About Career Returners

Career Returners is a social impact coaching, community and consulting organisation, partnering with employers and professionals since 2014 to enable confident, supported returns to work after extended breaks for caring, health or other life reasons. We support both new hires re‑entering the workforce and employees returning internally after a long absence.

Our Mission

We’re on a mission to make career breaks a valued and powerful part of a lifetime career. We aim to remove the ‘Career Break Penalty’ by dismantling the personal and structural barriers faced by professionals returning to work after extended breaks — whether re‑entering the workforce or returning internally after long absence.

Our Expertise

We are leading return‑to‑work specialists, enabling experienced professionals across sectors to return to fulfilling careers after extended breaks. We work with individuals, organisations and public bodies.

Our specialist management and coaching teams have supported returners for many years, both before and after their return to work. Alongside our well‑established expertise in external returner programmes, we also help organisations reintegrate existing employees after long absences.

Our work is grounded in a unique combination of deep insight into the return‑to‑work journey, psychology‑based coaching expertise and a practical commercial understanding of what drives successful reintegration.

Our Activities

We combine commercial and not-for-profit activities:

• We have partnered with over 200 leading employers across sectors to create supported routes back to mid to senior level roles. 
• We run the 10,000-strong Career Returners Professional Community, providing advice, inspiration, information and support to returning professionals.
• We deliver specialist coaching, training and consultancy globally to help organisations design, promote and deliver best-practice returner programmes that support inclusive hiring and talent retention.
• We support organisations to reintegrate existing employees returning from extended breaks for health, caring or other reasons — including guidance for line managers — ensuring confident, sustainable returns.
• We have designed and delivered large-scale national return to work programmes, funded by the UK and Scottish Government.
• We advocate for returners at Government, industry and media level, highlighting the psychological and practical barriers to returning to fulfilling work and promoting the solutions that enable long‑term success.