HEART building skills for investors

The Government has taken steps to ensure there is access to adequate labour for those who want to invest in Jamaica. It has started a programme of aggressive training, and leading economists argue that the country is on a path to sustainable economic growth.

Government’s renewed focus on training follows a report by the Economic Growth Council (EGC) that a largely unskilled labour force is a major inhibiting factor to the transformation agenda. The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, which is the fastest growing area at this time in terms of job creation, is now having problems finding qualified workers at the supervisory and management levels.

However, the State-owned HEART Trust/NTA (National Training Agency) is moving to do something about that and, as at January 2018, it had 77,736 persons in training, specifically targeting existing and emerging labour market trends.

What exactly are the emerging trends or the areas that are short of trained workers? Responding, the HEART Trust/NTA, which has been merged with the Jamaica Foundation for Lifelong Learning (JFLL), National Youth Service (NYS) and the Apprenticeship Board, has identified the following areas that are in greatest need of trained workers:

Supervisors and managers for the BPO sector, biomedical equipment maintenance technician, computer repair technicians, computer software engineers, animation, content creators, data analysts, engineers, housekeepers, housemen, heavy duty mechanics, biostatisticians, bioinformatics scientists, biotechnologists, body contouring specialists, radiographers, programmers, registered nurses, solar panel designers/installers, climate change analysts, virtual assistants and virtual reality developers.

“The HEART Trust/NTA is well positioned to respond to the labour market requirements,” emphasised the agency. “The Trust has a formal methodology for the alignment of projected programmes/skill areas to labour market needs. This outlines in detail, occupational areas of labour market demand, emerging areas and areas in surplus.”
It added that “intelligence supporting these findings is garnered from various primary sources, including sector studies as well as tracer studies….also from skills demand surveys and secondary sources which include, investment data from JAMPRO, the national labour force survey, work permit data from the Ministry of Labour and international scholarly articles.”

According to the HEART Trust/NTA, its merger with three other entities “has facilitated …an even broader range of opportunities for human capital development. The merger has created increased opportunities and access points to deliver current and projected labour market demand programmes.”

The agency noted that in the period 2018-2019, approximately 99 per cent of 268 skill areas/programmes planned for delivery are aligned to labour market needs. The training agency places special focus on the youth cohort ages 18-24, particularly those who are not working and are out of school. “Equipping these young people with the requisite transdisciplinary skills (including employability skills such as communication, teamwork and critical thinking) is also an important component of meeting the needs of the labour market”.

FASTEST GROWING SECTORS IN NEED FOR WORKERS
Animation, agribusiness, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), construction, energy, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), logistics, manufacturing, tourism, wholesale and retail, repair of motor vehicles and equipment.

OTHER TRENDS IN THE LABOUR MARKET
*New Media Literacy (new vernaculars in workplace communication as a result of the increased use of social media).
*Data mining/use of large amounts of data in decision-making and projections
*Movement of the labour market towards less traditional occupational areas
*Increased automation/reduced dependence on manual processes/ increased dependence on technology and automation
*Virtual collaboration/distance working/remote work sites
*Smart buildings and infrastructure
*Growth in the number of millennials
*Growth of ICT (information communication technologies)
*Aging population and its associated impacts.