IMarEST, the Insititure of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, has released interesting insights into what its members believe are the future challenges for the marine industry. in its report: Challenges in the Marine Industry: 2023 and beyond. SeaBot Maritime's CEO, Gordon Meadow was honoured to be a contributor.
Across the short, medium, and long-term, the central challenges focused for people were:
attracting people into careers in marine engineering, science and technology, retaining people and expertise as roles change, and filling existing skills gaps with new and existing talent, together with developing skills for future roles. Read the free IMarEST Report here https://lnkd.in/eQDxXSuq.
In the Report, Gwynne Lewis, IMarEST's Chief Executive states, "Marine professionals are at the heart of some of the biggest challenges of our time".
He continues, The marine profession is facing enormous skills gaps. We need to ensure that we have enough people with the right skills for now and the future. This is a priority for the short, medium and longer terms; we cannot rest on our laurels.
To compete with the other sectors in a bid to fill our skills gaps, we must ensure that we are attractive to new talent, we retain our existing expertise, and we retrain people where we have opportunity. Retaining our existing expertise is invaluable.
One of the challenges raised by our members is the need for clear career progression. I think this, together with feeling respected and valued, are at the centre of good employee retention strategies.
Employers need to provide transparency around progression opportunities and career development. As roles change, as technology and innovation continue to disrupt the world we know, taking advantage of opportunities for professional development is vital."
Gordon, who is Chair of IMarEST's Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) SIG, summarises the challenges:
“Maritime is yet to maximise the potential of new innovative business models and novel operating models offered by the collaborative economies brought about by human and machine partnerships.
This is both in decision support and in shared decision making. There is a very real skills gap, but there is also a skills lag. The key to innovative technology adoption is not solely dependent upon creating and training for entirely new roles.
The key to success is in helping current personnel to adapt too. To circumvent the threat in failing to adapt, the current workforce requires retraining and the assimilation of new skills to perform new functions through continuing professional development [by those who have first-hand knowledge of the sector and its challenges as it currently is]. This can be achieved, but it must be done using a focused and collaborative approach that recognises the importance of the workforce.
This must be understood across the global maritime community as well as those involved in the growth of the MASS sector. We must provide essential skills in working with decision support technology so that we combine our expertise with established rules and the use of analytical tools to deliver objective, repeatable actions, with the human working in, on and off the loop.”
Find out how SeaBot Maritime's can assist an organisation and its people in adopting new technology and embracing change at www.seabotmaritime.com.
Kommentare