The good Crewing manager A


good crewing manager should look after his main assets - the crew.


It does not mean he has to bend back- wards to every single request. What I mean is to do it in a responsible way, to provide equal opportunities and fair employment conditions.


What attributes are we talking about here?


Commitment and knowledge: I am thinking about someone who ‘can do’ and is constantly willing to know her/his people and their needs; someone who identifies with the needs of the crew being managed; someone who is willing to go the extra mile: to visit his vessels, participate in meetings with visiting officers, attend officer seminars, actively seeking feedback from the people she/he looks after. The ratings should be organised well too.


Problem solving - not creating: A good crew manager is someone who actively plans and has contingency plans at hand. There is no other activity in shipping which ‘can go wrong’ as frequently and acutely as HR management. We humans are likely to fall ill, usually at the last minute, have problems with loved ones, miss flights, do not get on well with others. The good Crew


Captain Kuba Szymanski, Secretary General, Intermanager


Manager has knowledge of these issues and will also have tried and seasoned solutions available immediately; she/he is interested in solving problems not by pursuing attitudes by not asking “Who did it?” but instead asking “What went wrong and what lessons can we learn for the future?.


Good communication: That means someone who knows how to listen to others. 50% of all the HR problems could have been solved if the HR Manager could just listen. Communication is a two-way street. One way communication is called broadcasting and does not help in any interpersonal relationship.


Tactful and friendly: Approach, with smile on her/his face. Smile even when answering the telephone. We all know how important it is to deal with a nice person. This is probably extremely difficult when dealing with a grievance, but even more important in these particular circumstances, when friendliness, a smile and warm attitude will immediately ‘set the scene’ and lack of it will make things much worse.


Where can we find this Superhero? I am afraid they come by very, very rarely; but,


Human Element - Quo Vadis? O


ur industry is unique in many ways, none more so than the level of


uncertainty and volatility that character- izes shipping. A very large proportion of a shipowner’s mind-space is devoted to the volatility of the revenue stream, asset and stock valuation. Thanks to effective and relatively inexpensive insurance cover, physical risk to assets, steel or human, takes up far less proportion of his mind- space. Let us remember that freight and asset value responds smartly to demand- supply imbalance in tonnage and rather sluggishly to risk management of life, property or environment.


The amazing thing is shipping is an extraordinarily safe mode of transport of goods and people. Something close to 99.996% of all cargo and passengers are delivered safely across the Oceans along the arterial lifeline of global economy, (a statistic that doesn’t capture media attention as much as a Costa Concordia would).


Somewhere down the pecking order of priorities, the good people aboard and ashore work together in a chaotic cocktail that we call the Human Element, a very crucial cog in the business wheel. So let us dwell on how we can enhance its output:


what we should do in shipping is ensure that they are properly trained.


It never fails to amaze me that a lot of people in the shipping industry complain that crewing costs are now 45-55 % of their operating expenditure, yet they absolutely fail to notice that the crewing managers are usually the least paid, least trained, very poorly motivated inexperienced youngsters who are expected to be … superheroes.


And now for a little reality check; pause for a second and think about your organisation and then answer honestly:


How many of your HR personnel


have been educated in the field of HR management?


How many have any formal HR qualification?


How many are actually Chartered HR Managers?


When did they last go on a course – any course?


Are they the least paid people in your organisation?


Captain Sivaraman Krishnamurthi , President, The Nautical Institute


Ability and Aptitude should logically lead to performance. Non-performance is the first indicator that the ship manager has either not defined the two A’s well or that he is not really acting on performance appraisals.


Training and empowerment are two powerful management tools, sparingly used in general. An allocation of no more than 2% of the Fleet HR budget to customized and company specific training programs will return several multiples of the training expense by way of reduced operating costs, be it voyage optimization or timely intervention and prevention of technical breakdowns. It is also relevant to ask if mentoring is identified as a tangible process within a company’s learning culture. The NI is launching a campaign shortly to revive this lost but valuable legacy.


Empowerment is not about constantly quoting the Master’s over-riding authority under ISM - the over-riding authority is often interpreted as the Master’s unfetter- ed right to incur any expense to respond to a calamity or to over-ride operational instructions to protect life and environment. Empowerment is about giving him financial authority and budgetary responsibility to


locally intervene, rectify and pre- empt


routine


material or process defects before they lead to high- risk situations. Empowerment is also about seamless sharing of manage- ment information from charter parties to voyage performance analysis, from port agency quotations to drydock and technical running costs. Empowerment is sparingly used for the simple reason that it destroys traditional management hierarchies.


The man-machine interface and the application of contemporary technology to ship operations calls for structured research. The Nautical Institute will continue to lead and engage with this effort. The intention is two-fold. One is to free the Human Element from monotony and generate a very precious resource called time. The second is to pull the human out of the error chain and position him at a vantage bird’s eye view of the error process. Intervention and error-prevention will follow like day follows night.


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