Global Services Sector Project Progressing Well

Work is advancing on the five-year US$15 million Global Services Sector (GSS) Project, being implemented by the Jamaica Promotions Corporation (JAMPRO).

Funded by a loan that was signed in 2019 between the Government and the  Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the project focuses on upskilling Jamaica’s workforce, particularly young people, to prepare them for jobs in the global services sector.

A major objective of the project is to improve the skills development system to provide the GSS with highly skilled workers in higher, value-added jobs, thereby strengthening Jamaica’s capacity to attract investments and increase exports.

The project is supported by major stakeholders, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, the HEART/NSTA Trust and the Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ).

President of JAMPRO, Diane Edwards, explains that the Global Services Sector refers to services that are outsourced to third parties, which can be delivered from various locations in the world.

“Jamaica has been extremely successful in attracting over 60 companies to this industry in Jamaica. People speak of it as Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), but BPO is actually a misnomer, because a lot of people think that it’s an industry based on telephones and it is really an industry based on computer,” Ms. Edwards tells JIS News.

“So, we need to upskill our young people to prepare them for the digital skill sets that are required by this industry and hence we embarked on this programme to help to upskill people,” she adds.

The project has two components,  one which focuses on providing a number of modules that will help young people to become digitally literate and digitally semi-skilled; and the focuses on developing strategies that are going to help the Jamaican economy to get into the digital age.

Ms. Edwards points out that the project has an executing unit, which drives the implementation of the project.

She points out that a major component that JAMPRO is driving that is linked to the growth of the industry, is the setting up of a Global Services Skills Council that brings together public sector representatives, including the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information.

“[It] also brings together private sector representatives, such as the Global Services Association of Jamaica and really try to help vocational training to become more responsive to the demands of the employers and marketplace. This is really critical because a lot of the training we have done, let us say, is not fit for the demands of the marketplace,” she notes.

The President says  that as a result, employers have not always been happy with the graduates “we have been graduating from those programmes.”

“So, what we are doing is tailor making and ensuring, through the Global Services Skills Council, that the training institutions, such as HEART/ NSTA Trust, Vocational Training Development Institute (VTDI) and others understand what the private sector is demanding and therefore can tailor make their programmes to the needs of the marketplace,” Ms. Edwards explains.

So far, the GSS Project has developed a digital skills curriculum, which will serve to support the industry’s needs.

“This is really trying to give young people an understanding of digital skills. And that is not just keyboarding skills or programming skills that include a number of soft skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving…it’s a number of skills within that curriculum which we are now speaking to the Ministry of Education about, trying to get that into the secondary school curriculum,” the JAMPRO President says.

There are several other initiatives being implemented under the programme, such as an industry skills upgrade strategy.

“[This] is really looking at a number of knowledge areas that we need to upgrade the skills of our people in, to really prepare them for the next generation of jobs that are going to require skills, such as communication, digital marketing, software development, critical and analytical thinking and human centred and interaction design,” Ms. Edwards explains.

“So, these are not things people are learning at school, but they need these skills to be able to be job ready for the jobs of the future,” she adds.

There is also an apprenticeship programme which is currently training some 600 persons in supervisory management.

“One of the great things about the outsourcing industry is that you can move very quickly up into the supervisory rank if you have the right skillset, and the right attitude. So, we are really training the middle management for middle management capabilities,” Ms. Edwards notes.

There is also a career pathway framework which is going to enable young people to take ownership of their career path in the whole global services area.

“We are going to build a website which is going to allow young persons to conduct self-assessment to see which pathway they may be well suited for and then they can access career advisory services for further guidance,” the President says.

A pilot internship programme is also being undertaken, which is focused on contracting interns for a period of three to six months in areas, such as data analytics, network administration, finance and accounting, and project management.

“These are more focused on university graduates and tertiary level graduates to allow them to take on an internship for a short period, so that they can understand better what the requirements of the job are and then the employers can also assess them and hopefully they will get a job at the end of it,” Ms. Edwards notes.

“Then we have a train the trainer programme, which is conducted by VTDI. They just completed training of 500 trainers who are going to support HEART/NSTA to deliver training on the job readiness curriculum and the digital skills curriculum that we have already completed,” she adds.

She further notes that this year, those 500 trainers should be training 6,000 new entrants into the industry.

Jobseekers were also connected to job opportunities in variety of areas in the global services sector, through a virtual career fair held in June.

“We had 3,400 registered online for the virtual career fair and this was really to give the opportunity to about 15 companies that we had online, literally offering 4,000 jobs. We had 2,400 applications from people who wanted to work in the industry,” Ms. Edwards says,  adding that a second career fair will be held in October this year.

A digital global services strategy has also been completed and is now going through the process to be tabled in Cabinet.

“This really looks at how do you take Jamaica into the digital global services world, how do we expand this opportunity that we have and really embed it into Jamaica’s economy going forward,” Ms. Edwards explains.

“Then we have a national awareness campaign which has been outsourced to a marketing company and that is really building the national awareness of this industry, because a lot of people don’t understand the industry. So, we are trying to break it down and explain it to people, what it is, what it entails, telling parents and teachers, yes recommend to your charges, your children and your students that this is an opportunity that is here to stay,” she adds.

She further argues that “we need to ride the digital wave, because Jamaica has the talent pool that is capable of servicing this industry, we just need to upskill our people.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Edwards said going forward, the programme will work with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, on getting the digital skills curriculum into the secondary school curriculum.

“We are going to work on the industry skills upgrade strategy because this is really how you get more people with the right skillset to attract small companies to Jamaica. The apprenticeship programme will be ongoing, so we will continue to work with companies to upskill their current workforce with short term certification courses,” she informs.

“We also are working on creating a technology innovation district which will be a state-of-the-art environment to foster innovation and scaling up of export of services for smaller companies in the global services sector. We are going to do a global awareness campaign to really strengthen the value proposition of Jamaica and find new clients for Jamaica,” the President tells JIS News.

Also in October 2022, the programme will be hosting a huge conference called Outsource to Latin America and the Caribbean, which has the possibility of attracting up to 2,000 people.

In July 2022, the Project will launch a GSS talent hub.

“So, that’s really looking again at how people position themselves to take advantage of the opportunities in the Global Services Sector. We have a lot more roads to travel in this project. It is a very exciting project and it’s a ground-breaking project because Jamaica has never had a project of this nature and in fact, the Caribbean has never had a programme of this nature,” Ms. Edwards says.

She points out that there are a couple of countries in Latin America that have had programmes like this funded by the IDB, such as Uruguay and Mexico.

“But, we are in the very small number of countries that have actually implemented this. So, we are trail blazers in this whole global services sector,” the President tells JIS News.