Audrey Hinchliffe, CEO of Manpower and Maintenance Group Limited which also trains workers for industry, says interest groups, including the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), who are currently advocating importing foreign labour to fill employment needs, should also consider training.

Hinchcliffe wants to help through the Institute for Workforce Education and Development (IWED), a member of the Manpower & Maintenance Services Limited group, is an accredited training organisation (ATO) by the National Council on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (NCTVET) – HEART Trust/NSTA.

IWED was founded in 2005 to provide skill training and equip employees for job readiness. The programmes are certifiable through organisations such as the NCTVET (NVQ-J), City and Guilds and other certifying bodies.

IWED Director Verica Bennett told the Jamaica Observer that 500 have been trained for the business process outsourcing (BPO) and service sector to date.

Hinchcliffe is meanwhile making her own input to the debate on how to deal with an apparent labour shortage in Jamaica.

Keith Duncan, president of the PSOJ, said at the start of May that the group “accepts and endorses the recommendation…to initially leverage foreign talent for higher value services which can seed the local skill pool, which can create a base for training local talent by knowledge transfer.”

Duncan, in giving his endorsement, referenced a World Bank recommendation on the issue that has been at the top of discussion points since Prime Minister Andrew Holness floated the idea of bringing in foreign labour to fill the skills gap in the labour force.

Duncan stated, “With unemployment at 6.2 per cent, the lowest rate in Jamaica’s history, we in the private sector are now experiencing tremendous difficulty in filling jobs in tourism, construction, technology, management, and other areas,” noting that a deficit in labour and skill sets will create a ceiling on investments and growth.

Construction industry training

Verica Bennette, the director of the IWED, notes that IWED offers soft skills training for workers of the construction industry which includes areas such as safety and protection, work attitudes, communication on the construction site, commercial awareness of the industry, among others.

IWED also currently does training for the global services sector( GSS) which is a priority area of Government, given the pace of development of the industry as an employer of labour, and the need to have higher levels of skilled workers as middle managers/team leaders and supervisors.

Additionally, IWED also trains for entry level positions such as in the fundamentals of customer engagement for call centres.

Bennett noted that the tourism/hospitality sector is another growth area for training and so IWED does training of housekeepers, laundry attendants and supervisors .

Notably, she said, included as important skills for the tourism/hospitality sector are the areas of facilities maintenance and turf/landscape and grounds maintenance.