Starter Kit. Idea 445 of 500. Cluster 23
Return-to-work programmes that firms pay for, bringing women back after the children
The mechanism, from the book
The single largest unused asset in the country is sitting at home, and the reasons are practical, not attitude.
The first step
Approach the HR managers of three firms in finance, IT or accounting, and ask whether they struggle to hire experienced staff and whether they would pay to bring back women who left work for their children. Find five such women through school parent groups and ask what would bring them back. The proof is one firm willing to pay a fee per placement for a pilot group.
- Who pays first
- A firm short of experienced staff that pays a fee per returner, because a trained woman back at work costs less than a graduate trained from scratch.
- What leaves today
- Women are 65% of the university intake and 32% of the workforce; a returnship converts that education back into wages instead of leaving it at home.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask whether a short return-to-work course can carry a recognised certificate.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask how to register a training business that firms pay for directly.
Check before you spend
Confirm each firm's agreement in writing on what it pays and what the placement is, and whether your course needs registering as training.
Find out these three numbers
- How hard is it for firms to hire experienced staff now?
- What would a firm pay for one returning woman, trained and ready?
- How many women nearby left this work for their children?
A comparison from the book
Switzerland. Chapter Fourteen
"Swiss studies find most firms earn back what an apprentice costs them before the apprenticeship even ends."
Firms pay for training when they earn it back. Show them the sum.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.