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Are Standards of Competency Getting Better or Worse?

Capt. L A Holder - Extra Master MPhil FRIN FNI
Chairman
Videotel Marine International

Introduction

What influences standards of competence in the world’s ships? Len Holder looks at some things that influence standards and finds a mixture of positive and negative indicators. He will look at changes in recent years to see how things have changed and look at the prospects for the future.

What causes things to change?

Whether seafarers are competent and highly efficient or not depends on a many things, but the most important are:

• Recruitment and selection
• Education – general and maritime
• Training – practical training at sea and/or using simulators
• Experience – with proper mentoring
• Motivation and job satisfaction

As things advance, there is a chance to improve and up-date training by making appropriate use of information technology and distance learning.

Recruitment and selection
Seafaring as a career used to be attractive to young people as a means of seeing the world, and for traditional maritime countries the sea career has always been respected in their home communities. There are now other ways to see the world and family seafaring traditions are much less influential. The biggest change in this respect is probably in Greece, where young people no longer expect to follow their fathers into sea careers, there being many other opportunities open to them.

So why do people seek a sea career in the 21st century? For many it is still varied and interesting, a real challenge and an opportunity to be responsible for managing and operating a ship - an expensive and important link in international trade. For others a job at sea is an economic choice – or no choice at all! At home jobs are scarce, salaries are low and seafaring offers the chance to support a family and save for the future. This applies to many of the seafarers from developing countries and from the former soviet states of Eastern Europe.

Although it is much harder to do, many who work mainly for the money can be encouraged to take an active interest in developing a career by good leadership and management.

As far as recruitment is concerned, sea careers need to be made attractive and the "net" spread widely to include large numbers of young well-educated people who can be selected for aptitudes and attitudes that will make them keen to learn and take responsibility.

Selection used to depend on a completed application form, references and a face-to-face interview. It was not very scientific and the chance of selecting the wrong people was quite high.

As far as the future is concerned, modern methods and new technology mean that selection can be quickly and efficiently carried out with a much better idea of attitudes, aptitudes and potential. A small amount of money spent on selection can save very costly mistakes appearing later.

Education
Well educated young people have a wide choice of careers. They are also easier to teach, quick to learn and adaptable. They are usually keen to progress in their careers and looking for interesting jobs and opportunities. If people have not had the chance of a good education, as often happens in developing countries, when given the chance to learn, they can match the best.

Some people had the chance to learn, but are less well educated because of low ability or lack of motivation. They are more difficult to teach. They are not keen to re-train when new skills are needed. However, some who learn slowly but are well motivated, struggle to qualify but then are happy to do the routine and regular jobs that might bore a "high flyer". So we need some of each, with care taken to provide the right educational pathways for each group. There will always be changes. The economies of China, the Philippines, the Indian sub-continent, Eastern Europe etc will develop and sources of recruitment are already changing accordingly. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the educational sector will keep pace.

For the future, it is most important that maritime college courses should be regularly inspected to make sure time is spent only on the topics that are necessary and not wasted in teaching out-of-date or irrelevant material. This requires research to discover what is really needed. Again such research would mean that scarce resources for education were much better used. This in turn depends on the experience and ability of the teaching staff, and giving them time to look closely at changes in the industry they serve. Attracting good college staff is difficult. Aware of this problem, IMO has encouraged Videotel Marine International for the last thirty years to help raise teaching standards by providing high quality teaching materials. Videotel Marine International Steering Groups include shipowners, legislators and others. They carry out research into what is really required and provide it in many different media formats both to colleges and to ships.

Training
Just as important as college courses are training opportunities at sea. In recent years the traditional four-year apprenticeship or longer periods of experience as a rating were replaced by minimum seatime requirements in international and national legislation.

The assumption was that modern "structured training" methods would allow competence to be gained in a shorter time than the old "drip feed" methods of years and years at sea. The use of simulators in colleges and training centres does give young seafarers the chance to gain experience in critical situations without risking their own ships, but time is limited, simulators are expensive and many colleges cannot afford them, nor afford experienced staff to operate them.

At the same time crew sizes were reduced, company contracts became the exception rather than the rule and continuity of sea training, along with the motivation to train the next generation of seafarers were largely lost. Fortunately some companies continue to recognise the importance of sea training and have kept procedures in place.

Help is available. As the trainer’s time is limited, provision of training materials (Video, Interactive DVD, Computer-Based Training, Distance Learning Courses) allow the self-motivated trainee to learn a lot for his- or herself and not rely on a busy senior officer to teach them. In addition, modern CBT allows the trainee to do self-testing and in products such as Videotel Interactive there are tutorials and assessments to make sure messages are being received and records of success are provided. It is a matter of making the best use of valuable time by proper use of new technology.

Experience
For the future, there is growing recognition of the importance of mentoring as part of the job of officers at sea. Young officers need to gain experience. They need to be given responsibility, allowed to carry out operations under supervision and learn from their own successes and failures. In this way they will gain in confidence and be able to progress. The senior officer who has supervised their progress will be reassured that the junior will not let them down in a crisis.

Mentoring within each ship is important, but companies are also involved, and looking wider still, the London Honourable Company of Master Mariners has a mentoring scheme that has been in existence for more than 50 years. In the July 2004 Edition of the Nautical Institute Journal “Seaways” the value of the scheme is described and the Institute now encourages other branches worldwide to adopt such systems.

Motivation and job satisfaction.
In order to be successful, you do not need to have all the best players, but you do need to have good management, teamwork and leadership. The Greek football team in Euro2004 proved that point, as did Denmark’s team who came through in the same competition earlier, from a beach holiday to championship winners in a very short space of time.

Underlying motivation there are all the basic requirements of adequate welfare, health, leave, wages, etc, but they alone do not make a ship’s team successful. Up until now, most emphasis in maritime education and training has centred on technical competence – did people understand the equipment and how to use it? Management and leadership training needs to be higher up the agenda. There are natural leaders and managers, but everyone of us can be better if we learn the basics of how to put a team together, gain their trust and support, and get the best out of them in terms of effort and their – and our – job satisfaction.

Many of the things that happen in shipping are driven by new legislation, often as the result of an accident. Legal requirements are very poor motivators. We have to work within a framework of laws, but if our ambition never rises above keeping out of the hands of the law, we will never be successful. We should be aiming much higher than that!

Summing Up
In summing up, several important points come to light.

The need to:

• attract more young people to the industry and select those best suited to sea careers
• devise education and training pathways which are well focussed, avoid waste and make the best use of modern teaching methods
• improve sea training regimes using better training aids and providing more support for trainees and trainers
• organise mentoring for junior officers so they can gain experience under indirect "hands off" supervision

The maritime industry is a very practical and sensible one. Problems crop up, so we solve them. In the case of human factors, raising our sights to look further ahead and learn lessons before crises occur, would save a lot of money, misery and heartache.

I would welcome your views:

© Leonard Holder 2006

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