With this year’s campaign theme for International Women’s Day being Inspire Inclusion, we wanted to hear from individuals and HR professionals regarding their thoughts and insights surrounding inclusion within the maritime industry.
Anonymous
HR Professional
What are you doing to ensure the recruitment, retainment and development of female talent within your organisation?
We constantly strive to create an inclusive organizational culture. We offer a flexible working environment, we encourage a learning culture, offer equal opportunities and thus aim to be such an attractive employer not only for women but for everyone regardless of gender.
Have you put any practices in place to support women and their progression into leadership/advancement within their career? If so, what is this initiative?
We have not put this in place specifically for women but in general for our employees. We started a leadership program last year and are rolling it out further within the organization this year and next. Precisely because we strive to be an inclusive organization, we think it is important to focus not on women but on the person. In doing so, we always start by acknowledging inequality. Everyone is unique and has their own personality and wishes. By recognizing and talking about that, we hope to get the best out of the person, regardless of gender.
Has there been any changes to your infrastructure to meet the needs of women?
We certainly cater to the wishes of our employees in this. We offer maternity leave, parental leave (for women and men), care leave (for women and men), the possibility of breastfeeding during working hours. Most of it is also mandatory under Dutch law.
Anonymous
HR Professional
What are you doing to ensure the recruitment, retainment and development of female talent within your organisation?
We have several policies and manuals to ensure Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace:
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy: Our approach of respecting human rights in all aspects of doing business by focusing on equal opportunities, mutual respect, fair treatment, and safety.
- Mental Health Policy: Our commitment and available services to support our employees through any challenges, that can influence their happiness, collaboration, and productivity.
- Speaking Up Policy: Our approach to encourage and empower employees, to report any business, personal or other misconducts or malpractices without any fear, pressure, or duress.
- Remote Work Policy: Provides guidance to remote employees to ensure they remain engaged and productive while balancing their professional and personal life.
- HR Manual: Inclusive Practices in CSR Activities, Handling Special Requests. Our performance review and hiring processes are based on explicit and impartial evaluation criteria.
We leverage historical data to forecast future workforce expansion and establish reasonable diversity objectives that prevent reverse discrimination. Every year, we implement various initiatives to spotlight and reward successful women in our company and beyond. In addition, we give our employees the opportunity to form groups and run their own awareness initiatives and campaigns.
We have joined the Diversity@Sea initiative aiming at collecting more data and feedback to implement measures that will improve gender and cultural diversity at sea. The data will be used to run comparative analysis with non-participating vessels to help monitor the effectiveness of these measures.
Have you put any practices in place to support women and their progression into leadership/advancement within their career? If so, what is this initiative?
We actively work with our managers to identify and break unconscious biases. We deliver DEI workshops to employees in managerial and recruitment roles, encouraging discussion around equity and inclusion, challenging behaviours that go against our values, and each person’s role in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and heard. In addition, all new joiners are trained during their onboarding on workplace behaviours that foster an inclusive culture.
We ensure equal opportunities for career advancement by including equal number of male and female employees in our biggest leadership and career development training programmes.
We established a Female Mentorship Programme to connect shore and sea. This programme will create an additional support system and safe space, empowering new recruits to maintain regular contact, openly share their experiences, and raise concerns. By doing so, BSM will be better equipped to address these issues for all female colleagues onboard.
Has there been any changes to your infrastructure to meet the needs of women?
We offer various leave types (i.e., maternity, parental, childcare, menstruation, and work from home) according to the local laws.
Anonymous
HR Professional
What are you doing to ensure the recruitment, retainment and development of female talent within your organisation?
We try to be an attractive employer. We get more and more women as leaders. We have 51% men and 49% women in the company.
Have you put any practices in place to support women and their progression into leadership/advancement within their career? If so, what is this initiative?
We treat women and men the same. They all get the same support. We have 51% men and 49% women in the company.
Has there been any changes to your infrastructure to meet the needs of women?
In Sweden we have supportive laws, in other countries where we have offices we try to be as supportive as possible.
