Forward thinking managers...are you looking to make the case to your leadership about why your organization should be running an in-house return to work program?
Please feel free to use it however it may be helpful. Or contact us and we can walk through it together – consider it our gift to you. We want to see as many employers running return to work programs as possible and this is our way of paying it forward.
If you get approval for the pilot with you as the program manager, you will have the rare opportunity to build a new onboarding program inside your organization from scratch. Not only will it be a high visibility role from the top of the organization, but in doing so you will have the opportunity to review and evaluate the components of onboarding programs for other talent coming into the organization, and extract the best components of those programs. If they meet your high standards, you can include them in your return to work program. If they don’t, then what you create for your return to work program can become the new standard for other in-house onboarding programs to use also.
Consider us your dedicated partner in developing and launching your program every step of the way, bringing our expertise and experience in building best in class return to work programs with innovations and customization for each employers’ unique culture and objectives. Our structures and frameworks, templates and checklists provide an approach to program building that has logical starting points and keeps the process from becoming overwhelming.
The breadth of models we have developed and worked with means we are not wedded to any single approach. We work with our clients to determine the best model for their particular needs. We have partnered on launching and expanding a full range of returnship and direct hire programs including single or multiple cohorts per year, small and large cohorts, role based and project based, virtual or in-person, rolling admissions, loose cohorts, direct hire programs with and without a cohort structure, and event-based return to work programs.
A core element of the best career reentry programs is training for the participants themselves and the managers, recruiters and other “stakeholders” who engage with the participants during the program. We have found from our work with leading employers around the world that even at employers with extensive learning and development resources, there are customized elements of career reentry programs that make more economic sense to be outsourced to experts than developed in house.
We are constantly innovating; updating the content of our presentations and how we deliver them, adjusting for factors such as whether we are speaking with managers and recruiters who are brand new to a program or repeat participants, or whether relauncher cohorts are large or small and in what time zones and global locations.
Working with employers to build their programs and sharing our deep knowledge through our extensive training are a hallmark of our approach and central to our mission.
Demand exceeding supply in professional hiring, especially in the technology and finance functions
Lack of gender and other types of diversity in mid-to senior level roles in certain functions and industries
Return to work programs enable employers to tap into the high-caliber, predominantly female returning professional talent pool. This pool is made up primarily of women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who take career breaks for childcare reasons, in addition to men who take childcare career breaks, and men and women who take career breaks for other reasons, including eldercare, a health issue, military spouse and ex-pat experiences, extended travel, pursuing a personal interest, or “un-retiring.” In other words, people who elect to leave the workforce for reasons that have nothing to do with their work performance.
Plus, during the "Pandemic Exodus," 1.79 million women and 1.75 million men left the labor force*. When they are ready to return, there will be a huge bump in the supply of qualified relaunchers. These programs also present the opportunity to reconnect with and rehire an employer’s own high performing alumni who left to go on career break and are now looking to return to work.
Relaunchers are highly educated, have significant work and life experience, and are exceptionally motivated to resume their careers. They have a mature perspective and are in a stable life stage. During their career breaks, relaunchers have had the opportunity to step back and reflect on where they can add the most value at an employer; they are not in “exploratory career mode” as they might have been earlier in their careers. They have worked on teams, with different personalities and work styles, and faced work deadlines. They do not need to re-learn these skills.
When relaunchers apply for roles after career breaks, they are not doing it on a whim. Expect significant thoughtfulness and deliberation on the part of the relauncher about where they can add the most value at an employer before they submit their application.
They are motivated to upskill and reskill and have high quality resources to do so, often free or low cost.
Finally - energy and enthusiasm about returning to work because they have been away from it for a while is a hallmark of relaunchers. Managers consistently report that relaunchers bring an excitement to their work teams because they are so thrilled to be working again.
Running a return to work program sends a powerful signal to all of a company's workforce constituencies: its own alumni on career break, its current employee base with friends and relatives on career break and its younger employees who are anticipating career breaks in greater numbers than ever seen before according to recent studies.
With the emergence and proliferation of employer returnships and return to work programs, career breaks have been completely reframed: it used to be that a career break was a reason to reject a candidate. Now career breaks are required to be eligible to apply for and participate in employer return to work programs. This reframing is a major milestone in the institutional shift required to normalize career breaks.
