Vodaphone (LON:VOD) has announced plans to launch the world’s largest programme designed to provide women who have taken a career break with a way of returning to work.
The telecommunications giant’s ‘ReConnect’ programme is the latest in a series of initiatives to encourage women to resume their career after a break. It is specifically aimed at woman “who would like to return to work on a full-time or flexible basis but are struggling to make the professional connections needed or refresh the skills required”.
The new scheme, which will be launched on International Women’s Day on March 8, will be introduced in 26 countries and give up to 1,000 people the opportunity to return to work. Employees will not just be offered work, but training to “refresh and enhance skills”. The initiative will also offer training for hiring managers in “unconscious bias training”.
This is not the first time that Vodaphone has pushed the boundaries for female employees. Two years ago, Vodafone became one of the first companies in the world to offer female staff the same amount of maternity leave regardless of which country they worked and despite the fact that some countries such as the US do not enforce employers to offer maternity leave. This policy is applied in all 30 countries Vodaphone works.
At the moment, the telecommunications company says that 27 percent of its managers are women – something it wants to increase to 30 percent over the next three years.
Serpil Timuray, the company’s chief commercial operations and strategy officer said: “Twenty-seven percent is good but we really want to accelerate our efforts.”
“Companies often struggle to recruit and retain women in management and leadership roles. Innovations such as our global maternity policy and now our new ReConnect programme can make a real difference to women who work for us today and who will work for us in the future” said Vittorio Colao, the chief executive of Vodafone.
Vodaphone has already carried out a pilot of the initiative, where Colao said they found women “who thought there was no opportunity for them because after a two or three-year break, maybe after a baby, they would not be sought after because their competencies were obsolete or not right.”