Anyone have knowledge with charterer expectations that every company must have a certain percentage of termination, demotion, and discipline?
I have heard if your company is above the curve they are thought of as being unresponsive, and if below they are thought of as too soft.
Any thoughts?
I’ve never heard of anything like that. A high rate of dismissals might just be the result of poor screening of initial hires. A charterer may see what action a company takes after an incident but my guess is that only the Captain and/or Chief would come under scrutiny.
K.C.
Cappy you might want to break this down into different sections.
The charter requirments are very different from a tug and barge, or tanker operation, as compared to a construction, ROV boat, or drill ship, MODU.
I know on a tug you only will see customers at the docks if you are lucky, most of the time only talk to them on the phone.
On a drill ship or construction boat the customer is onboard with you. We have 4 company men onboard with us 24/7. They see everything everybody does, every day, all the way to the lowest galley hand. You can’t hide anything from them. On those type of vessels you have to have a quality, respectful, people friendly crew that is still capable of doing the job, or they will be on a chopper quick.
[QUOTE=cappy208;80134]Anyone have knowledge with charterer expectations that every company must have a certain percentage of termination, demotion, and discipline?
I have heard if your company is above the curve they are thought of as being unresponsive, and if below they are thought of as too soft.
Any thoughts?[/QUOTE]
Never heard of such a thing.
When matters aren’t working out - there is a reason. Most fellows that have to go (from a charterer’s perspective), “earn” their eventual dismissal and based on my experience, go to great pains to demonstrate their capacity to be either uncooperative or just plain disagreeable. It takes the first outburst of outrage in response to a routine work request or about 3 days aboard to suss out who is there to contribute and who doesn’t get it. It is very, very rarely that a one off mistake that does them in.
Of course the 2 skippers that ran their ships aground at great speed were definite “one mistake was all it took” exceptions. Lying will also do you in quick. My thoughts.
Where I work, loyalty up and down, is a priority.
Crew retention is a priority.
Hiring good people is a priority.
I’ve worked with lots of people that worked other places, very few leave after getting hired.
It’s almost unheard of to get fired.
The reason I posted this is because last week during a vetting the vettor mentioned (I think it was a faux pas ) that my company has a very low turnover, lower than most. Apparently the charterers rank that amongst criteria on whether to use us versus them. Knowing how invasive the charter vettings are, nothing surprises me any more!
It seems pretty even across all spectrums that all the outsourcing by the majors is turning from hands off chartering to having to meet the same criteria that the big oil companies couldn’t afford to do when years ago they decided to outsource. Kind of like a catch 22 is occurring over the last 30 years or so!
As far as crew goes I think that most charterers would agree that lower turnover is almost always better. An exception might be if the vessel is not performing up to par. But like ChiefRob pointed out there is a lot of variance among different sectors.
K.C.
As one of those doing the evaluatin’, low turnover usually means the “management” and “shipboard” teams are working well.
It is a “positive” observation.
If there is a new unfamiliar team each time we show up, it means (to us) look deeper. We follow individual engineers and captains through their careers, especially the good ones, and especially the “uncooperative” ones. It tells us what to look for and how fast we can accomplish what needs doing. Seeing the good ones, even after 10 years, warms our hearts.