Outsourcing firm ibex Jamaica on the hunt for workers

Outsourcing firm ibex Jamaica is to host a job fair on Saturday and Sunday to identify 2000 candidates to fill vacancies for its new facility at GTECH Park in Greater Portmore, St Catherine.

The state-of-the-art Campus Delivery Centre in the Sunshine City is the company's fifth location since it started operations in Jamaica in 2016.

Since its inception, ibex Jamaica has increased its staff complement from 200 workers to more than 6000 employees at its Kingston, Portmore, and Ocho Rios locations, but new country head Tamara Ricketts-Brown said her firm will be looking at any opportunity to expand.

“We currently have 2,000 positions that need to be filled, so we will be staging a job fair at our location at GTECH Park in Portmore on Saturday and Sunday to fill these roles as we continue to expand,” said Ricketts-Brown.

According to a release on its website two years ago, ibex has invested more than US$50M in Jamaica and has enhanced the overall health and quality of life for its employees by investing over US$40M in annual salaries. Ricketts- Brown declined to discuss the current spend.

“We would not speak to a specific dollar value in upskilling the staff, but what I will say is that we have a specific learning and development team, that works on programmes and processes geared towards the entire staff complement in ibex Jamaica.”

“We have invested significantly in terms of salaries, and we have already implemented increases across the organisation that impact over 70 per cent of our staff. So we are making the investments that will make us make us more competitive and create good experiences for our staff because we want them to be proud of where they are working.”

She said there is tremendous opportunity for growth within the company.

Regarding concerns from other industry players about a shrinking pool of quality workers from which to pull, the country rep said there was no issue at present.

“From a recruitment perspective, we know that the demographic that is targetted is primarily from 18 to 27 years old, and so far, we have not seen any material issues,” she told The Gleaner. “We know that a lot of our school-leavers are pretty young, so we have been investing in the training and development of our staff.”

The company hires over 30, 000 employees globally and represents major players in the retail, technical services support, sales, and insurance sectors, but only 11 per cent of its employees have been allowed to work from home.

“About 11 per cent of our staff work from home, but primarily we are an onsite organisation for the most part.”

But even as it sets its sights on further growth ibex Jamaica is also hoping that the supporting industries and government institutions will stay abreast with the growth and development in the sector, so that they can offer the requisite support, when called on.