Redington signals continued commitment to diversity with launch of return to work programme

Redington, the leading pensions consultancy, has renewed its commitment to improving diversity within the financial services sector with the launch of its return to work programme, ‘Redington Returners’, following a successful pilot. The scheme offers placements to women returning to work after periods of time away from the workplace.
Redington has teamed up with The Return Hub to implement the programme. Set up by former City headhunter Dominie Moss, The Return Hub works with firms to ease the transition of returning to work for women. This comes as the Chancellor announced plans in today’s Budget to make £5 million available to support women returning to work after career breaks.
Under the pilot, Redington took on five women for 10 weeks each, matching them up with ‘buddies’ within the firm and running tailored workshops throughout the programme.. The overarching aim of the scheme was to foster the sharing of ideas and knowledge from both sides: as well as learning and rebuilding their confidence in a supportive environment, the returning women were encouraged to draw on their professional and personal experience. This saw them make important contributions to running projects, picking up firm-wide issues, building processes and coaching others.
The success of the initiative means Redington will now be extending the scheme, both by finding permanent roles within the firm for the women and through welcoming future returners through its doors.
Commenting on the programme, Mitesh Sheth, CEO, Redington, said:
“At Redington, we are passionate about maintaining a cognitively diverse workforce, which we see as an essential health check for us as the firm continues to grow. Not only do returners offer gender diversity, they also offer a wealth of experience, bringing a rounded and mature perspective to what is still a young business.
“The returners have all hit the ground running and within the first couple of weeks we found them all to be adding value. I knew we would see benefit, but we have all been surprised by how much their contributions have positively impacted the company already. This has shaped our thinking a lot on issues of diversity and how we can take such programmes further and build a good pipeline of unconventional talent.”