If you thought that workforce discrimination was a thing of the past, women’s workforce participation rates remain lower than men’s — currently 62.1 per cent versus 70.9 per cent — and women are also three times more likely to work part-time.
Usually, women are more likely to be stay-at-home parents, more likely to be carers, and more likely to leave the workforce for extended periods due to increased responsibility for unpaid domestic labour. When they’re ready to head back to work, some women struggle to find jobs that meet their level of skill and experience, while others struggle to find jobs at all due to their time away from the workforce. What’s more, women often worry that their skills are no longer relevant — and many employers do, too.
This attitude comes at a huge cost to women, businesses and Australia’s economic bottom line, but it doesn’t have to. At UTS, a pioneering program is helping women and carers reskill in digital marketing to help them get back into the workforce after an extended time away.
UTS Women's Career Confidence: Re-employment Pathways Program is a partnership between the UTS Futures Academy and the National Careers Institute. It connects participants with award-winning digital marketing agencies, industry experts and career and development coaching to help them re-build their skills and prepare for managerial roles in the digital marketing space.
The program’s focus on digital marketing is no accident: the industry is facing a whopping vacancy rate of 12 per cent but offers few opportunities for women to advance to management or technical roles.
“The digital marketing industry is facing a severe talent shortage [and significant] gender disparity, with almost 75 per cent of management and 90 per cent of technical digital marketing roles held by males,” says course presenter Dr Ofer Mintz, a marketing expert from the UTS Business School.
“Consequently, [we saw an] opportunity [to] create a unique project collaboration between higher education, industry associations and individual firms to address the talent and gender disparity gaps in an important and growing Australian industry.
“We believe it will lead to a win for the overall Australian economy, a win for the participants re-entering the workforce we are assisting, and a win for the many firms in the digital marketing industry.”
The seven-month program is just one way that UTS is making a direct contribution to addressing the national skills gap. The university has long emphasised the importance of re-skilling through targeted education and industry opportunities, an approach that has only become more critical in the face of one of the worst skills shortages Australia has ever seen.
With a national unemployment rate of 3.5 per cent and a ‘migrant deficit’ of nearly 200,000 people, the road back to an overflowing talent pool looks long and uncertain. The upshot? Building targeted talent pipelines in underutilised segments of the labour market is a clever way forward, particularly when the re-skilling process can be completed in a mere matter of months.
With the first Re-employment Pathways for Women course set to launch this month, now is the time for businesses in other sectors to think about how to address their own skills shortages.
Like to know more? Get in touch with PLUS UTS, the enterprise learning arm of UTS, and find out how we can help build tailored training programs to meet your workforce needs.
