Company Culture – is it an onboard thing?

Shipping companies are often multicultural and a melting pot of different nationalities with people from all walks of life. One of the tools we use to accommodate this is creating a company cultures that ensures that everyone feels welcome and comfortable. Are the ship's crew part of this company culture? Or are there separate cultures within the company?

One of the cultures we like to pride ourselves on is our safety culture, we display pictures of seafarers in full PPE, with headlines such as “Safety First”, “We Are One”, or “Safety is Our Promise”, but when office staff attends the vessels it is often done in jeans, sneakers, and no helmets. If we want to promote a healthy company culture that includes the vessels, it must be driven and nurtured from the top management, through the shore organization and down to the vessels – it is all about the signals we send.

How people behave in certain situations depends on the environment they work in. If people are in a toxic environment, they often choose not to act out of fear from making mistakes. When working in a comfortable environment, people will act and make decisions. Not necessarily the right decisions every time, but at least they act. They know that they will get the support they need, regardless of the initial outcome of their actions.

There are a lot of good and genuine people with their heart in the right place, developing a positive and strong company culture using campaigns and policies, but often it fades out when it reaches certain levels in the organization. Maybe policies get introduced to the vessels but there is a lack of follow-up – and then it is looked at during an internal audit, where the Master is questioned on why he didn’t drive a stronger culture onboard.

It is not an easy or simple task to implement and drive a healthy company culture and it needs commitment from all levels in the organization. Once everyone is included and the culture becomes “Just How We Operate”, the benefits most likely the performance will follow.

We are all in same storm, maybe in different boats – but we all want the same thing, and we are all trying to reach the same goals. We might as well support each other and create a culture where all employees are comfortable.