Training seafarers for the tech transformation – more than knowledge transfer

The technological transformation was a subject that the fourth panel at the Global Maritime Environmental Congress (gmec) at this year’s SMM in Hamburg, discussed in some detail.

Tuva Flagstad-Andersen, DNV’s Regional Manager for Europe, told GMEC delegates: “We did a study some time back called the Future of Seafarers 2030 A Decade of Transformations, and here we interviewed a lot of seafarers and all the complexities that they do see, and a key point was that they do see a need for training.”

Raal Harris, CCO Ocean Technologies Group, also at gmec said, digitalisation and decarbonisation are coming at a much faster than anticipated, “I’d be much happier if we started [dealing with the issues] much earlier”.

Had the industry started to consider the challenges of training earlier it would have relieved some of the mounting pressure that is intensifying as crew numbers grow and new crew join the industry.

According to the International Chamber of shipping seafarer numbers serving on merchant ships is estimated at 1,892,720 seafarers, of which 857,540 are officers and 1,035,180 are ratings.

Fleet growth is expected to outpace the growth in crew numbers: “While the global supply of officers is forecast to increase steadily, this trend is expected to be outpaced by increasing demand,” said the ICS.

Attracting people to the maritime sector is key for Torsten Holst Pedersen, COO at Seaspan Corporation, who argues: “If we are saying there is a shortage and the macro-trend is going to be an even bigger shortage, and the signs are it’s improved a little bit, but why exclude half the world’s population.”

Pedersen believes many recruiters go to the academies and see five girls, and they hire them, but he says this that won’t help to solve the crewing issues, because those girls have already chosen a career in shipping.

“What you have to do is go back another step and persuade other women [and men] who have not yet chosen a career that shipping is a good choice,” said Pedersen, who went on to ask: “Why would people go on a ship where they’re more or less isolated?”

For Pedersen the answer is connectivity which will allow ship owners and operators to offer better working conditions to those at sea, while also improving safety and reducing carbon emissions.

“We have Starlink on all vessels, and 90% of our bandwidth is used on Facebook Live, Instagram Real, WhatsApp and live sports, which is still fine, but as we use the bandwidth for business purposes, we will need to restrict it somehow, or bandwidth just becomes cheaper,” said the Seaspan COO.

Crew happiness does not necessarily improve your bottom line, however, claims Pedersen: “High employee engagement makes the bottom line better, the correlation is there, but if you look at the actual data the causality is the other way; a company that performs better has a bigger impact on employee engagement than the other way around.”

In the gmec discussions Harris argued that the industry cannot simply keep loading seafarers with ever greater amounts of training: “If it [the training] is closely aligned to allowing seafarers to do the job then really it’s not an extra burden it’s a part of that process, so getting used to it and getting to understand in the flow of work and learning as a tool.”

Harris believes that if crew can see that training is enabling them to do their job more efficiently, “they stop seeing it as a burden and see it as something to facilitate that”.

David Taylor, Head of Curriculum at Lloyd’s Maritime Academy, believes that training traditionally focused on knowledge and skills: “We now need to focus on the behaviours of our people, to build the resilience, the teamwork and adaptability into their daily lives,” he said.

According to Taylor 70% of the learning that we acquire comes from organic non-structured sources such as watching others do it and participating in informal conversations.

Another 20% of the skills we use daily is learned from informal, but structured forms of education like mentoring, coaching and working with someone on the job.

“Only 10% of what we actually use comes from formal structured courses. And we need to remember that a great deal of what our seafarers do on ships does need to come from formal learning,” he added.

Yarden Gross CEO and co-founder of Orca AI, says that “The big brother effect” is also critical, as technology can be seen as superiors onshore are keeping tabs on a master’s performance, which could see the officer reject that support.

“For some crew tech is fine and they’re all for visibility, others might be more resistant to tech, you can have great technology, but if you don’t know how to implement it correctly, provide the right training, to both the office and officer, doing the onboarding correctly so they know how to utilise the tech to get value out of it, then the adoption takes much longer.”

Essentially training in this situation is a collaborative process between crew and managers and will require the buy-in from the trainees to achieve the industry’s goals.