The crew are the backbone of the vessel, owners and management companies need
to invest in their crew’s personal and professional development.
Reading the syllabuses on various seaschool websites, both courses seem very much geared towards the operation of the vessel itself and not towards ensuring your crew are happy, healthy, and understood. Again, a real missed opportunity. When, some years back, the need for learning soft skills, people management, dispute resolution and all that good stuff was identified as somewhere the industry was lacking, this was the answer. It feels half assed. And the feedback on this course is not, overall, positive. It’s disappointing. Karine, whose background in psychology and yachting inspired her to set up as The Crew Coach, explained, “It’s important for leaders and managers to dig deep into their own abilities, and examine their own emotional intelligence.
How can you lead others if you’re not aware of your own weaknesses, or how your actions impact others? The crew are the backbone of the vessel, owners and management companies need to invest in their crew’s personal and professional development, then they’ll get loyalty and retention in return as well as a well run yacht with a happy team.” Clearly we need better leadership courses which aren’t just generic management guides regurgitated. Yachting specific.
I put the question out to captains and sadly many told me they’d love to be more involved in the soft skills and soft skill training but they don’t have enough time. On larger vessels, many delegate this to their chief officers and chief stews who, without any official training at all, end up being the onboard “HR” department. Clearly captains need more support in order to do their jobs successfully. Many said they need more support from management. So what about the management companies? What’s their process for reporting/logging/addressing incidents with mental health?
Damian told me, “At Edmiston, sadly as yet, we don’t have formal process.We have extremely caring members of our team, who are encouraged on a daily basis that what we do is a ‘people thing’ and that the strength of their relationships with their
crew is vital to being an effective manager. We can and must do more. I am in the final phases of a plan which we hope to implement across our fleet that we hope will go a long way to addressing some of the current shortfalls in the identification of areas of concern. We encourage owners to treat crew with respect, and to engage with their crew to create vessel identities.”
This gives me hope. It’s great to hear forward thinking people at management companies pushing for change. But what happens when you get a captain who ignores a crew member asking for help, and a management company who are equally as disinterested? Well in one case this past summer season, a chief stew attempted suicide. Only then did they realise she needed help so after attempting to blame everyone else and take no responsibility for their utter lack of care, they fired her and sent her home telling her to get some therapy. Helpful.
these calls come completely out of the blue, but as yet, none of them has been unwelcome. In more serious situations, we are identifying a number of partners who can offer assistance (bear in mind that in the UK, for example, you cannot simply ‘offer counselling’ a person needs to be referred by a medical doctor). We have to understand what our limitations are, does jumping in with both feet achieve the right goal? Or is a more ‘softly, softly’ approach more appropriate. Currently, as the director of the department, I personally oversee all cases such as these that are brought to us. My fear is that many don’t make it to us… we are working with our captains to try and change that.”
It’s important we encourage crew to speak up for themselves and each other. And it’s very important those in charge, the HODs, or captains, or managers, or even DPAs, listen with an open mind and take everyone seriously. Many crew fear being dismissed or regarded as “snow flakes”. I despise that term.
Everyone needs to just be a little more understanding and look out for each other, for the people you work alongside or share a cabin with, for the people under your
I am in the final phases of a plan which we hope to implement across our fleet that we
hope will go a long way to addressing some of the current shortfalls in areas of concern.
I asked Damian what the procedure is when a situation like this, where a crew member is struggling with mental health issues, is flagged up to his management team. He said, “Generally speaking, we talk… we talk to the captain, the crew member (if they’ll allow us), and we try to establish what the ‘root cause analysis’ is (clearly, we have better, softer terms) and then we try to work out how to help.”
I know from my own struggles with PTSD that very often, people just want an opportunity to talk, to be heard and to understand that what they are saying isn’t ‘stupid’ that they are not ‘weak’… Often, simply taking people ‘out of the line’ is as restorative as anything else… let’s get them off the vessel, to friends, family. I have spoken to numerous parents about their children and our concerns, often
supervision, and lose the judgemental attitudes. You might be ok but everyone’s fighting their own battles so cut a little slack. As Damian reinforced, “it’s ok, not to be ok”.
In the recent survey from The Crew Coach a staggering 75% of crew members believe the industry isn’t doing enough to deal with mental health problems and look after the well-being of crew; 70% believe there is no support in place for crew who need mental healthcare. If you struggle with mental health problems involving burnout, sexual harassment, bullying, trauma, depression and anxiety, you’re not in the minority. It’s more common than you think.
We need to open up the lines of communication and start talking about this, before we wake up to news of another lost soul.
46 | WINTER 2023 | ONBOARD
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