Time Out for Safety

Standard Relationships

One of my subcontractors wrote the following paragraph, in a leadership and management training manual that my company is delivering for a client:

“Most people have experienced working under a bad leader, a poor communicator, or perhaps even an abusive or bullying supervisor. However, few people take the time to honestly reflect on how they are perceived by others. We often assume that because we hold a particular rank or job title, our leadership position is secure, and our skill as a leader is self-evident. This assumption can prevent individuals from pursuing self-improvement as a leader or manager.”

That’s my boy.

Photo by Ian Simmonds on Unsplash

A recent Splash 247 article compiled some key statistics about the sorry state of management in maritime, citing:

• 42% of seafarers have faced bullying, harassment or discrimination at sea, in the past.

• 58% have experienced sexual misconduct at sea.

• 8-25% of all seafarers currently experience bullying and harassment.

• This number rises to 50% for female seafarers.

• There has been a 45% increase compared to the previous financial quarter.

• Many incidents involve abuse by senior officers.

• Findings come as maritime labour reaches 17-year record shortages.

I can’t explain that increase in the past 3 motnhs. I am sure the hangover & exhaustion from COVID remains, when many sefarers were forced to remain on board ship for up to 18 months. I’m sure cost of living pressures at home eroding the value of their daily sacrifice is also adding to the pressure and dissatisfactions. But I think more broadly, a decline in the value placed on relationships is to blame.

This isn’t just important to people who live on an island nation like the UK, where 90% of all consumer goods and raw materials are imported by sea (not to mention all the exports that ultimately pay for those imports). Shipping is essentially the foundation of all material progress beyond what we had in the 1600s. Raiding giving way to trading gets a whole lot more appealing as computer-aided design, mega-ships and containerisation reduce risks and increase efficiency on an exponential scale.

Shipping is also dealing with both the costs and the benefits of globalisation in a way that may be useful for the wider world of management to be aware of.

As international shipping is starved of talent, and accident rates begin to creep back up from historic lows, the cost of shipping will increase. The opportunity costs of sub-standard shipping include potentially decreased food security, decreased energy security, and therefore less security in general.

Most British ships are crewed with non-nationals and non-residents. There are very few British flagged vessels, and government plans to ‘commandeer’ British registered tonnage in times of crisis do not take into account peak market demand bringing scarcity during those times of crisis. We do not have an operational hospital ship, and there are not enough British nationals trained as regular seafarers or reservists in case we had to commandeer and operate such vessels. If, for example, we were to repeat our defence of the Falkland Islands, or other British protectorates.

Under the one-world governed international maritime organisation, international standards of training and certification have meant that British seafarers have been competing on an open labour market. Standardised certification reduces maritime labour to commodity status. Requiring British seafarers to go back to college every five years, and do as much work as it would take to become a doctor or lawyer, but then forcing them to compete for wages against people living in developing countries with lower educational requirements for the same certification. It drives down wages.

No longer can you just rock up to the docks, demonstrate an ability to tie a reef-knot behind your back, and persuade a skipper to give you a job. No. You can’t even enter the harbour without paying £2000 for basic safety courses, and you can’t get a trip under your belt without spending months of your life at a college that almost holds people hostage when they’re first starting out.

OK, it’s safer now. But after every maritime accident, a new convention, treaty, code of practice, regulation, or training course is introduced. All of this adds to the up-front-cost of employing someone, and therfore drastically restricts the pool of people that employers may recruit from.

The high cost of training and employment leads to a situation where many vessel masters are not even allowed to fire someone from a company or a vessel, until actual criminal negligence (or criminal activity) takes place.

Often the smartest and most capable officers are seconded ashore the very moment they get their senior officer’s tickets. The bulk of the fleet in average companies is manned by people who couldn’t achieve the academics to get ashore, or couldn’t take the associated cut in salary when you have to start paying shoreside income taxes. This can lead to the top-performers being nowhere near the vessel. Inversely, those 'promoted' ashore too early can often become undeservingly convinced of their own talent, superiority or worth, without having really paid their dues.

