Career breaks

Career break guide

A career break is a period away from what someone considers to be their main career. Its duration can range from a few months to several years, and examples include maternity leave and time taken off to look after children or elders. Other common reasons for taking a career break include travel or relocating with a partner.

It may also comprise periods of paid work, which the person on the break does not consider to be part of their main career. This report considers career breaks and the subsequent return to work for people from physics-based careers. It follows on from the survey on career-break management carried out by the Institute of Physics (the Institute) in collaboration with the Daphne Jackson Trust during 2003/2004.

A key issue to emerge from that study was that few people thought in advance about how they would manage their career break. The aim of this report is to help physicists to prepare and plan their career break. In particular, it outlines strategies and actions designed to make returning to a science, engineering and technology (SET) career a positive choice.

Download Best Practice in Career-Break Management

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