1/3 of the fortune 50 have in-house return to work programs and less than 10% of the Fortune 500 have them. Return to work programs have happened in three waves: Wall Street and financial services were the first companies to have return to work programs in larger numbers, followed by a wave of programs in a range of industry sectors that were tech-driven. Now, the public sector is starting to offer return to work programs with the State of Utah running the first state return to work program. We expect a wave of public sector programs to follow their lead.
Is there a familiar reference that can give us a good sense of them? Most return to work programs are structured as “returnships.” Think of returnships as a cross between a college internship program tweaked for the mid-career returning professional and a leadership development program for high potential employees. Also consider having the responsibility of managing a relauncher part of leadership development for the managers.
A less common version of a return to work program is called “direct hire” in which relaunchers are hired as employees from day one but still benefit from transitional support programming, mentoring, and either tight cohorts in which all participants start on the same day or loose cohorts in which people start at different times but are still connected and may even mentor each other.
Return to work programs have evolved over the years. The early returnship model was project based, with conversion to a permanent role upon completion of the program more of a possibility than an expectation. While still not guaranteeing a job at the end, many of today’s employer returnships take an “intent to hire” approach, in which participants are recruited and integrated into work teams assuming they will convert to permanent hires. A handful of employers with high conversion rates in their own returnship programs or aware of strong results at peer companies, did away with the internship altogether and hired the return to work program participants as employees at the outset. This is how direct-hire programs started.
The common ground linking these program types are transitional programming and mentoring for the participants, and customized training for the recruiters, managers, and others interacting with the returning professionals to welcome them back to the workplace. Most programs also use cohorts, so participants move through this significant personal and professional life transition as a group; a powerful and bonding experience.
To keep the process from becoming overwhelming, start with a small pilot. Even the biggest global employers will often start with a single cohort of less than 10 people in one location (virtual since Covid hit). Pilots are a great vehicle for testing the concept. The whole idea of a pilot is to test and see what works and what doesn’t and then make changes accordingly as the program moves out of a pilot and gets officially established.
Designating an internal program manager who “owns” the program and its outcomes is critical. Even if we manage the program, we require an internal partner with whom to collaborate closely. Without this internal partner and executive championship from a senior leader, we have seen programs languish, become dormant, or go away entirely. The variation comes in whether the program manager is solely dedicated to the return to work program, or whether the program manager manages the return to work program as part of an umbrella of other responsibilities. Employers that are committed to scale their program across business lines and geographically will typically designate a full time program manager to oversee the effort.
The program manager is the hub of all activity to do with the return to work program- for the participants and managers and the orbit of “stakeholders” around them, including recruiters, mentors, buddies and HR business partners. They also work to market the program internally and externally, including managing the establishment of a dedicated landing page/microsite which contains all the critical information about the program.
Referrals from an employers own employee base PLUS their own alumni who have gone on career break are often the biggest and highest yielding source of participants for their return to work programs. Additionally, tapping alumni populations from colleges and universities they recruit at for entry level hires, plus (of course) specialized return to work pools such as our nearly 100,000 relauncher community at iRelaunch. We have a range of additional sourcing ideas that we share with our clients depending on function and industry for which they are sourcing.
There is wide variation in terms of where return to work programs “live” within an organization. They can be within Human Resources, diversity & inclusion, talent acquisition, as part of experienced hire or other specialized areas within recruiting. Or they can originate in a particular line of business and then grow from there. If the program originates in a line of business, at some point it is usually centralized by one of the other areas mentioned above.
Cost varies significantly based on whether a program is set to scale globally or whether it remains a relatively small scale once a year format.There is cost associated with assigning a full or part-time program manager to the role of managing the return to work program. All stakeholders need to be trained – using internal, external, or a combination of training resources. This is typically handled out of a central HR or other budget. Paying the participants is typically covered by the line of business, although sometimes some costs associated with their training, travel or other programming parts of the return to work program are covered by a central HR budget.
As far as creating the onboarding and ongoing programming for the relaunchers, we say don’t reinvent the wheel! If there are modules from other in-house onboarding programs that would be valuable for the relaunchers, then by all means pull those in. Plus some internal presentations on topics such as executive presence or how to make a great presentation are often included. For customized presentations and training especially for relaunchers, their managers, and other critical program stakeholders, employers often find it to be a higher ROI to outsource these elements to iRelaunch as opposed to devoting the time and resources to developing them in-house. Components and content of return to work program orientations and ongoing programming require a more detailed discussion. Please contact us for a complimentary session to discuss this topic.
