Ms. Doris Magsaysay Ho and maritime leaders at the Asia Pacific Manning and Training Conference.
Business strategy aligns with crew development By Gen Dy
common belief to major investment in training to ensure maritime excellence.
Shipping magnate Doris Magsaysay-Ho urges ship owners and managers to create a new level of partnership with crew managers to address crew competencies and shortage problems.
Ms. Ho explains they transform crewing services to measurable human resource business processes, which are key strategies to attract, retain, ensure compliance, train, assess and develop people.
“Ship owners/managers must align people development and systems with their business strategy,” stresses Ms. Ho, President and CEO of the Magsaysay Group of Companies. Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Manning and Training Conference, Ms. Ho observes, “Critical shortages and complex competencies and skills mean, crewing managers need to provide more complex strategic human resource services.” The lady executive underscores people are intangible assets but must be on top of their mind. She explains in simpler days, they only recruit, deploy and administer seafarers. But now there must be human resource architecture that focuses on how to create value, and how to measure the value-creation process. In a long- term view, management must provide seafarers training and development, a business policy reflected by the Magsaysay Institute of Shipping (MIS). Leading international shipping and maritime companies invest in education to promote the seafaring career through MIS. MIS partners, Mitsui OSK Lines, Fairmont Shipping and Magsaysay Maritime Corporation. All want to ensure a pool of competent and disciplined officers and ratings. They share a
She says non-monetary elements also contribute to crew retention. Part of this is that crew and families need to be valued. “We cannot ignore the new generation perils at sea such as piracy and criminalization,” she observes while adding that if we want to attract the young generation into shipping, they must transform the partnership between owner/manager & crewing managers to cope up with the changing requirements of the industry. According to the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) 2010 study, world-wide supply of seafarers is estimated to be 624,000 officers and 747,000 ratings, reflecting increases in seafarer supply in some countries, notably China, India and the Philippines, as well as a few European nations. BIMCO says the supply and demand balance for now, with a modest undersupply of officers of two percent, particularly felt on specialist types of ships such as LNG tankers and offshore support vessels. BIMCO notes problems persist now as individual shipping companies experience recruiting problems and concern over availability of senior management level officers. The study also predicts the next decade assumes a modest increase in the number of ships in the world fleet of 2.3% per annum, while manning levels are assumed to decline. JANUARY 2012
FUSION OF MARITIME NE WS & VIE WS
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