How Crewing Business Intelligence Can Tackle Maritime’s Crew Shortage Challenges

“Officer supply shortfall has reached a record high and is not expected to improve, leading to manning cost inflation, according to the latest Manning Annual Review and Forecast report published by global shipping consultancy Drewry.” (‘Seafarer labour market tightest on record’, Drewry) 

The seafarer labour shortage reached a 17-year high in 2023, and it continues to pose major challenges for shipping companies. High turnover, crew shortages, and the complexities of managing a global workforce can overwhelm ship owners and managers. Outdated methods to monitor the crew can make the issues worse by failing to deliver the actionable insights needed for effective decision-making.

However, business intelligence (BI) – like that offered by the BASSnet BI Dashboard – provides a modern solution for ship owners and managers.

BI dashboards can empower companies with dynamic and interactive data visualisation and analytics, allowing for a deeper understanding of crewing trends and workforce stability. By leveraging these insights, HR teams can more effectively address challenges, improve crew retention strategies, and avoid costly disruptions.

Maritime’s Challenge with Crew Shortage & Retention

“Seafarer Workforce Report [2021] from BIMCO and the International Chamber of Shipping warns that the industry must significantly increase training and recruitment levels if it is to avoid a serious shortage in the total supply of officers by 2026.” (‘New BIMCO/ICS Seafarer Workforce Report warns of serious potential officer shortage’ by International Chamber of Shipping)

Shipping companies must address several major challenges to overcome the labour shortage:

1. High Turnover and Crew Instability
   Retaining skilled crew is an industry-wide challenge. High turnover disrupts operations and increases costs. Yet, identifying the root causes of turnover is difficult without access to comprehensive crew data.
2. Lack of Insight into Reasons for Crew Attrition
   Shipping companies struggle to understand why crew members leave. Are they resigning, retiring, or were they terminated? Without clear data, it’s hard to address the trends behind attrition.
3. Inefficient Workforce Planning
   Understanding crew demographics, such as gender, age distribution, and nationality, is essential for effective workforce planning. Without visibility into these demographics, companies may struggle to balance crew composition based on international standards or best practices.

How Crewing Business Intelligence Addresses These Challenges

“We must analyse and respond to trends in seafarer retention, and continue regular monitoring of the global seafarer workforce, to ensure that the supply of STCW certified seafarers continued to keep pace with demand.” (Guy Platten, Secretary General of the International Chamber of Shipping)

Business intelligence dashboards offer valuable insights that enable shipping companies to optimise operations and manage crew more effectively. The key benefits include:

• Data-Driven Decision-Making: Instant access to comprehensive and actionable insights allows companies to make informed decisions regarding crew management.
• Improved Crew Retention & Reduced Crew Attrition: By analysing retention trends and understanding the reasons behind crew attrition, companies can develop proactive strategies to keep their best crew members onboard. Dashboards that properly track crew demographics and attrition could help, for example, to identify the key areas for training investments.
• Efficient Workforce Planning: With detailed demographics data, shipping companies can ensure a balanced, regulatorily compliant, and well-planned workforce.
• Operational Efficiency: Using BI Dashboards, companies can make targeted improvements to crew management strategies and enhance overall retention of skilled workers as needed.

Let’s look closer at how BASSnet’s latest BI reports—Crew Retention, Crew Attrition, and Crew Demographics—can help solve crewing challenges.

Benefits of BASSnet’s Crewing BI Dashboards

1. Boost Retention with the BASSnet Crew Retention Report

Retaining valuable crew members is critical to reducing operational disruptions and costs from high crew turnover.

Using BASSnet’s Crew Retention report, shipping companies can leverage multiple insightful graphs and charts for easy data visualisation. They can identify trends and gain actionable insights to improve crew retention strategies by:

• An in-depth analysis of crew retention rates over a look-back period of seven years.
• Drill-down to yearly, quarterly, and monthly levels, for a detailed timeline analysis.
• Monitoring key metrics such as crew nationality, gender, age distribution, and manning agent.

