An Education Needs Assessment of CARIFORUM Firms

• Socio-emotional/soft skills training is needed in areas like oral and written communication skills, creativity, and a desire/willingness to learn.

Tourism Sector •

Suriname Lack of relevant experience and work ethic are limiting productivity • In demand skills include customer service skills, critical thinking skills, soft/behavioural skills. Source: Belize Chamber of Commerce and International Labour Organization 2018; Elliot 2019; USAID 2017; Pierre 2018

•

Creative Sector

A 2012 study on creative industries in the Caribbean found limited organisational and

business skills among many operators in this sector, calling for increased training in project

management, marketing, business planning and intellectual property management, along

with use of ICT and digital technologies to create added value for creative products and

services (Hendrickson et al. 2012). More recently, Jamaica’s 2017 Labour Market Sector

Study reconfirmed the lack of business and management skills in the creative sector, citing

a need for communication and self and project management skills as well as specific

technology skills in areas like animation studies and technical theatre production (USAID

2017). In Dominican Republic’s 2020 Labour Market Assessment , the music and film

subsector highlighted skills gaps in broadcasting and audio-visual recording technicians

and photographers (USAID 2020). Drawing from Annex 3, priority areas for the creative

sector outlined across national development scholarship programmes include band

management, sound, lighting and camera engineering, dance choreography, production

management (including film and television production), and interior design.

•

Non-Tourism Services

Dominican Republic’s 2020 Labour Market Assessment out lined skills needs for some

non-tourism services, notably health and transport and logistics. Regarding health, there is

increasing demand for nurses specialized in primary, family, and community care and for

mid-level diagnostic laboratory professionals following the impact of COVID-19 on this

labour force subset (USAID 2020). Training programmes for occupational health and

safety careers were also found lacking (USAID 2020). For transport and logistics, skilled

labour is needed in port and warehousing operations, ship/terminal dispatchers, ship/yard

planners, maintenance technicians and supervisors, superintendents/senior supervisors, and

operations supervisors (USAID 2020). Despite the availability of logistics programmes at

25