Our CEO’s Call to Employers: Take Action to #EndTheCareerBreakPenalty

The Career Returners Indicator is our annual research study exploring the challenges, motivations and preferences of professionals returning to their careers after long breaks.

Our 2025 research findings illustrate the increased challenges that the current economic and political environment is creating for returning professionals. It’s always been difficult to return to work after a career break, with widespread bias against returners in mainstream recruitment, and demand far exceeding the number of returner-targeted opportunities. Now it’s getting harder, as hiring pressures intensify and many returner programmes have been paused. Our returner community of talented (mainly women) professionals wanting to resume their careers after breaks for caring, health or relocation are facing an uphill battle. They are hit by the double-whammy of widespread recruitment bias against their CV gap and a pervasive loss of professional confidence. Research carried out by the UK Recruitment and Employment Confederation, launched this year alongside our joint recruiter guidance, found that recent experience within the past year is one of the top two CV screening factors.

At Career Returners, we’ve been tackling these challenges over the last 11 years, so we know there is no quick fix for this ingrained, global problem. However we do have proven solutions. Thousands of people are thriving back in skilled roles thanks to our confidence-building return-to-work support and the returner programmes of 200 forward-thinking employers, who have partnered with us to move towards inclusive returner hiring.

In 2025, there is a risk of winding back progress. We are encouraged by the resilience and determination of returners to resume their careers, and we are doubling down on providing the necessary tools, training, and networks that returners need. But employers and the government must step up their support. With the Recruitment and Employment Confederation estimating a potential £39 billion annual cost to the economy due to labour shortages, actively reintegrating skilled returners is an economic imperative. It’s time for concerted investment and a collective effort to unlock the vast potential of these skilled professionals who are currently being overlooked.

Our practical action plan ’10 Steps to Become a Returner Inclusive Employer’ (below), which can be followed by employers of any size, is below. We call on ALL employers to join us, and our employer partners, in our mission to make career breaks a valued part of a lifetime career and to end the career break penalty.

Julianne Miles MBE CPsychol, CEO and Co-Founder, Career Returners