Hilary Robertson-Hickling

Recent reports in the press have highlighted the problem of the unsuitability of many of our high school and university graduates for the world of work. There was a time when being a graduate almost automatically conferred a special privileged status. Today, there is much more competition between many more people for the same job. In addition, an organisation is now free to employ a competent person from wherever he or she is in the world as the competition in the world is global.

How do we know how to behave when we enter the workplace? Some people have learned from home about punctuality, high quality work, probity and other important elements of success. We have many models of family businesses, large and small, in which children have seen their parents make a living to keep the families alive. Many grand Jamaicans are the children or grandchildren of higglers who spent the week and the weekends growing or procuring food for sale in the markets which were in largely deplorable condition. In fact, Mrs. Barbara Gloudon spoke many years ago about the pain expressed by an older woman dressed in her hat at a graduation ceremony where she had been the guest speaker. The woman said that her children were ashamed of how she earned a living which was one of issues raised by the guest speaker.

Ashamed of profession

Many are ashamed of the little dressmaking, or hairdressing or domestic work which allowed many to achieve an exalted position in life. In turn, they have raised their children as princes and princesses to be snobs and to become social incompetents.] I like to hear of those people who then go to study and live abroad who get a rude awakening in those countries in which people have to do most things for themselves or pay a vast sum of money for someone else to do the job.

In our famous Chinese shops, many of today's successful businessmen and women learned to provide customer service '24/7', give credit and learn to communicate in whatever language made that possible. The shop was a factory with built-in security and a place where children learned to respect the work that kept their families alive. One of the aspects of the transition from school to work relates to the kinds of sacrifices that had to be made. Many dressmakers ended up with bad eyes and many other workers suffered from ergonomic disasters.

When I was a child and I went to my mother's workplace at the Jamaica Library Service, I and the other children of the staff had to remain stationary, quiet and doing our homework. At many offices in the public sector, the children of the staff use the computers, eat their food and run around the office, unsupervised and behaving like they are in a playground.

Teach children respect

I know that some places have homework centres, but we need to teach children to respect the workplace. There are parents who are constantly on leave, who treat their jobs with disrespect and their children are learning from them. Some children come from homes where no one goes to work or works from home so concepts like appropriate dress, speech and decorum are unknown. Remember our young people are competing with American counterparts who have had paper routes, jobs in fast food and elsewhere from early in life it is difficult to get or create a job, many more people can do so; internships are scarce but we can do more. The young employee must have the right attitude and skills as I saw a multinational advertising a job in Jamaica recently ask for fluency in the English language to work in a customer service setting.