This project is being accomplished by bfz Bildungsforschung.Companies today often assume that females employees who return to work after taking a break to have children will only be of limited use in the workplace. As a result of technological change, including in the office and service sectors where women are most heavily concentrated, working skills are soon outdated. Many skills are missing which have come to be essential. Therefore, women returning to work involves significant effort and costs: long working-in times for both old and new workplaces, and training measures concerning both specialist and process-related skills of the women are required. Many companies seek to avoid the associated organisational effort and costs and dismiss these workers on grounds of apparent non-cost-effectiveness, even when they do not wish to have to do without proven staff members.
The adapta project, carried out by Frauen:ComputerSchule [Women’s computer school] in cooperation with Forschungsinstitut Betriebliche Bildung, wants to provide assistance in this field. It is aimed at companies who want to make it easier for their female employees to return to work.
The strategy assumes that women are able to prepare in a targeted way for returning to work by means of appropriate training, even when not in employment. In order to make it easier for them to undergo continuing education in a family situation which is new to them, self-learning materials and new learning media, in particular e-learning modules, are used. In this way, learning and family life can be more easily combined. Personal circumstances can be better taken into account in terms of training.
The qualification is modular and organised as a blended learning arrangement. Each module contains several units which can be combined in accordance with individual requirements. The modules are designed to combine self-learning phases (for knowledge acquisition) and attendance days, which allows women to arrange their study to suit them in a family-friendly way. The modular arrangement ensures that all participants learn precisely that which their future (and former) employer expects of them, so that they can be reintegrated upon their return to work with a minimum of effort.
