Large corporate organizations such as KPMG and Morgan Stanley are now looking for women who left their careers to have a family and who are now considering re joining the labour force. These budding employees are considered perfect as their skills and knowledge are esteemend and flexible working becomes easier to deliver.

Historically women who left work to have a family had little choice when they decided to return to the workplace as flexibility of hours to work in with nursery and school times was very tricky to deal with. Often women would work evenings in a retail setting or more recently in some sort of call centre, operating in a customer care environment, as these positions were the main ones with an element of flexibility. Opportunities were also presented in the “party selling” type roles with the likes of Avon and Tupperware. Again these were attractive to returning mothers as they allowed a high degree of flexibility and the option to Work From Home.

There has always been a call for extra retail cover, particularly in the lead up to Christmas and this again has been an area where women returning to work after having a child have found opportunities, predominantly over the last 20 years as evening shopping and Sunday shopping has become the norm. But even with decent employers such as the ones named so far the flexible positions on offer until recently have not been career type ones. They have been just a way of adding extra income to the family funds and have given women with a relatively static role.

With the enhancement of technology and the dawn of the Internet Business all this is now shifting. We see the large businesses such as Barclays and Morgan Stanley actually making a definite effort to enlist mothers back into the workplace and not only that, but the positions on offer are at a much higher level than those seen before.

This sort of development is due in part to the arrival of broadband, offering very quick download speeds to most of the country which in turn has allowed remote working to become a possibility. The opportunity to work from home or at a satellite office close to home instead of travel into the city is a big benefit for a lot of women with child care to deal with. Local school runs can still be dealt with and the travelling time to an office is cut out altogether meaning that the actual time spent “at work” is entirely constructive and there is more time for family life.

Another facet of the changing business scene that has offered opportunities for mothers to return to work in high flying jobs is the expansion of many internet businesses. These normally operate without a definite physical base and the majority of staff are able to work from home on Online Jobs using all the online technologies available and being developed.

It is therefore obvious why the larger organizations are tapping into this rich seam of talent, as it offers them with the opportunity to get hold of individuals with a high skill level who need no more than some refresher training to be fully operational. It will be interesting to see if some of the SME’s start to realize this potential too and take advantage when the job vacancy numbers rise following the countries pull away from recession.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 6:59 am and is filed under Business and Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.