This leads to a hollowing-out of operational wisdom at the upper management levels, both ashore and afloat. It can also lead to a lack of mentorship opportunities for those starting out in their career.

The materialist attitude to the interchangability of human beings, and to training neglects the importance of mentorship, friendship and trust in the workplace. If everyone is treated as an interchangable widget, and if all deficiencies can be rectified by a state-mandated 5-day powerpoint training, then what else could we expect but a decline in standards?

It is sometimes tempting to blame multi-culturalism or excessive racial, gender or ethnic, linguistic, or nationality differences. (Yes, we have training courses to tell you how to deal with multi-culturalism. They’ve been mandatory for 20+ years now). But what really is culture?

I believe it is an aggregation of behaviours. And the great thing about changing behaviours, is that we have direct control over at least one element in that aggregation of effort.

We can change ourselves.

Our training manual elaborates with a self assessment guide for bullying toxic managers, or just generally cockey and dismissive executives:

“Do your subordinates:

• avoid your presence or eye contact?

• experience frequent incidents or accident?

• consistently fail to meet expectations?

• show up late or fail to attend your briefings or training sessions?

• fail to ask questions after you give a briefing?

• leave the room whenever you enter?

• avoid volunteering personal information to you?

• frequently ignore your instructions or break rules?

• are your instructions often misinterpreted?

• do you have a higher turnover of staff than other managers?

These are signs that YOU might need to improve your leadership, communication and management skills.”

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Nothing comes more easily to the human mind than self-deception. Only interaction with the real world, and the social world, can bring us face to face with our short-comings.

Being unable to (or practically discouraged from) firing people is not an entirely terrible thing. Much like living in a multi-cultural society, or a family, we’re stuck with each other whether we like it or not. Dealing with that fact can help us to learn to stop being so dismissive of others. To hold our tongue sometimes, and to maybe even learn to forgive people. You can be direct, but you should also know how to be neutral.

The vessel I’m sailing on right now has an outstanding master, and an excellent safety management culture. Indicators that I’ve witnessed so far include:

• The captain having coffee chats with members of the crew, of all ranks. (Apparantly it is common in this company for the master to host a 15 minute coffee & cake session at 4 pm, every day, wher all crew (galley, deck, engine, electrical, project crew, riggers, etc), are welcomed on the bridge. Everyone gets a chance to chat with the most senior person on board, regaularly).

• Officers performing walk-rounds of distant and dirty corners of the vessel, every day.

• The catering team made a cake to celebrate a crew member having a baby, and there were genuine outbursts of smiling and happiness for tohers!

• extensive modifications have been made beyond the initial design of the vessel to add barriers, plates, securing points and protection from slips/trips/falls or machinery.

• Outsiders visiting the vessel are asked for their fresh-perspective on working practices, every day.

• There are photographs showing the crew on vacation together, and using downtime to go hiking, or perform non-work activities together.

• All feedback, negative or positive, is recorded, acted upon immediately, and shared with the fleet office.

• Interpersonal relationships are given primary importance.

• Manners and respect are an expressed corporate value, but space is given for different nationalities to retreat into their own sub-cultural domain during rest periods.

• Friendships are actually evident. People still take the piss out of each other at work!

That last indicator is a huge one. Nobody is walking on eggshells here. People feel such psychological safety that they can truly be themselves. Even if it does mean the marine surveyor has to step over ice cream that is lying all over the elevator after some of the lads have had a food-fight on board. The benefits of having strong relationships among the crew are clearly valued much higher than any robotic sense of rule following or humourless enforcement of HR procedures.

