Helping women employees restart their careers

Companies across the country are planning to take stock of the initiatives they’ve taken so far for their women employees, especially those who have had to take a break due to personal reasons.

Amazon has announced the launch of rekindle, an initiative to encourage women on a professional break, to resume their corporate career. Through this initiative, Amazon aims to provide opportunities to support women, who intend to professionally re-integrate and recommence their job. Structured on-boarding, focused mentoring, flexible work options and on-the-job learning will be the key elements of Rekindle which will help candidates develop the competencies for the role.

Aimed at empowering women employees to return to work and integrate into the workspace, Amazon will provide an environment to address their concerns and close skills gaps. The rekindle programme offers flexible work options including work from home, and flexible shift options depending on the role. “We will offer them roles that allow a flexible work arrangement and at the same time provide an opportunity to perform effectively on the job such as live projects across different functional areas including technology, operations as well as support functions like HR, finance and legal etc. This will enable ramp up of responsibilities in stages giving the candidates the bandwidth to regain confidence,” says a company statement.

Intuit India has a programme called Intuit Again developed to provide an opportunity for women technologists who have taken a break in their career and aspire to come back to work.

The Intuit Women’s Network (IWN) and Technical Women’s Network (TWI) was also created to inspire and empower women to lead with confidence and make a difference

The network has an active core team that gathers feedback from women in the organisation to translate them to programmes to enable and engage its members. This group is active throughout the year.