“I was getting very frustrated that the first round of redundancies were midlife women. They were always, it seemed to me, the first to go,” says Jacquie Duckworth, co-founder and head of Visible Start at Visible Inc.
Her company was formed in response to the issue that if midlife women, a term that applies to women aged 45+, find themselves out of work it can be difficult to get back into a career role irrespective of expertise or experience.
The noticeable deficit of women in this age group in senior business roles is counter intuitive as this group wields substantial economic power. Research from Accenture found that midlife women are behind 90 percent of all household spending decisions, so people with a first hand knowledge of what drives these decisions can be a business asset.
Midlife invisibility
Duckworth spent most of her career in magazines, national press, outdoor events and digital until she was made redundant at the age of 45.
“I realised that I wasn’t going to get a permanent job, so I freelanced for 10 years on the commercial side, being very unprecious in terms of any roles that I can do. I developed a reputation for crisis management, maternity covers, and any kind of assessment in terms of where products and brands needed to go within media owned organisations.
During this time she met fellow co-founder Jane Evans, who despite having a prestigious career, including being regional creative director for JWT and winning multiple awards, found that she couldn’t get work in a creative position.
As a midlife woman, Evans said she had become “completely invisible” to the advertising industry. Her reaction was: “If I can become invisible, what hope do other women have?”
Unleash the power
As a result, Visible Inc launched with the goal to “unleash the power of midlife women” and change the narrative for all women.
The Visible Start return to work programme is a key element of this. It focuses on supporting midlife women and has already enjoyed success with sponsor WPP, a major advertising agency.
Launched in 2021, the eight week returners’ programme is free for women in this age group and is available online to ensure flexible, convenient access. For employers it represents a recruitment campaign that helps them engage with a largely untapped pool of talent, while also supporting their corporate diversity and inclusion goals.
Training covers transferable skills, how to thrive in a workplace that may be radically different from the last one they experienced, upgrading and updating professional skills and, perhaps most importantly, support to get a job at the end of it.
Mark Reid, CEO of WPP, endorsed the programme and as part of this the employer has an agreement that it will ensure there are 20 roles for these women to apply for when they finish the training. As a result of that, more than 32 women have been successfully employed at WPP.
The relationship each woman has with the programme doesn’t end once they have completed it, Duckworth says.
“We’ve created a community platform called Visible Society and it has 1,250 midlife women who use it. It’s a safe space to reach out and connect with each other.”
She adds: “It’s wonderful to see how these women who felt isolated, washed up, and who had no self confidence, have turned things around during the programme and now believe in themselves again.
“The course has given them a voice and belief and hope. It’s been a huge success, so we are expanding it to work with more employers.”
- You can hear more from Jacquie Duckworth on the topic of recruiting from untapped talent pools, diversity and equality and what the future of flexible work could look like as she is speaking at the Benefits Expert Summit 26-27 November.
- To attend the event, visit the Benefits Expert Summit website to register.
