Investment and Commerce Minister, Senator Aubyn Hill, is encouraging businesses to implement apprenticeship programmes to facilitate unattached youth.

His call follows the Government’s desire to address labour shortages across several sectors.

“We [as a ministry] support businesses. We support you in middle management but you in business must train a lot more and must upskill our people,” Hill said.

The minister was addressing stakeholders at the 13th staging of the Make Your Mark two-day conference, at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston on Wednesday (April 26).

Senator Hill said the ministry is working with the HEART/NSTA Trust to provide training and certification opportunities, “to help expand the workforce through apprenticeships”.

He also noted that the Government continues to allocate resources to the education sector to improve the programmes currently available.

The most recent include waiving administration and tuition fees from courses up to level four (associate degree) at the HEART/NSTA Trust.

The conference, which ends today (April 27), is being hosted by Make Your Mark Group (MYM), under the theme ‘Leading from the Middle with Courage, Authenticity and Vision’.

Against this backdrop, Senator Hill encouraged the managers to be intentional about addressing the problems in their organisations, maintain authenticity and be reflective against criticisms.

Meanwhile, group managing director Dr Jacqueline Coke Lloyd said the conference is designed to “prepare managers for the future, given cultural, global, economic and social shocks being experienced”.

“The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) also calls for new thinking, reorganisation of our businesses, continuous evaluations and retirement of obsolete systems and processes,” she said.

Coke Lloyd noted that opportunities exist to expand Jamaica’s economy through “intense targeted training, revision of school and tertiary curricula, and imputation of special skillsets”.

Meanwhile, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), Metry Seaga, said the labour sector continues to evolve with rising demands for managerial and supervisory roles, according to findings obtained by the entity.

“A key finding was that 42 per cent of the respondents selected management leadership or project as the primary skill required by their company. This finding was further supported by data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security last year, where of the top occupational jobs advertised, 185 of them were managerial and supervisory,” Seaga said.