We asked 6 organisation leaders about what they are doing differently in order to prepare for the future.
Watch the video or read their responses below.
Stephen Cotton, General Secretary, ITF
“Automation, digitalisation for the ITF and ITF unions are quite scary because we are organisations run for and lead by people. The prospect of having no people or a different role for workers is a big challenge, and we need to be on top of that. We have a global perspective, but what’s best practice? What is coming down in whichever section we are working in in ITF? This one is maritime. We need to know what’s happening, we need to know how people are responding, and we need to bring solutions.
“It’s no good us complaining the world is changing. The world is going to change. Technology is changing quicker than we can stay on top of. So, our job is to say: ‘this is coming, how do we engage, who do we speak to, who are the policy makers, and what are we going to do about it’.”
John Lloyd, Chief Executive Officer, The Nautical Institute
“My organisation is the professional body of people in control of ships. We’re working with the International Maritime Organisation; our member are council to those groups to find out what’s important for them, and using our monthly publication, our journals, our books, to make sure that seafarers are as well informed as possible.
“We have online applications that people can use for better communications, and so on. We’re making sure that we have modern means of communication and engaging with them wherever we can to support their skills development into the future.”
Alexander Avanth, Future Education Specialist, Expert in 21st Century Competences, Dare Disrupt
“I think we have two things that we are excelling in when preparing for the future. The first is actually being 50/50 on genders. So, my colleagues are as many women as there are men. The second is making different kind of partnerships, so we try and pair up with organisations that are not necessarily in our industry but have an interesting way of either changing or trying to change their own industry. So different shades of partnerships, in my eyes, are very important attributes in the 21st century.”
Yuzuru Goto, Managing Director, “K” Line LNG Shipping UK
“We are going back to how people interact with each other and also to the leadership of the organisation for both ship and shore to be able to share and to be able to align themselves about the direction of the organisation. It’s leaders who set the tone and I think it’s important for me to talk about this in the office but also for the captains to talk about that on board their vessels.
“So that is something we are trying to focus on, and it goes back to the culture of the organisation. We believe that if you have a good maturity of safety culture in your organisation, that will allow us to reduce accidents, and that allows our seafarers to go back home safely.”
Mark Charman, CEO, Faststream Recruitment Group
“So, what we will do at Faststream is we will continue to grow our organisation. We are about a 130 people with head office in the UK, Southampton, big office in Singapore, an office in Houston.
“So we’ll expand our geographical footprint to make sure that we’re covering all the emerging markets globally, and we’ll continue to develop our voice as a thought leader in the maritime sector, really showing people the careers that are available and the opportunities and managing people’s careers from seafarer to CEO.”
Karen Waltham, Managing Director, HR Consulting
“We’re starting from grassroots levels, if you like, in terms of careers. We’re doing an awful lot to promote the careers of maritime, we are trying to tie up the two. I would like to see more collaboration between the HR sea and HR shore side of the business so that we can build the pipeline, so we’re promoting that point of view.
“We’re also promoting personality profiling and really, what is the individual, what are the people themselves thinking – what are their preferences and being able to take that into where they want their career to go. For us, that means its happy people and happy jobs, which is the success for the industry as well.”
