Firms no more averse to women wanting to return

Women with several years of work experience, who have either taken a break in their career or are contemplating one, in response to child-care, elder care or transition, are being wooed by organisations as potential employees.

This segment has been found to be one needing no training or needs minimal training, is focused, has expertise "" both functional and managerial.

In a survey by Teamlease, the staffing firm, among a small sample about 32 per cent feel it is not possible for women to pursue their career with the same velocity after a child break. Despite this opinion, many firms see women who may have taken a break from career, as a captive group from which they can hire.

Firms are today running out of options to find people. This talent crunch is seeing firms tapping into till recently an ignored resource pool. Among these is the readily-available talent of women who have taken a break from work and want to return.

Till recently most firms paid no heed to them. Looked at from the financial point of view, companies many a time need to spend much lesser resources while deploying them.

Firms in the high growth sector are also developing models to deploy them in the most beneficial manner. Flexible working style is a method being used by most of these people.

The firm 24/7 Customer, the call centre, uses flexibility to accommodate the needs of the segment. Many of them who return after a break had earlier been with the firm. "The chance of women of this group leaving is much lower. They are more sincere," S. Nagarajan, Chief People's Officer and Co-Founder of 24/7 Customer said.

Future Group with its Flexi Resource Concept has been adopting this in their retail outlets. Future Group, in association with Avtar i-Win is rolling out an initiative that offers flexi-time career opportunities only for women.

Under this initiative women will get an opportunity to work part-time at their convenience and also strike the perfect work-life balance. And all of this in a highly professional, safe, lucrative and conducive environment.

Avtar I-Win is a portal that will enable the networking of these women professionals, with organisations, to assist them in finding flexi-time or project-type jobs, which will allow them the freedom to invest their expertise in assisting organisations, while at the same time retaining the job flexibility.

Innovation becomes the need of the hour in the industry. Moreover, a boom in the salary levels in the industry, lower profit margins, Pressure to manage bottom line sustainability, challenges in recruitment and retention has initiated a need to work seamlessly and created an opportunity to redefine roles by customising the same and capitalising on the workforce available in the society.

Hence, Avtar i-Win came into being. The concept helps in giving job opportunities to the segment of people who don't want to take on suitable full time employment. The initiative focuses on the utilisation of the Human capital by: Creating focused jobs and hence introducing part time jobs.

Realising the double dimensional need felt by companies in need of talent as well as women professionals who require unique careers, Avtar Career Creators has created Avtar I-WIN where I-Win stands for interim women managers interface network.

This is a service offering, conceptualised to tap the talent in this segment, enabling the woman-manager-turned-homebound-professional to address some of the talent requirements, without being bound by the constraints of either full-time employment or working-hours employment.

Saundarya Rajesh, CEO of AVTAR Career Creators had started Avtar I-Win. The company has 4,000 women on its database.

But, there are issues with regard to this group. "They have the drive, but it is not possible for them to give their commitment to their jobs fully. Organisations keep this in mind. Firms are also taking to flexi-time or when they face the problem. Hence, firms may need to make it a contractual issue so that there are no issues in future," said Sanjay Shetty, director (operations), EmmayHR.