Procedures that may be designed to be ‘fair’, in an autistic kind of uniformity (much like censorship laws in the UK), actually destroy relationships. The application of procedure always removes context, and inserts 3rd parties into relationships where they often don’t belong. The difference between bullying and harrassment, and horseplay, is virtually impossible for a distant head office or government to discern. The overall result of excessively bureaucratic structures is that they end up becoming more arbitrary, precisely because of their attempts to be uniformly fair. They breed fear.

Yes, internet access, decent wages and sufficient time off to have a family are critically important to the success of a high-performing shipping company. As is access to training and self-development.

Scaring the pants off of newcomers with detailed stories of the guy who got crushed to death and chopped in half by failing to use the watertight door correctly, are also important. But it is also important to have people who care about each other enough to risk upsetting each other.

For example, today, when I witnessed a superintendent have a five minute chat with some crew he witnessed using the watertight door incorrectly.

Often 'problem' crews or cultures have just been neglected. they need to be shown over and over again that someone does care about this. Someone is paying attention. And that there is a standard that you should be conscious of. Even when nobody is looking.

So often these little ‘corrections’ that could build a habit, change a culture, and save a life don’t take place because:

• The culture is short term, and narrowly focused.

• High turnover of contractors and crew leads to a lack of caring.

• Racial or nationalist prejudice leads to people not caring about one group of crew being unsafe or poorly treated.

• Nobody would notice if you didn’t intervene.

• Possible hostility from the person being corrected in unsafe behaviour.

• Possible perceptions of racism or harrassment by person being corrected.

• No particular praise, or system of recognition for good practice being followed.

• Harsh complaints for requests that involve spending money, time or resources that were unplanned.

• Unpleasant personalities on board. Over-reactors, shouters, etc.

And the trouble with ‘caring’ is, that you can’t fake it. No management school can make you care. No amount of training can prevent employees from detecting insincerity.

It requires particular tact, care and kindness when speaking ‘down-rank’. Particularly when dealing with east-Asian or saving-face cultures. But often the same precautions used with those crews are at play in western culture too. Albeit less on the surface or conscious.

For example, when speaking down-rank, or if a subordinate needs to correct a senior officer, there can be a perceived threat. The lower rank person is often less well paid, and needs their income far more than the senior person. That’s why any displeasure expressed on the part of the vessel master, or company CEO can be a traumatic and fearful event for a subordinate rank to deal with. Any hint of displeasure from the boss can bring all sorts of anxiety, and thoughts of losing work and becoming destitute. One really serious reason that you should pay people as well as you can, is so that they feel secure enough in their livliehood to be able to speak up, and live without fear. They might even be able to innovate and improve your methods, if they aren’t spending every moment scraping a living or making ends meet otutside of work. Money isn’t everything, but it ain’t nothing.

As such, it is often too easy for the senior ranks to withdraw and avoid all contact completely. So that when management corrections need to be given, or disciplinaries handed out, there is what some call a ‘professional-distance’.

That’s selfish and lazy. And it doesn’t work, if getting the best out of your people is your aim.

The thing that so many companies get wrong is that people are not interchangable. Let people have friendship groups at work. Make sure they love each other enough to correct each other when they’re making a mistake. Despite any perceived threat or insecurity. Forgive and learn. Do not forget. Make sure every rank is seen as a spacialist element of a valued whole, rather than a disposable appendage, or inferior element.

That seems to be what makes the difference between a flash in the pan, versus a high performing industry giant that has commanded employee loyalty for over a hundred years.

OK, stay safe, chaps and chapettes. Whether you run a business, or the most leadership you do involves dragging yourself out of the house each morning, just try to be kind. Say hello, and ask people questions. That’s all it takes. Do that often enough, and you’ll build something called a relationship. And that will make things better, I promise.

We’re not deisgned to live as individuals. Let alone as disposable components of the corporate machine. And the companies that let friendships at work flourish will benefit from that - at the expense of the competition - over time.

As AI and automation make information less and less scarce, it is the softer skills like wisdom and interpersonal relations that will gain in value and importance. I think that will be true in every business.