About half a million dollars has been set aside to help Caymanian job seekers overcome the practical barriers that keep them out of work, according to the Caymanian employment minister.
Michael Myles said the money, held in an account through Workforce Opportunities and Residency Cayman (WORC), could be used for covering costs such as transport to interviews, childcare and interview clothing.
“I have given our team approximately half a million dollars to help Caymanians overcome barriers,” Myles said on Radio Cayman’s ‘For the Record’ programme on 21 August.
“Because I do not believe that if an individual goes to WORC to get help in finding a job and they have a barrier, we need to send them right back to the Department of Financial Assistance for public welfare.
“That is an absolute waste of time, and we are getting people hooked on welfare in a systematic way where then we now can’t get them off of welfare.”
Myles described a more focused approach to providing employment services, aimed at getting unemployed people back to work within six months.
The Employment Services Unit’s client list, he said, had been cut from about 1,000 people to roughly 280 to 290, after screening found that many registrants were underemployed or already in work rather than unemployed.
The unit now has six staff including the manager, he said, with a further three in the Department of Labour.
“We cannot continue to have 1,000 people on the client list because… the people that are ready to work, we will not get to them.
“And we need to get to the people who truly are ready and want to work, and then we need to get them in the workforce,” he said.
The barrier fund grew out of a National Workforce Development Committee that Myles said he and the premier established in January.
Made up largely of private-sector members, it worked for about six months and delivered a set of strategies, including improvements to the jobs portal, better data collection to inform scholarship needs, and short-term support to overcome temporary impediments.
These services feed into Hello 2 Hired, the ministry’s recruitment initiative, which connects Caymanian job seekers with employers who are actively hiring and offers on-site support such as résumé reviews, interview coaching and career guidance.
The ministry has held a series of Hello 2 Hired events this year, the most recent of them on 24 August.
