no longer big salaries, impressive titles or extensive benefit packages. For the majority of women in the Capability Jane network the key motivator is the opportunity have a work-life balance and to return to work on a flexible basis.

Basically, returning to work is no longer driven by salary. Companies offering elements of flexibility to a role will, through the services of Capability Jane, be able to tap into this cost-effective, high-skilled workforce that would be otherwise inaccessible to the employment market.

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Returning to work: “The confidence issue”

As recent study by Brunel University found that one of the primary reasons why mothers with young children are being held back from returning to work is a lack of confidence.

Since many previously professional women have devoted themselves to being full time mothers for a period of time they become unsure of themselves, especially when considering re-entering a professional working environment.

We went out and talked to these professional women returners and found that often this lack of confidence stemmed from a fear of the unknown: what has changed since the last time they worked? How can they balance work and life successfully? Have they forgotten the skills they once had? How can they transfer their skills to a new area? Can they live up to an employer’s expectations?

It really is quite surprising to discover that some of the most talented, confident, previously high-flying professional women lack the confidence in their ability once they have taken time out to have children. But that’s just it! It’s all about confidence not ability.

We found that for a lot of these women the skills developed in their earlier career are not actually lost they have merely been channeled in other directions. A great number of mothers have been actively using their previous professional skills and developing new ones in a wide variety of voluntary, charitable or school related activities.

Our research has also found that once these women have taken the plunge back into work in a position that values and utilises their skills and experience it does not take them long before they get their self-confidence back, are very quickly up to speed and firing on all cylinders!

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The Launch of Capability Jane

At Capability Jane our vision is three fold:

1. To address the huge brain-drain from the workplace when experienced professional women take a career break for maternity by providing a channel to market for those who are now looking to find a job that enables the right work-life balance.
2. To fill an identified skill gap within local businesses by providing access to a pool of cost-effective, experienced, capable, high calibre resources on a flexible basis.
3. To address the lack of confidence and uncertainty that some professional women experience when considering returning to work by providing programmes and tools that will help them gain renewed confidence and clarity for their next career direction.

Working at Capability Jane we have a great team of individuals with extensive experience in a wide rage of sectors including recruitment, training/coaching, PR, marketing, business development and management consultancy.

We have all directly experienced the hurdles of getting back into the workplace following a career break and are passionate about supporting other professional women through this transition.

We work with local employers, large and small, who recognise the value of professional women returners and flexible working. We work with the local business community to channel the individuals in our network into skilled jobs that are flexible.

By flexible we mean

• part-time (e.g. 2-3 days a week)
• flexible hours (e.g. 10-3, school hours)
• term-time (excluding school holidays)
• job-sharing
• remote working (e.g. working from home)
• freelance/project work

In addition, we believe that those women who have chosen to take a break from their career to bring up their children should be given the same level of professional help that others have access to in the corporate world. Consequently, we have partnered with leading providers of coaching and training to senior executives in the corporate world to deliver our back-to-work programs.

Currently the Government does not offer grants for training and coaching to qualified women returners - one of our many soap-box rants! However, since we passionately believe that these women should have access to these events, Capability Jane have subsidised the costs where possible.

We offer back-to-work workshops, one-to-one coaching, networking events, CV updating service, skills updating courses, and many other tools and support that will help women returners gain renewed confidence and clarity on their career direction.

For more information on Capability Jane or to speak to someone directly please contact info@capabilityjane.com

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