Shipping cuts training when it needs it most

Irene Rosberg, who runs the Blue MBA at Copenhagen Business School, returns to Splash today. 

When business conditions become difficult, training is often one of the easiest budgets to cut. In shipping, that is becoming an increasingly dangerous habit.

The industry is asking its people to understand decarbonisation, artificial intelligence, cyber risk, increasingly complex regulation and geopolitical disruption, often all at the same time. Yet education and professional development can still be regarded as discretionary expenditure rather than part of a company’s ability to operate successfully. There is a contradiction here because shipping wants better leaders, more skilled seafarers and managers capable of making increasingly complex decisions, but those capabilities do not simply appear when they are needed.

Today’s maritime leader must be commercially savvy and technologically literate. Executives need sufficient understanding of AI and digitalisation to question the information put in front of them rather than simply accept it. They need to understand cyber risk, regulation and decarbonisation while remaining capable of responding when geopolitical events suddenly alter routes, costs and commercial assumptions. Operational experience remains enormously valuable, but experience alone cannot prepare someone for every challenge now entering the industry.

This is why I find the tendency to reduce training when companies come under financial pressure so short-sighted. Sometimes the lack of the right skills, knowledge or leadership capability may be contributing to the difficulty a business is experiencing in the first place. Cutting the investment that could address those weaknesses can make the problem worse. The same applies at every level of the industry. We rightly talk about training seafarers to handle new fuels, equipment and technology, but professional development cannot stop once somebody reaches shore management or the boardroom. Seniority should not exempt anyone from continuing to learn. If anything, the consequences of outdated knowledge become greater as responsibility increases.

A chief executive does not need to become an AI engineer or a cyber specialist, just as a board member does not need to become an expert in every new fuel. They do, however, need enough understanding to challenge specialists, recognise risk and make informed decisions about issues that may determine the future of the company. That requires investment and shipping has historically placed considerable value on experience, and rightly so. But the speed of change means that what someone knew ten or even five years ago may no longer be sufficient for the decisions they face today. Lifelong learning cannot be a phrase we use in speeches while treating the training budget as expendable when margins tighten.

Companies should also look carefully at what they mean when they say they cannot find the right talent. If the perfect candidate is expected to arrive with operational experience, commercial acumen, digital literacy, regulatory knowledge, leadership capability and an understanding of emerging technologies, perhaps the answer is not simply to keep searching. Perhaps companies need to build more of that capability themselves. That means identifying people with potential, exposing them to different areas of the business and continuing to educate them throughout their careers. It means developing seafarers for shore positions and managers for executive responsibility. It also means recognising that the future leaders of shipping may come from broader professional backgrounds than they did previously.

Education should not simply prepare somebody for their next job. Done properly, it creates organisations that are better equipped to deal with the unexpected. That matters enormously in shipping because unpredictability has become part of everyday management. A geopolitical event can alter trading patterns overnight. A cyber incident can affect operations across a fleet. New regulation can change investment decisions, while AI can alter established ways of working faster than traditional training structures can respond.

No company can predict every disruption. It can, however, decide whether it has people capable of understanding what is happening and responding intelligently. Human capital should therefore not be regarded as a cost to be cut when times are difficult. It is part of the infrastructure of a maritime business, every bit as important to resilience as technology, vessels and financial capacity.

Shipping will spend enormous sums preparing its fleets for the future. It should be equally serious about preparing the people who will be expected to lead them.

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