By using this dashboard, users can better grasp crew retention patterns and use this data to enhance crew retention strategies by targeting specific factors like age, gender, and nationality. The analytics in the report can also be used to improve workforce stability by addressing crew retention challenges over the long-term, extrapolating trends for future planning. 

2. BASSnet Crew Attrition Rate Report: Understand Why Crew Members Leave

One of the most crucial crewing business intelligence is understanding why crew members leave—whether it’s due to resignations or terminations. The Crew Attrition Report provides data on crew attrition rates and the reasons for departure, offering invaluable insights including:

• Percentage of average attrition rate, with comparison to the year before.
• Breakdown of attrition by gender, age distribution, manning agent, top 5 nationality.
• Insights into reasons for crew leaving, with breakdown by rank and crew type.

By gaining an overview of crew attrition reasons, companies can quickly take proactive measures to address any trends. In this way, the Crew Attrition report can act as a catalyst for companies to look deeper into internal issues in a timely fashion.

For example, if resignations are high, companies can vet potential dissatisfaction with onboard conditions, or prioritise crew welfare improvements for better physical and mental health and a more supportive work environment as needed. Alternatively, if terminations are high, it may signal a need for better recruitment practices or training programs.

3. BASSnet Crew Demographics Report: Optimise Workforce Planning

Having a clear picture of your crew’s demographics is crucial for planning and ensuring compliance with international seafarer workforce standards and best practices. The Crew Demographics Overview report provides detailed data on the composition of your workforce such as:

• Gender distribution across the crew.
• Age/seniority matrix.
• Composition by nationality.
• Seniority by rank, and seniority vs longevity.
• Total crew onboard.

This report helps shipping companies ensure they have the right mix of crew members as needed. It allows for better workforce planning by identifying any potential gaps in crew demographics or when facing a high number of older crew members nearing retirement which could impact training and insurance costs.

In these circumstances, it is invaluable for HR teams to use crew demographic data analytics and dashboard visuals to stay on top of potential gaps in the workforce.

The Value of Pairing Interactive Data Visuals with Deep Dive Capabilities

Digital analytics provide critical support for understanding crew retention and attrition. To address labour shortages effectively, companies need in-depth insights rather than a surface-level view.

One of the biggest advantages of BASSnet’s BI Dashboards, for example, is the ability to drill down into specific crew data points from the interactive data visualisations. By drilling down into levels of data, users can perform a more granular analysis and gain deeper insights into crew management trends for more precise adjustments in HR strategies.

Additionally, the dashboards are integrated directly with BASSnet’s HR Manager software, providing seamless access to detailed crew information, streamlining data retrieval and enhancing decision-making. Users can quickly and efficiently deep dive into crew details to better identify and address factors contributing to crew turnover.

For instance, a user can click on a particular nationality in the BASSnet Crew Retention Report to view detailed data on individual crew members in BASSnet HR Manager for deeper insights, or quickly identify which manning agents are contributing to higher turnover rates. This seamless integration with BASSnet’s full HR system not only saves time but also provides a more holistic approach to crew management.

Conclusion

As cautioned by the 2021 Seafarer Workforce Report by BIMCO and ICS, maritime faces a potential officer shortage by 2026. It’s important for shipping companies to act now to improve retention and recruitment strategies.

Dynamic BI visualisations provide the insights needed to understand causes of turnover and enhance crew retention. By effectively tracking crew attrition and demographics, companies can quickly identify important trends and adjust workforce strategies to retain skilled workers. It also becomes significantly easier to take targeted actions to optimise hiring strategies.

Investing in crewing business intelligence is no longer a luxury but a necessity for shipping companies to maintain an edge in an increasingly competitive maritime labour market.

Reach out to learn more about the BASSnet BI Dashboard’s insightful Crewing reports!