As the IMO calls for seafarers to share their safety tips on Day of the Seafarer, Adam Parnell, Director of CHIRP Maritime, stresses the importance of taking onboard maritime workers safety lessons every day of the year.
The IMO’s Day of the Seafarer call this year is for crews to share their top safety tips for working at sea. As an industry we should pay close attention to the messages that seafarers post on social media today – they are the people at the coal face, working in often harsh and dangerous environments and will have unique insights and lessons on how to improve safety at sea.
But let’s just not limit listening to crew one day a year. If we learn to enact an open and just culture in our organisations, where the opinions of all our workers, not just those in the boardroom, are valued, we can learn how to run our vessels more safely and ensure we better protect the lives and wellbeing of our crews. There will be lessons beyond safety too; seafarers will have sound ideas on how to run our operations more efficiently and cost effectively, helping our industry to remain even more resilient (not to be sniffed at amid continued geopolitical conflict and the challenges of decarbonisation ahead).
At CHIRP Maritime, our mission is to listen and take seriously all the safety concerns and lessons seafarers have to offer. We receive confidential reports from maritime workers the world over and by analysing and sharing lessons from their anonymised reports we help shed light on safety issues in our industry and encourage organisations to do more to prevent them.
Sadly, many of these are lessons we are all too aware of. Each year we see the same near miss and safety incident types occur. From CHIRP Maritime’s latest data analysis of the reports we received between 2023-2024, fires (12%), entry into enclosed spaces (11%), persons falling overboard (9%) and hand injuries caused by crushing or rotating machinery (7%) were cited as the cause of over 40% of all reported incidents. Meanwhile the most frequently cited causes of near miss reports were unsafe or non-compliant pilot ladders (33%), deliverable deviation from safe standard operating procedures (17%) and fire danger (15%). As an industry, if we already have this information, why are we not doing more to protect our crews and vessels from these known risks?
Many of these risks can be combated with more high quality training, a reduction of work stresses and pressures on crew that lead to fatigue or the fear of speaking out in dangerous circumstances, greater investments in safety equipment and, creating a just culture where crews feel able and empowered to speak out about safety concerns.
Unfortunately, maritime workers tell us they turn to CHIRP rather than their company to report safety concerns because they fear being judged by their peers or managers or that it could have a negative impact on their career. Sometimes it is because they have reported issues to their company but no action has been taken.
We know that a strong safety culture must come from the top down – but this also means allowing safety lessons and changes to be empowered and enacted from the bottom up. Each year we analyse the maritime reports we receive by using the SHIELD human factors taxonomy, which covers hundreds of human factors across 4 different levels: Acts, Preconditions, Operational Leadership, and Organisation. We then map these to find a “Deadly Dozen” of the most common human factor issues for safety incidents. The list remains largely unchanged for the last three years, including issues such as poor safety culture, no cross-checks or speaking up, no transmission of important information and inadequate leadership or supervision.
These factors suggest many safety incidents begin in the boardroom before reaching the bridge. All too often it is commercial pressures that prevent companies from going above and beyond minimum regulatory requirements. Yet, investing in that extra crew member or more thorough training course will ultimately save money in lost downtime to safety incidents. Not to mention preventing the reputational damage major incidents can cause to operators.
As a general rule, for every 300 near-misses that get reported, there will be 1 major incident. At CHIRP, we encourage organisations and managers to actively champion and encourage near miss reporting because it is a powerful tool that can reduce the likelihood of serious safety incidents and loss of life. Tragically, over 50% of reports submitted to CHIRP in the past 12 months resulted in one or more fatalities. We can and must do better.
The IMO has thrown down a strong message to shipping this year, with themes for this year’s World Maritime Day and Day of the Seafarer focused strongly on safety. As we move into the decarbonisation era, business must continue to not only keep safety at the forefront of all operations, we must invest more in it. A core element needs to be ensuring your organisation has a just culture that allows for safety concerns to be shared, listened to and acted on where appropriate.
Every seafarer’s voice matters. Until we as an industry fully recognise and make space for those voices to be heard, and their concerns addressed and taken seriously, we at CHIRP will help magnify them. To all the maritime workers reading this: your voice matters, every report to CHIRP you make matters, and we will continue to lobby for change and make our industry a safer place to work, one report at a time.
The views presented are only those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.