Back in 2005, when 8 tanker owners met in a room to discuss salary best practice, it seemed as though the maritime industry finally wanted to catch up with what the rest of the world calls ‘HR’. It was the beginnings of the Maritime HR ‘Forum’ collective, and while at AET (one of the original 8), I was one of those members who delved through the salary data in order to better understand the fair pay for our shore-based staff, and looked forward to the annual conference, as an opportunity to meet with other HR professionals across the maritime world.
It’s incredibly exciting to now be Managing Director of HR Consulting, the company behind the now-100-member-strong Maritime HR Association – a thriving membership body still with an annual conference, and annual salary survey, and now a comprehensive programme of development and training events.
And what a year 2017 is going to be for us. We kicked it off by continuing a leadership development programme that began in Singapore and are also launching one in London in March. We’re full steam ahead booking delegates onto our annual conference taking place in May, and we were in Copenhagen with major shipping companies in January to discuss our first ever foray into seafarer salary benchmarking.
This new venture of seafarer salary benchmarking, highlights a real step change for HR Consulting. We’ve also focused very closely on salary benchmarking for shore-based staff, but the demand from our network for information on how best to pay seafarers shows that our expertise is no longer confined to the shore. We can ensure that best practice is undertaken when paying seafarers worldwide, something we take very seriously.
With maritime HR constantly changing, we are keeping on top of the latest issues within the industry, and we are proud that this year is set to be our biggest yet.
We hope you see you at one of our events throughout the year – keep up to date by following me on Twitter @SG_KWaltham.
Karen Waltham, MD, HR Consulting
