InterManager – new year shipping challenges

In addition to fears surrounding how challenging market conditions impact on operating budgets, the survey revealed that ship and crew managers are also concerned at the difficulties of finding and retaining quality staff – both at sea and on shore.

To this end, the trade association plans to introduce a number of new initiatives in 2013 to address training and recruitment matters, including a young executives group to encourage and support rising stars.

Gerardo Borromeo, president, InterManager, said: “Today’s young executives are tomorrow’s leaders and we want to do all we can to support them and help them to develop their leadership qualities.”

He explained that bureaucracy remains a problem for the ship management sector, particularly the burden it places on time and resources. InterManager is supporting a number of projects to help, such as crew payment by ‘plastic money’, as well as continuing to develop its leading KPI system to streamline and share best practices and improve efficiency – particularly important when budgets are stretched.

Mr Borromeo added: “The human element is key to successful ship management and we must ensure we work together as an industry to raise standards and to encourage good staff to enter and stay in shipping.”