From Career Breaks to Comebacks: Reimagining Talent Pipelines For Women

Career breaks remain viewed as career derailments, particularly for women, even in the modern, rapid-fire, progressive workplace. There is uncertainty surrounding women's choices to leave for personal health, caregiving, or side projects. But a departure from structured work does not degrade capability - it fortifies the source of emotional acuity, resilience, and agility. These very qualities are what organisations claim to seek in their future-ready workforce.

Normalising the Break

Career breaks for a very long time need to be redefined such that they are welcomed, not rejected by society and organisations alike. Imagine sabbaticals being greeted with as much fanfare as promotions. Picture interviewers posing not, "Why were you absent?" but "What did you learn when you were away?"

Policy and culture both have to change. Leaders to line managers need to change the way we talk about it - from gaps to growth. It's time to rebrand the break - a pivot, a pause for purpose, or a recalibration. After all, there is learning in every experience of life. 

The Untapped Upskilling

Women returning to work bring honed, frequently intangible toolkits: high-pressure multitasking, emotional regulation, creative problem-solving, and adaptive learning. Motherhood, caregiving, entrepreneurship, and volunteering forge outstanding leaders.

Resilience is not developed in boardrooms; it's forged through lived experience. These experiences provide unmatched empathy, teamwork, and decision-making power to any organisation.

Structured Re-entry is a Game Changer

Firms serious about future-proofing their pipelines will need to make investments in systematic re-entry schemes, returnships, and sponsorship. One-off induction will no longer cut it. Returnees require individualized induction, upskilling with technology, fluid work patterns, and an underlying culture that sincerely welcomes - not simply tolerates - them.

Mentorship and sponsorship matter. We must have internal mentors who promote real routes into lasting roles, based on expertise, not experience alone. 

Beyond Hiring - Creating Real Belonging

Hiring women after a break is just the start; retention is where true inclusion is achieved.

True belonging begins when returnees are no longer the exception, but the rule - when their value is celebrated, not questioned. Inclusive language, equitable promotion paths, mental wellbeing support, and daily allyship enable women not merely to survive post-return, but to flourish.

Policy Changes: Think Larger, Act Smarter

Policy needs to be the driver. Gender-neutral parental leave, reskilling allowances, project-based employment, and second-career routes are a must.

We need to break the myth that women alone carry the career cost of caring. Equality is not women filling gaps – it's men stepping up, too.

Redefining Potential: Experience Over Linear Paths

It's time to rethink "potential."

Linear career trajectories are a thing of the past. Innovation is conceived in disruption, and career interruptions bring fresh clarity and creativity. We need to hire for life experience, not solely unbroken employment experience. The zig-zag routes tend to produce the strongest, most agile leaders.

Comebacks aren't compromises. Women don't come back with less - they return with more: more perspective, more purpose, more power.

It's time to challenge outdated mindsets and reimagine career paths that include breaks, not as gaps, but as powerful growth pivots.
Let's create hiring ecosystems that don't just let women back in but create workplaces with them in mind. Because when we open up to non-traditional routes, we don't just let more women in - we make the future of work richer.

Authored by Shruti Swaroop, Founder, Embrace Consulting; Co-Founder, International Inclusion Alliance. Views expressed by the author are their own.