Keeping doors open in-house

Phil Parry* of Spinnaker highlights the importance of offering clear career path options in the drive to secure and retain LNG seafarers

The new market dynamic which LNG shipping is currently undergoing has been experienced in the past, to a certain extent, in the very large crude carrier and certain other maritime sectors. We thus have some understanding of the impact of rapid fleet expansion on manning and on crew and shore staff training requirements.

LNG training today is effectively two separate issues. The first is about getting the fundamentals right, while the second concerns staff development and retention. At the fundamental level LNG training is about preparing an experience-short and skill-short workforce for fitness for purpose. This is a no-choice, needs-must requirement.

As a recruitment consultancy, Spinnaker has the task of finding shore personnel early enough to enable employer clients to put them through sufficient training to transfer their skills from other vessel types. Naturally, the nirvana for us in the LNG sector is to source suitable LNG expertise for the shipowner. However, although our technical division has had some successes in recruiting LNG staff over the last couple of years, in general the task is, ever more so, easier said than done.

The challenge, once suitable people have been secured, is to retain them. Keeping hold of employees is critical. Losing talent is costly in a variety of ways… and time-consuming. Given the massive disparity in the demand for experienced and qualified LNG hands versus supply, many of our shipowner clients are working hard on their retention strategies. They know that the competition is circling around their staff and, whilst salaries have risen significantly in recent years, they need to think smarter than simply indulging in a 'price war'.

It is widely recognised that organisations investing in training and development are valued far more highly by their employees than those that compete on salary alone. Many research reports and surveys have shown this to be the case. It is also well known that, of the most common reasons people give for leaving their jobs, money is seldom the number one.

Among the key 'push factors' that drive people either to look for a new job or be susceptible to an approach from elsewhere is lack of personal development. Clever employers in shipping have caught on to the best human resources (HR) practices in other industries and are putting into place personal development plans for their staff.

Call these new schemes what you will. Terms like employee value propositions (EVP) and employee experience programmes (EEP) are now entering the lexicon. The bottom line is that the companies achieving success with these programmes are demonstrating to their staff that they are valued; that they want to retain them; and that they are prepared to invest in developing them and mapping out clear career path options for them. Above the fundamental level, therefore, training is becoming a key factor in keeping hold of people. LNG

* Phil Parry is chairman of Spinnaker Consulting Ltd/shippingjobs.com. Spinnaker is secretariat of the Tanker HR Forum, an association of leading tanker owners, managers and oil companies founded in 2006 by a group of shipowners whose boards know that reliable shoreside salary and benefits data is business critical. By gathering such data for the shipping sector, Tanker HR Forum members say they are better able to build effective recruitment, retention and salary review policies.