Vodafone announced ReConnect program to hire 1,000 talented women, who have left the workplace for several years, in the next 3 years.

The Vodafone initiative is designed to increase opportunities for women in the workplace and enhance life prospects for women in emerging markets.

The ReConnect program will operate across 26 countries including India.

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Under the ReConnect program, Vodafone will hire up to 500 women for management roles over the next three years, accounting for around 10 percent of all Vodafone external management hires over that period. In addition, Vodafone will recruit up to 500 women for frontline roles.

Economic research commissioned by Vodafone from KPMG indicates that there are 96 million skilled women aged 30-54 on career breaks including 55 million with experience at middle-manager level and above.

The KPMG research also indicates the potential economic benefits associated with bringing back into the workplace all women on a career break with experience at middle manager-level and above could be £151 billion per year and the cumulative financial boost for those women’s households, in terms of earnings, could be approximately £419 billion a year.

“Companies struggle to recruit and retain women in management and leadership roles. Innovations such as our maternity policy and now our new ReConnect program can make a difference to women who work for us today and who will work for us in the future,” said Vodafone Group Chief Executive Vittorio Colao.

Vodafone Group aims to bring mobile to an additional 50 million women by 2025. Vodafone Turkey Women First program connects more than 640,000 women entrepreneurs and small business owners with markets and customers.

Vodafone’s M-Pesa mobile money service – launched 10 years ago – is already used by more than 11 million women.