Do you know your company’s current crew costs? Are you paying crew at the right level?
In order to make the right strategic decisions for your company, you need to be armed with the right information. Have you checked what your competitors are paying their Chief Officers? Do you know what you need to pay a 2nd Engineer in order to retain them within your company? Some companies are experiencing difficulties recruiting certain nationalities or ranks. Some crewing professionals are simply looking to get sign off for a pay increase, and need further information to support such a request.
In a highly competitive market, it is difficult to imagine that you might pick up the phone to your competitors to discuss such matters. Furthermore, how can you guarantee the information you receive is accurate?
This is where Spinnaker can help. We are the maritime HR experts who are in our fourth year of sea-based wage cost benchmarking, as well as having 14 years’ experience of shore-based salary benchmarking with over 100 member companies benefitting from the crew cost information we publish.
“Having recently published our 5th Seafarer Daily Wage Cost Report to members of the Seafarer Employers’ Association, we have been able to produce detailed wage cost benchmarking reports for ranks of different nationalities on all major vessel types helping members make informed decisions about what to pay their crew,” says Sandra Briegoos, Compensation & Benefits Consultant at Spinnaker.
“Our vessel types reported now include bulk, container, general cargo, chemical tanker, crude tanker, product tanker, cruise, ferry & roro, LNG and LPG.”
Crew costs – percentiles
By providing wage cost percentiles, members of the Seafarer Employers’ Association can see the cost of a seafarer of a specific nationality / rank and position their pay structures accordingly. “Whilst pay is not the only factor when looking to retain the best crew, having the knowledge that what you are paying is at the correct level – that’s certainly beneficial in retaining seafarers,” says Briegoos.
Spinnaker’s full reports are comprehensive and tailored specifically to the individual company, so you can see exactly how your costs compare with other shipowners / ship managers in your market. The report is based on data representing both Salaried seafarers (paid irrespective of at sea or ashore) and Unsalaried seafarers (paid only whilst at sea) and of course the differing rotation patterns that may apply.
Rapidly growing data
Mitch Digby, Benchmarking Manager at Spinnaker, says “Our data is growing rapidly, having recently reviewed pay structures covering 94 different nationalities and 50 different seafaring ranks, representing over 250,000 seafarers globally. The January 2020 report contains over 5,600 lines of real data derived from wages scales / payroll information provided by shipowners and shipmanagers globally. We are reporting more and more nationalities each time the report is issued and expect this growth to continue for our next report due in July 2020.”
If you think that your company could benefit from receiving these reports, or you would like to understand how Spinnaker might be able to support payroll decisions for either sea or shore based roles, please get in touch.
Email us at [email protected] or call +44 1702 481660.
Hear more about our salary benchmarking work and crew costs insights at our annual conference on 14 & 15 May in London.
