WHILE geopolitics, inflation, the economy and monetary policy are matters the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) are concerned about, President Keith Duncan has asserted that greater importance should be placed on the social fabric of the nation.

The PSOJ president added that while crime and violence and states of public emergency continue to grab headlines, keeping Jamaica at crisis levels, the organisation is shifting its focus to human capital development as a remedy.

“I would say that we have chosen human capital development as the strategic focus for the PSOJ for the current year, and a key area is social and community transformation and education. We believe if we have a real focus and synergistic efforts on human capital development, we will not see the levels of crime and violence and the levels of dysfunctionality in the society and this is where we need to focus,” Duncan told reporters at the Jamaica Observer Business Forum last week.

At present, Duncan is finalising plans to roll-out a PSOJ-led project geared towards social and community transformation which, he said, will involve the participation of the Government and community stakeholders. At the same time, the business advocacy group is also seeking to address the monumental issue of skills gap in the workforce.

According to PSOJ Vice-President Mariamme McIntosh Robinson, while human capital development spans the spectrum from early childhood education to tertiary education, there needs to be a stronger focus on the gap between formal education and applying that knowledge in the workplace. She pointed out further that to address the challenge of a skills gap some companies have resorted to importing labour, but that doing so has not always resulted in knowledge transfer.

“When we import talent because of a gap we need to be very methodical about how we transfer that knowledge so that it’s not left to each entity to determine how,” she said.

Instead, she called for a more collective approach to knowledge and skills transfer that includes the private sector working with the Government to create a template for knowledge transfer in cases of labour importation.

Another issue the PSOJ vice-president identified was the abundance of talent in the Jamaican workforce but the lack of certification to validate employees’ work. This, McIntosh Robinson reasoned, could lead to stagnation and underpaid staff.

“So when we got a group of business leaders together in a meeting, we came up with solutions and one thing is to expand [the curriculum for] the uncertified skills that we need in Jamaica and are using but they (employees) are not getting their full potential in both pay and jobs because they’re not certified,” she explained to Business Observer.

However, chief among the PSOJ’s issues with human capital development is the dearth of leadership skills and the reluctance of companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to invest in leadership and management training.

A PSOJ-commissioned survey among its members across several industries found that “the biggest skills gap” was in leadership and project management.

McIntosh Robinson pointed out that while companies, in most cases, promoted employees from within with good technical skills, they may not have the soft skills needed to be a manager such as interpersonal skills, people management, and problem solving.

“We’re not prioritising the focus on the soft skills in how lead our teams and how we work through others is critical to the outcome of projects,” she said.

In this regard, she suggested that an employee can benefit from augmenting leadership training with experience on the job.

When asked why there is reluctance among companies invest in management and leadership training, McIntosh Robinson shared that this further from the truth as large companies have invested in middle management, senior management and executive development programmes.

However, “the challenge is in smaller companies as most of our talent and workforce are hired by SMEs” that don’t have the time or resources to develop a programme to train a small team.

“So I think that is what we need to figure out. How to ensure that leadership development and project management get the proper investment how to pool our resources so that SMEs can make that trade-off,” McIntosh Robinson continued.

“But it pays dividends because the outcome of an organisation is based on leadership at all levels of that organisation,” she added.

The PSOJ vice-president and GraceKennedy Group executive shared that one of the lessons she has learned from the novel coronavirus pandemic is the importance of leadership at the governmental and corporate level to ensure continuity and survival.