The Swedish Club Academy is altering the face of maritime training by focusing on people’s attitudes as an essential aspect of professional competency.
According to Martin Hernqvist, Managing Director of The Swedish Club Academy, “Maritime training efforts tend to be focused on the technical skills and knowledge of seafarers, but if attitudes are poor, it makes little difference what skills and knowledge they have. That is why we often see also people regarded as experts involved in the worst accidents.”
In fact, the number of major accidents within the maritime industry has remained virtually unchanged over the past 20 years, despite improved technology, the introduction of the ISM Code, and other initiatives taken to decrease accident rates. The industry’s traditional response to accidents is ineffective, typically taking the form of new pieces of text in company safety management systems or new rules and regulations.
“A broader and more effective approach would be if we focused on the ‘attitudes’ of people,” states Mr Hernqvist, who describes ‘attitudes’ as the third component of competency alongside ‘skills’ and ‘knowledge’. “Attitude is essential because it informs behaviour, and behaviours stemming from negative attitudes can lead to job dissatisfaction, poor performance, and accidents.”
The Swedish Club Academy was founded by the marine insurer and P&I Club The Swedish Club to help shipping companies combat incidents and accidents caused by human and organisational errors. Mr Hernqvist, who previously worked as the Club’s Loss Prevention Officer, says: “Insurers get involved after an accident has already happened. It’s frustrating to see the same contributing factors in accidents being repeated over and over. Far better for everyone if trainable factors that contribute to accident prevention are proactively identified.”
Since 1993 The Swedish Club Academy has collaborated with maritime training providers in 35 countries to offer the Maritime Resource Management training programme to safeguard positive attitudes toward teamwork and communication in the industry. Seafarers, pilots, VTS-operators, shore-side managers, accident investigators, and other persons who may influence safety at sea have been the typical target groups for training. “With over 50,000 people trained, the MRM initiative has been a tremendous success,” says Mr Hernqvist. “Now we would like to take the next step: a new service called the Mariner Attitude Survey, which will analyse the attitudes and perceptions of mariners.”
The objective of the Mariner Attitude Survey is to understand the attitudes and perceptions of mariners so that proactive safety measures can be taken by shipping companies. The survey will also offer benchmarking opportunities so that a company’s risks and weaknesses as well as its strengths can be comparatively identified.
The Swedish Club Academy will discuss the importance of attitudes and demonstrate the Mariner Attitude Survey for shipping companies at seminars in Manila on