Blog: Do we really have a recruitment crisis?

MSC


I remember asking a fleet manager if he’d ever not sailed because he was short of crew. “Of course not”, he said; “if I hear there’s a problem I get on to our crewing agency and a guy flies in from Poland”.

If there was an absolute shortage of crew at sea we’d hear stories of ships that couldn’t sail because operators couldn’t find people to sail them. But we know that doesn’t happen. All round the world operators find people to sail their ships, and they find people who meet IMO standards.

What companies often mean when they talk about recruitment problems, at sea or ashore, is that they can’t find the trained people they want willing to work for the terms and conditions they are offering. That’s very different from an absolute shortage where the skilled people you want just aren’t out there.

Consider the Wright Brothers in 1903, putting an ad in the Kitty Hawk Gazette for an “Aircraft Mechanic; must have at least 5 years’ experience”. There was no one Earth in 1903 who met those criteria. That’s an absolute shortage, and when the Wright brothers got round to building a team they had to grow their own talent.

Now think about the Maritime and Coastguard Agency recruiting surveyors. I heard the previous Chief Executive, Sir Alan Massey, tell a Parliamentary group in 2018 that the Agency struggled to recruit them. Six months later, I heard one of his colleagues say that they’d solved the problem … by sorting-out surveyors’ terms and conditions.

“We’ve had 300 applications for the vacancy we’ve just advertised”, he told us. When a sceptic asked how many of the 300 were employable, the answer was “all of them”.

What does that mean? It means that quite unlike the Wright brothers in 1903, there were 300 qualified marine surveyors out there who had previously chosen not to work for one particular employer; some internal action changed their behaviour. That’s a very different problem from an absolute shortage. And tackling that very different problem required a very different solution.

When many companies talk about the skills issues they face, all they’re really saying is that some of their people will be retiring or leaving for other reasons over the next few years. That’s not a crisis either; it’s a reason to plan.

And it’s a reason to plan carefully because recruitment is a competitive business. In many parts of the sector, like seafaring, companies need to put in real effort to attract the talented people who in the past would have coming knocking anyway. Seafaring is less visible than it was when my grandfather went to sea, and there are many appealing alternatives – just as there are many appealing alternatives to marine engineering or maritime law. That’s a challenge, but it’s not a crisis. 

I’m not saying there aren’t recruitment issues which need attention.  Of course there are – and if you happen to know of skilled carpenters who can reach the high standards required by our superyacht builders, I’d be happy to introduce them to someone who’d be keen to meet them. 

But next time you hear anyone in the sector talk about a recruitment crisis, challenge them. Ask them to spell out exactly what problem they’re trying to solve. If it’s an absolute shortage because a company is at the cutting edge of innovation, that’s one thing. If it’s that talented people have made a rational decision to turn their back on you, that’s very different. Unless we define the problems correctly we stand very little chance of getting the solutions right. 

This blog was written as a feature for the 2022 State of the Maritime Nation Report.