Shipping must seize the day to land next generation of talent

The "new norm" of a data-driven, digital shipping industry is being reshaped daily by new technologies, mindsets, skill sets, expectations and regulations. Increasingly, strategies executed in all these areas are balancing data and experience-driven decision-making.

This is important because people can and will continue to play a pivotal role regardless of machine learning or unmanned, autonomous vessels. Despite how fast the technology evolves or how quickly we adopt it, the new norm is ultimately about people.

However, with technology impacting on us almost daily and companies planning and executing digital growth strategies, we are going to have to fight to secure the people we need.

Historically, age, experience, skills and training have defined talent and led shipping organisations to determine where someone is in their career, and possibly their trajectory within a company.

Today, that equation is being redefined; technology and people are coupled together, creating a new dimension that requires a new approach to talent development.

We must redefine our talent needs related to new types of skills such as data-driven decision-making, predictive data analytics, systems and design thinking, integration engineering and cyber awareness.

The rate of technological change is also redefining how we characterise talent, create learning mindsets and the ability to rapidly and effectively embrace change. After all, innovation is nothing more than fast learning.

At an industry and company level we need a culture that can blend these together and recognise the need for specialists and generalists in terms of strategic decision-making.

We need to develop a workforce capable of handling the traditional areas such as structures, machinery, and marine operations that tend to focus on isolated systems, with the emerging, non-traditional areas of integrated cyber networks, which interconnect, monitor and control shipboard systems and equipment.

The people we look to hire today are those who can continually adapt and learn fast.

We look for different skill sets in these people because we require systems thinking, design thinking and a convergent mindset. By this, I mean a strategic perspective, focused on comparative risk thinking.

Integrating skills

Talent development programmes for these people must extend to continuous learning models and focus not just on technical disciplines, but apply an integrated path to build skills in strategic, operations and systems thinking.

But even as we rethink and raise the bar for the talent we seek, we are also dealing with a shrinking global technical talent pool. According to recently published analyses, available technical talent will shrink anywhere from 2% to 15% by the end of 2017.

So with fewer candidates available from traditional talent sources, we will have to go outside and recruit talent from non-traditional sources with non-traditional degrees. We will have to look beyond what is required just to fit a role today.

We find ourselves at a crossroads in terms of recruiting and developing traditional skill sets from traditional sources to work in a more connected and complex shipboard environment.

As an industry, we need to supplement and complement traditional skill sets with non-traditional skill sets. And we need to do that quickly, to secure the best candidates and to drive the changes we all know are coming and shaping the future winds of shipping.