'Returnship' programmes tie-ups among 12 recommendations by SBF to support women in the workforce

TO BETTER support women looking to re-enter the workforce, organisations can collaborate to pilot "returnship" programmes for workers to test the waters on whether they want to return to a full-time role after taking a long hiatus from work.

This was among the 12 recommendations laid out by the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) in a policy paper titled Uplifting Women in the Workforce: Investing in the Success of Women.

The recommendations were made in 4 categories: company, ecosystem, national and the individual levels.

The key findings of the paper were gathered through research conducted between September and November this year, with 1,140 individuals and 116 business leaders from businesses, trade associations and chambers, as well as government agencies and labour unions.

SBF said in a press statement on Thursday (Dec 2) that the recommendations "reflect the collective aspirations of stakeholders to accelerate the progress of working women in their career and entrepreneurial journeys".

Though strides have been made to support women in the workforce, it found that there are still opportunities to encourage female entrepreneurship, and support women who juggle caregiving needs with work.

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For instance, 63 per cent of the women surveyed by SBF who had informal caregiving responsibilities had considered leaving their jobs due to competing personal duties.

In the paper, SBF pointed out that many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may not have the resources to invest and devote time to train and mentor workers under a returnship programme due to their ever-fluid business needs.

Therefore, it recommended for organisations to work together and share resources to promote the take-up rate of returnship programmes.

For example, institutes of higher learning (IHLs) can collaborate with large companies and SMEs to form a cluster offering returnship programmes.

IHLs can develop the curriculum in consultation with the companies and help train the returning employees before they get hired by the companies within the cluster in a returnship programme.

The cluster could tap existing grants offered by the government and share resources in order to defray some of the cost.

Separately, SBF also recommended that companies recalibrate their processes to be more open to returning workers and to encourage women to remain in the workforce.

For instance, they can rethink their hiring process by adding a section where candidates can highlight appropriate volunteer or informal experiences to demonstrate the skills and expertise they have outside of the formal workforce.

They could also consider reconfiguring their career pathways, such as by being more open to lateral transfers, investing in training to support employees in gaining new skills and reconfigure performance indicators towards deliverable-based outcomes.

At the national level, SBF suggested for the government to explore policy adjustments that can help support stakeholders in making changes in their companies.

For instance, it asked the government to consider increasing statutory provisions for childcare leave, subsidising family or elder care leave and promote leave utilisation.

This is especially since there are currently no statutory provisions to provide leave for caregiving of elderly parents, noted SBF in its report.

On an individual level, SBF recommended for workers to be more receptive to new opportunities and pathways and to embrace continuous learning.

"As life circumstances change, individuals can be agile and explore various career pathways, whether in the same company or completely switching industries," it said.

"This agility is particularly salient because increased retirement ages mean that there could be multiple switches throughout their careers as disrupted industries become a constant."

Moving forward, SBF said it will work with its partners in the trade associations and chambers to drive education and outreach at the individual and company level.

It will also collaborate with the Singapore Women Entrepreneurs Network to deepen its engagement with women business groups, IHLs, trading providers, government agencies and other key stakeholders to enact change on an ecosystem and national level.