In this Career Comeback Support program for Women (CCSP-W) project, the aim is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women who had work experience previously, and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing an Online and mobile platforms as well as its relevant curriculum. Gender-related differences in employment rates and conditions have been discussed over the decades by the researchers and governments. Women, as a disadvantaged group, have suffered from less stable employment due to various factors. Some of the reasons for less stability in the workplace can be listed as marriage, childbirth, gender roles in the society and cultural issues. Knowledge society transformed business world into an environment where intangible assets are considered the main value of the organizations. There was a radical change from traditional business environment to contemporary social environment where the focus is not only on consumers and organizational needs but also on environmental, social and ethical issues. Diffusion of rapidly changing technology into the business world discouraged people, especially women to return to work force. Moreover, intense penetration of the technology use and social media require developing new skills and abilities for a successful career. The complexity of such an environment demands a more integrated approach across different dimensions of contemporary business to regain women work force. The project is designated for the period of 36 months. The main purpose of this project is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing an Online awareness-training system and its curriculum. In this project, there are three objectives: 1) All types of job opportunities that would allow women to have flexibility and ease them return to work life will be allocated in a single platform. This part of study will assist with the career-planning phase of women to see available options for them in detail so that they can allocate types of jobs based on their interests and skills. 2) Those potential entrepreneur women who would like to run their own business will be assisted by networking and knowledge base tools that are going to provided. Correspondingly, this study aims to introduce funding opportunities that are available to entrepreneurs in general and also specific to women to re-enter the workforce.3) An Online platform in their own languages with a mobile platform will be provided to woman returnees to adapt them to the social business era considering possible opportunities and necessities in the new business world.For the project management tool, Prince2 (Projects in Controlled Environments) Methodology will be used. Project Leader will be responsible for managing and reporting on the project’s cost and deadlines throughout the duration of the project, for preparation of the description of each phase of project's implementation, planning of the timeline for each task, and resources needed to implement each project's task by the project team. The quality of the project’s activities and results are going to be monitored according to the guidelines of the quality evaluation and enhancement plan (QEEP) that is designed, agreed and followed by the project leader and partners. All selected partners are experienced and required knowledge for this project. The partners are from Turkey, the UK, France, Greece and Poland. This project consists of 6 phases as shown below and as a result of this project all relevant software, tools and materials will be completed and provided to women returnee.Phase 1 – Need analysis reportPhase 2 - Developed model for career comeback system Phase 3 - Curriculum DevelopmentPhase 4 - Web Portal and Mobile Application DevelopmentPhase 5 - Pilot TestingPhase 6 - Project Booklet & Final ConferenceKey results of the project will be the knowledge base for the targeted users, integrated model that is offered, Online platform, mobile application, resume builder tool, networking opportunity and Protean Career Management tool.
In this project, Career Comeback Support program for Women (CCSP-W), the aim is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women who had work experience previously, and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing Online and mobile platforms as well as a relevant curriculum. Gender-related differences in employment rates and conditions have been discussed over the decades by the researchers and governments. Women, as a disadvantaged group, have suffered from less stable employment due to various factors. Some of the reasons for less stability in the workplace can be listed as marriage, childbirth, gender roles in the society and cultural issues. Knowledge society transformed business world into an environment where intangible assets are considered the main value of the organizations. There was a radical change from traditional business environment to contemporary social environment where the focus is not only on consumers and organizational needs but also on environmental, social and ethical issues. Diffusion of rapidly changing technology into the business world discouraged people, especially women to return to work force after a long break. Moreover, intense penetration of the technology use and social media require developing new skills and abilities for a successful career. The complexity of such an environment demands a more integrated approach across different dimensions of contemporary business to regain women work force. Considering these, the main purpose of this project is to increase the awareness of contemporary business environment for unemployed women and also encouraging them to get back into the workforce by providing an Online awareness-training system and its curriculum. In this project, there are three objectives: 1) Providing them with online and mobile platforms in all 5 languages of the partners (ie. English, Turkish, French, Greek, and Polish) to adapt them to the social business era considering possible opportunities and necessities in the new business world. 2) Assisting potential entrepreneur women who would like to run their own business by networking functionality and knowledge base tools that are provided. Women can also sign up to the web sites of other countries for further matching activities those could allow them to start international business. 3) Providing especially women with a platform where they could find job opportunities, important news related to business life, funding opportunities, etc. that would facilitate their return to work life. After the kick-off meeting, project started with need analysis report. All the partners contributed to this report both with a desktop research and with a survey applied to target group. Being a clear map of the status quo, the prepared report founded a basis for all other activities of the project. Following the need analysis, the requirements defined were reflected to a model for career comeback system. This model is reported in a functional design document (FDD) that both the online and mobile platforms relied on. Almost simultaneously, curriculum development phase started. First, the most necessary topics for the curriculum were defined and agreed on a partner meeting and each partner (besides BIS) worked carefully on an assigned topic. All those curricula were initially prepared in English, proofread by the English partner, and translated into all other 4 languages of the partners. BIS, on the other hand, prepared the Web Portal first, based on FDD. Then they transferred the functionalities and content to a Mobile Application Developed. All those functionalities and content were tested for several dimensions like usability with Pilot Testing held in all partner countries simultaneously. Required fixes were applied and the products became ready for introduction to all related parties. With a final conference in Istanbul, Turkey, the portals were formally presented to the society in general, and to some women NGOs specifically. A multilingual Project Book including the curricula prepared and a users' guide for the platforms was published and distributed during the conference. In the long term, the platforms can be given to all voluntary women NGOs to provide a higher benefit to the society. Thanks to the modular structure of the platforms, some additional content can be developed and added to the system, and existing content can easily be updated. Also, the framework prepared can be used for some other projects, with modifications, to deliver additional benefits not covered in that project. After all, according to us, the project was successful in attaining originally foreseen benefits. Moreover, all the partners learned a lot from each other, gained new abilities, and shared their culture with each other ending up with understanding of and respect to differences.