The American P&I Club has curated a practical guide of ideas and suggestions designed for Masters and Chief Engineers to enhance crew wellbeing and morale onboard.
Vessel managers can enhance wellbeing and morale onboard by implementing initiatives that include friendly competition, entertainment, or celebratory meals. Activities like these promote crew happiness, crew cohesion, and positive mental health by giving seafarers an outlet with which to wind down after a busy workday.
Friendly Competition
Sports can be played individually or by teaming up with members of different departments. Hold a teammate draft, pick a fun team name, and keep a scoreboard or organize a tournament on a whiteboard.
- Ping pong requires only a table, paddles, and ping pong balls.
- Foosball can be played as a team or individual matches.
- Darts can be of the traditional kind or magnetic sets, which won’t leave little holes in the bulkhead.
- Electronic gaming systems like Microsoft XBOX, Sony PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch are fun and have added benefits of improving cognitive function, problem solving, and teamwork when played with shipmates.
- Board games and card games are great stress relievers and help promote group socializing. Many are played and understood internationally, for example, chess, checkers, mahjong, catan, dominos, backgammon, etc.
Competitions onboard should be played for fun, game playing for money or betting should be prohibited as it could have an opposite effect on morale.
- If your vessel has a pool, fill it up. It’s simple to do! Allocate time for a adult swim after the workday or on weekends. Implement a buddy system for safety and to promote crew interaction.
- Exercise is always better with friends. If your vessel has a gym or workout space, set up crew workout times and make sure the equipment is in good condition and the stereo is working.
- Prepare or purchase a cake or dessert to celebrate a special occasion for someone onboard. This could be a birthday, name day, anniversary, birth, or other milestone or achievement.
- Steel beach picnics or barbeques allow the crew to enjoy a meal and some fresh air outside of the workday. On tankers, grilling may be restricted to the galley due to the vessel’s operations, but for most cargo ships, grilling can be safely done outside on the poop deck.
- Parties can be organized in a different space than the messrooms, such as the galley or even the vessel’s outer deck areas. This can be a tradition to welcome a new crew member or celebrate reaching a safety objective or goal.
- Modern vessel crews are more multinational than ever. “Cultural Days” can be a way to bring people together and celebrate cultural diversity. Allowing a crewmember to make traditional food from their culture is a symbol of pride for their ethnicity and also a means of coping with homesickness.
- Cooking days are fun opportunities for crew members to volunteer to cook lunch or dinner for all the crew. This gives the cook a break and allows the crew to engage in an activity they enjoy and reminds them of home.
