‘Seafarers are a forgotten workforce’

Ian Florance contacted Claire Pekcan for an interview after watching Why Ships Crash, a BBC documentary. This analysed the 2021 incident when the Ever Given, one of the world's largest container ships, blocked the Suez canal for six days.

Claire is a British Psychological Society member whose company, Safe Marine, works with UK ports, international merchant shipping and other offshore environments. Here, she discusses what psychological and cultural factors may have contributed to the incident.

In Why Ships Crash, Claire was introduced as a marine applied psychologist.

"That job title helps in the industry where I apply occupational psychology techniques and theories. I'm often brought in when there's been a serious incident: a near miss, a release of chemicals or oil or if containers get lost. These are the presenting symptoms and my job is to contribute to a diagnosis of the condition.

I work in merchant shipping, mostly with people who operate tankers rather than container ships. To give an example, I'm about to start a project on management performance and feedback. Feedback, particularly if it's negative, can cause huge problems when you not only work with but live with people for extended periods of time.

As you can imagine, ships with 18-20 people on board can become a powder keg, and the counselling training I took in 2009 is really helpful in looking at this sort of issue."

"The BBC programme discussed hierarchy and leadership, asking who had ultimate control over a ship in the canal; the captain or the pilot? "

Claire describes safety as a major focus:

"Safety culture surveys often lead to training, particularly of leaders. This can be a challenge as there's not really the space to do training on most merchant ships. Shoreside training takes key people off ships who have to be replaced, so that can be difficult as well.

My PhD at Royal Holloway related the psychological contract to safe and unsafe behaviours at sea, so I have a long-standing interest in the area. I find the psychological contract a useful vehicle for explaining why people behave in certain ways – taking short cuts and not wearing safety equipment, for instance."

The criminalisation of seafarers

Claire argues that, overall, shipping is a couple of decades behind shoreside thinking about leadership and people management. She refers back to the BBC documentary to illustrate this:

"In many industries a hierarchical, command and control, Type X management style and structure has been replaced by flatter, more open models.

The BBC programme discussed hierarchy and leadership, asking who had ultimate control over a ship in the canal; the captain or the pilot? And, if someone lower down in the hierarchy wants to challenge decisions they think are wrong, how easy is it to do this? That's exactly what didn't happen on the Ever Given, with a resultant impact on the world economy.

I view the crews on a ship as a team who should, like any team, be able to honestly share their views. A blame culture has developed: the big question when an accident happens is "who's liable" and this has resulted in the criminalisation of seafarers and a reluctance to challenge decisions."

Crew are often multi-national and multi-lingual and this can also affect decision-making and leadership effectiveness. By contrast to their cultural diversity, ships crews are gender homogenous:

"98 per cent of crews are men. Separation from families can impact psychological health on long voyages. You can see this particularly when cadets – apprentices – are given experiences on ships during their training. The industry should take more account of the obvious problems caused if, say, a female cadet joins an all-male Russian ship or a young male is the only person from India on an all-Croatian vessel.

Social isolation is also even greater than you would think. Some ships don't have web connections or web access is rationed or priced. Near-accidents can be caused when ships come close to shore to try to pick up wi-fi signals."

I wondered if Claire got involved in recruitment design since this might, if applied professionally, solve some of these problems. 'I've written a competency framework for seagoing staff for one of the trade associations. The issue was current when I worked on my MSc in the mid-nineties. However, the industry hasn't caught up. Though it's beginning to see the importance of competencies, it hasn't made the link between potential and actual performance.'

Psychology at sea

The last 40 or so years have seen huge changes in how merchant fleets are registered and owned:

"In the eighties there were lots of redundancies. Ships were also "flagged out". Before then they were registered under their own nation's flags but increasingly, they're registered elsewhere: Panama and Liberia have the world's two largest ship registries. Much legislation is international but interpreted by nation states with different employment legal frameworks. This carries through into companies' policies on pay, contracts and hours of working."

"I've spoken to seafarers who have been on their ships for two and a half years, unable to get off. They truly are a forgotten workforce."

The 2017 Maritime Labour Convention laid down that an individual can't work on board longer than 12 months:

"Captains might work on a 12-week rotation but it's common for the lower-skilled to work for nine months straight. Crew members must have a contract (this wasn't the case for a long time), but many receive low level, voyage-only contracts. Ships might be registered in a distant country, owned by an individual or group, and the crew might have been employed by a manning agent. The result is that many of the crew aren't, in fact, clear who they're working for! You can see how these factors create huge uncertainty."

The results are stark. Claire tells me that recent research by Yale with a sample of 1500 staff showed 25 per cent suffering clinical depression, 20 per cent ideating suicide and the majority experiencing anxiety:

"The pandemic has exacerbated this. I've spoken to seafarers who have been on their ships for two and a half years, unable to get off. They truly are a forgotten workforce."

Does Claire get involved in 'human factor' areas, the sorts of issues that affect other transport areas; signalling on railway systems, for instance?

"I learnt about human factors during my MSc but I tend to only get involved at a conceptual level. It is an issue for shipping. As an example, electronic systems have replaced paper-based navigation. Digital navigation system manufacturers offer little consistency in the arrays they offer. Often operators get only a one-week training course which is insufficient for such complex and important pieces of technology. There's a lot of work to do here on the interface between people and navigating systems."

'It takes a major event to accelerate change'

Claire's route into this fascinating area was via radiography.

"I travelled the world for seven years as a radiographer. It was a wonderful life. You could work on your own or, in the case of a big accident, as part of a team. It was the latter situation which drew me to psychology. Why were some teams almost telepathic while others were disaster areas?

I completed a Masters degree at Hertfordshire and then wrote round to Occupational Psychologists offering help with research – and it was the Warsash Maritime Centre, now part of Southampton Solent University, which replied. My career has involved consulting, training and academic work: I became Professor of Applied Maritime Psychology at Southampton Solent in 2016 though I'm now solely involved in my own company.

Drawing on my own experience, I think young people studying psychology shouldn't assume there's only one route into the area. You can work in a variety of industries and areas with a psychology degree: you don't need to feel you have to become a psychologist formally."

I suggested to Claire that she seems to have cautious optimism about change in the maritime industry:

"There are not enough people with psychology knowledge in the industry as a whole but there are some in training and an increasing number of human factors staff. Sadly, it takes a major event to accelerate change.

That's certainly true of the pandemic which has created real problems in the seagoing workforce. So people issues have risen up the agenda. Will they stay there? I don't think anyone knows. I can hope, but I know that environmental legislation is a major issue for owners and operators and this might reduce the priority given to people. We'll see."