Company name : Return2Career
Activity sector : Other service activities
Company category : SME
Description of the action
We support organisations to design and implement Career Re-entry Programmes for supporting returners and hiring out of the talent pool of returners, but we also support women to find their voice, find their confidence and define their career advancement approach to shine. Being a very small company, with a small budget, and also being a professor of management and working hard on empowering women with education and coaching andmentoring, we found ways to spread the message and support the women in finding their voice.
Context
For long absence employees (parental leave, sickness etc) coming back to the workplace can be daunting for both the employee and the teams they come back to. These programmes help to re-onboard the employees, supporting the process in a transparent way viamentoring, education and coaching. For the open positions, difficult to fill via the traditional application processes, the same programme can be used to hire Returners, professionals who have been away from the workplace for a certain time and wanting to relaunch their career. Hiring processes often include a certain bias towards career gaps and our approach makes sure the processes are bias free or can be adapted to include the finding, hiring and onboarding these profiles out of a fairly untapped talent pool.
Objectives
Creating a level playing field for all talents out there who want to contribute to the workplace. “Broadcasting” the message every way possible, by speaking loud and clear, using social media, speaking at events, giving courses on confidence building, doing a Ted talk, being a coach and mentor for free and supporting those who are front-runners publicly.
Approach
We support organisations in the design and implementation of career re-entry programmes, we can support as an outsourcing partner for the onboarding process and the coachingmentoring and training. We also have a database of registered returner profiles where we can support organisation matching with open positions.
That’s all what as an organisation we do for companies, but it’s also the women (or men) that need to step up and out to take charge and find their destiny of course and that’s what I do on the side.
Where I do much more, is by also supporting the returner community. I also coach and mentor the returners to become more and better visible to hiring employers. I raise awareness of the diversity challenges for both companies and talent and the way I do this is by speaking at public events for instance.
In my spare time, I am very vocal on LinkedIn in my personal posts on diversity, on what women can do to step up and out. I created a series on how to write CV’s, how to do interviews, how to network, how to build confidence.
Next, I have set up a whole series on confidence building and boosting and even made this into a training with 4 workshops. These were run in 2025.
I have done a Ted Talk in 2024 on Returners and re-entry programmes in which I use examples of women in Luxembourg who stepped up and I am advocating for every success story out there.
I am regularly asked to come talk about what women can do to find their way in Luxembourg, finding a job etc for the different women clubs.
I was a speaker during the International Women Day in 2024 for the British Chamber of Commerce event on how to deal with challenges,
I was the main speaker for Julius Baer Luxembourg female employees on female empowerment on May 8th, 2024 (and was it again in 2025 by the way),
I organised together with Vodafone a masterclass in Networking where women who were looking for relaunching their career got the opportunity to network with working professionals.
And I made sure I had several interviews with Luxembourg Times and the Chronicle to talk about diversity, giving tips and advice to women how to get back to the workplace and how to create the best networks and make themselves visible.
Impact
As the majority of the long term absence and returner profiles are women (around 75-80%) thegender gap and diversity element are full in play. Through the use of my voice, I can help these women to be more aware of their choices, how it works in Luxembourg and how to develop their career options.
« To do »
Understand what women need to understand, learn and the support in general that will help them to find their voice and then find the channels where they are looking for this information and support. Make yourself accessible and easy to find and use your own network and voice to support the diversity message and the empowerment / enablement message.
« Not to do »
Be very aware that in Luxembourg a lot is done via networking. If you want to have your voice heard, being loud is not the best way, but knowing who can carry the message is important. Diversity and women empowerment are “slow” topics. There’s still much we need to support on, and it sits most often deeply engrained in the culture and lack of confidence. Don’t expect direct results of your speaking up, repetition is the key. One offs don’t work.
