The comeback women - a growing tribe

 

As more women take mid-career breaks, they find their return to professional life unusually tough. The New Manager speaks to a few women to find out why.

Back in the fold: Women returning to their careers after a break have to often deal with deep-seated doubts about their professional commitment

Anjali Prayag

Career comebacks are not easy. It’s obvious Indian audiences did not dance to the Aaja Nachle tune and 2007 was obviously not a memorable year professionally for Madhuri Dixit. The country’s biggest superstar just a couple of years ago, Madhuri is now struggling to return to films after a break in her career. Her story does not sound very different from that of thousands of other women who have faced difficult, sometimes hostile situations when they attempted a re-entry into professional life.

Dr Leena Chandran-Wadia, CTO, Netcore Solutions, who took a six-year break from her teaching career and attempted to comeback into work life in 1996 says, “It was the lowest part of my life, felt extremely crushed as most people could not even connect my qualification to the kind of job I was looking at.”

Dr Chandran-Wadia, a PhD in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, joined as a researcher at the National Centre for Software Technology and later IIT Mumbai before moving to Netcore in 2006. Comebacks are most difficult in India, she says, adding that a break longer than a year could be disastrous.

Settling for less

But, if women are willing to switch careers or go a few steps down the ladder, then it would seem there are opportunities.

Take the instance of Kiran Umesh, Team Leader, 24x7 Customer, who took a 10-year break in her career as a textile designer before knocking at corporate doors again. “I started at the L1G1 level, which is pretty low level work in a call centre, but at least I got an opportunity to get back.”

She opted for the midnight to morning (1.30 am to10.30 am) shift which meant sacrificing sleep but gave her an opportunity to be at home with her kids when they needed her. “Getting back into the groove has been tough, but I do not regret the decision to take a break.”

Vrinda Pai, Manager, CSPM, also with 24x7 Customer, has taken two breaks in her careers for her two kids and has managed to get back into working life. “The call centre industry is different and offers a lot of opportunity for women like us,” she says.

And if one thought most women took a break to raise a family, well, that is not true either. Deborah Ephraim, who was in telemarketing sales at 24x7 took time off for a holiday in the UK. “When I got back, they offered to take me back on the roles, but I opted for a training job.”

The market is huge with a lot of options available, but the trick is to stay in touch and not lose heart, say these women.

Some positive moves

In a talent-starved economy, are companies attempting to capture this pool of women waiting to open their second innings?

Nina Nair, Vice-President, HR, 24x7 Customer, says the company has put in place a recalibration programme for women on the comeback track. “We have 10-12 women in the learning and development team who have made a comeback. We evaluate and certify them.” The learning curve in the new environment may be longer, but they do get into the groove with a little training, she says.

There are companies that facilitate people to take a break and make a comeback after a year. At MindTree Consulting, for instance, every six years of service entitles an employee to take up to a year off from work. Puneet Jetli, Head, People Function, MindTree Consulting, says the company realises that employees need time off to start families, look after dependents, or opt for a sabbatical to pursue studies or be with a spouse who is travelling overseas. This HR policy implemented a few months back is open to both men and women.

As there are no strings attached (such as a bond or an agreement to come back), how does the company tackle the risk of losing employees after one year. “We’re confident that with such good HR practices, we will have employees coming back to us, not leaving us,” he says.

Saundarya Rajesh, who runs Avtar I-win, the country’s first flexi career service for interim women managers, is of the opinion that women’s careers in India have to undergo a whole transformation.

“Why is it that we have women’s careers being force-fitted into the clockwork of male careers? And that too the clockwork of Western male careers?” she questions.

Having taken a break in her career when she had her child, she says she had to search ‘far and wide’ for a flexi career to enjoy the best of both worlds.

She talks of the stigmas attached to a ‘gap in a resume’: The stereotype of a mother leaving important projects hanging and rushing to be at the bedside of a sick child. Then, there is an absolute lack of awareness among corporates that the flexi way of working is not a compromise and that flexi-workers are not secondary citizens.

Indian corporates, in her opinion, have to create a stigma-free environment for flexi-professionals to pursue meaningful, economically productive careers and develop policies and processes that can allow a healthy measure of growth, assessment, mentoring and progress.

They could do this by unbundling jobs into smaller units of activity to enable a parallel workforce — this would reduce attrition, add to the bottomline and create a more mature workforce.

 

 

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