Women Back to Work

Redesigning Return-to-Work Pathways for a Forgotten Workforce

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, women around the world left the workforce in unprecedented numbers—and many didn’t return. At the Innovation Foundation, this stark data point sparked a deeper inquiry: Who exactly was not coming back, and why?

What emerged was a troubling gap in the system. While many corporate “returnship” programmes were available for highly educated, white-collar professionals, there were few—if any—solutions designed for the vast number of mid- and low-skilled women struggling to re-enter the workforce on their own terms.

The Innovation Foundation’s Women Back to Work project was born from this insight, with a bold aim: to fundamentally reshape how shift-based work could fit the needs of these women. Specifically, the project focused on women aged 35–45, with caregiving responsibilities, some professional experience, but often without a university degree—many of whom had been stuck in rigid, undervalued roles before the pandemic and were now seeking something more sustainable, flexible, and fulfilling.

From Data to Design: Understanding the Barriers

Like all Innovation Foundation projects, Women Back to Work began with a robust Scan phase. This involved deep data analysis, global consultation calls, and dozens of empathy interviews with women across the globe. The team then identified Spain as a testbed due to its significant population of the target demographic and the strong footprint of the local Fundación Adecco, the Innovation Foundation’s sister foundation. The region also offered potential scalability into similar labour markets like Portugal, Italy, and Latin America.

Insights from the field revealed three recurring barriers:

Lack of visibility: “I never get the chance to demonstrate my skills.” Many struggled to even reach a real person in the recruitment process.
Lack of flexibility: “I don’t necessarily want to just return to the type of work I had before.” Women weren’t just returning to work—they wanted different work. The rigid schedules of their pre-pandemic jobs no longer fit their complex lives.
Lack of feedback: “I apply, and then I hear nothing.” The absence of communication left many demoralised and stuck.

These insights helped the Innovation Foundation map a full user journey—from the moment a woman decides to re-enter the workforce to the challenges she faces when applying, getting rejected, or attempting to pivot careers without support.

Designing with Empathy

Armed with this understanding, the Foundation moved into the Build phase, assembling a diverse Working Group of 15 stakeholders including employers (such as Marriott, Hilton, Dow, and Microsoft), grassroots organisations (like Women’s Work Lab), and hiring experts from healthcare and similar fields. It also included the Innovation Foundation’s future Venture Leads and Fellows, ensuring alignment between ideation and implementation from the start.

Through a set of three design workshops, the Working Group co-developed a range of possible interventions—narrowing down to two high-potential solutions:

A community-based support model to create peer-led accountability groups for women re-entering work. Local cohorts provide emotional support and structure, using a light curriculum and a “train the trainer” cascade model to empower facilitators from within the community.
A tech-driven solution designed to support both jobseekers and employers. Women can use the platform to make their personal work needs visible—whether that means no weekends, a later start time, or part-time contracts. On the employer side, a data-driven dashboard shows how adjusting job specs can widen the talent pool and attract overlooked candidates.

Building and Testing: Sprint by Sprint

Two venture teams were launched—each with a Venture Lead and Fellows seconded from the Adecco Group—to bring these solutions to life.

One Venture Team was tasked with developing the community-based support solution. They focused on co-creating a 12-session curriculum and trained a first generation of coordinadoras, or facilitators. The solution, called Yosotras, was built with and for the community, leveraging local partnerships in Spain for testing. While promising, Yosotras was not taken forward into the second sprint, due to questions about long-term sustainability and scalability. To preserve the value, Yosotras was handed over to the community of facilitators so that they can keep the community going at the local level, autonomously.

The other Venture Team built a platform to make visible the barriers to women returning to work. They then partnered with Tatio, a cutting-edge tech startup that offers interactive job simulations. The version of the tool specific to the Women Back to Work project, is called Para Ti (For You). It is tailored to the mid-low skill profile and uses real-world examples from the hotel industry to assess hard and soft skills in real-time, giving women a tangible, CV-free report to demonstrate their abilities. Based on the assessment, women were introduced to three pilot hotel companies, Hyatt, Marriott, and Hilton, helping real women find meaningful jobs. The goal: change employer behaviour and make shift-based work truly human-centric.

At the end of the Sprints, the Foundation pitched a full product roadmap that combines the platform with a new employer-facing dashboard capable of modelling how small changes—like shifting start times or offering 60% contracts—could dramatically boost hiring pools. The Innovation Foundation Board approved, and the project moved into the Scale phase.

Scaling with Purpose: Where We Are Now

Women Back to Work is now in its first year of Scaling. The Innovation Foundation has merged its Venture Team with Tatio to create a unified product development path. A second pilot is underway in Barcelona, with a third planned for another location—chosen to test how the solution performs in a more flexible labour market and a different cultural context.

The end goal is to spin off the full solution by the end of 2025—either as a joint venture, subsidiary, or a standalone product. By then, it will be a market-ready tool with a validated social impact model and a strong commercial case.

Inspiring Tangible Change

Women Back to Work is more than just a tech product or a pilot—it’s a reimagining of what flexible work can truly mean. It’s about giving women the agency, visibility, and support they need to return to the workforce on their own terms. It’s also about challenging employers to do better—not only for social good, but for their own staffing challenges.

As the Innovation Foundation continues to scale this initiative, the message is clear: when we redesign systems with the end user at the centre, everyone wins.