MARITIME TRAINING - A CROWDED SPACE
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By Kabir
Sant Kabir das says in this couplet that too much of anything is bad, so one must exercise control and be moderate in everything. Too much talking is not good, neither is too much quietness. Just like how too much rain is not good and neither is too much sunshine.
We in the maritime world do not believe in this especially when it comes to TRAINING (While the whole world refers to this as Learning and Development, but we are still stuck to training).
Now why do I say this, in the past 25 years of my professional life I have seen training been given the enviable responsibility to eradicate almost every problem facing the maritime world, be it the conventions or codes coming into force, incidents, performance, behaviours or somebody’s fantasy about a particular subject.
I keep on getting a request to add a training to our existing matrix every now and then and very often the reason in one of the above. It is as if everybody works with a template and additional training is a tick in the box of that template.
I have seen the training matrices grow from a single A4 document to booklets. From statutory to value add, from classroom to CBT, from what is needed to good to haves, we are in a crowded space when we deal with maritime training.
Cometh the COVID hour and we start filling the BROKEN STOWAGE with Webinars, Online training. We are reaching permeability of ZERO in this space.
What we have not realised is there are still only 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. So more we expect the people to training or educate themselves we should allow them to other aspects of maritime life a little less e.g. work a little less, sleep a little less.
With so much trainings around we trainers are also expected to show training effectiveness for these trainings. Now how can we demonstrate training effectiveness for an ineffective thought which resulted in an additional training in the matrix.
We speak of empathy, but in this realm, we do not empathise at all. I know of incidents where people ashore have been given multiple reminders to complete one training but would not extend the same courtesy to the seafarer.
So Like everything else in life, training (Learning and development) needs optimisation. May be Kurt Lewin’s FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS is a good approach to see if the programme is NEEDED and SUSTAINABLE.
Jefe de operaciones / Inspector de carga / Loading Master
4 年I agree, training is important with a purpose.
Co-Founder @ Offing Group, Director @ IMBA& Motivational Speaker
4 年Nilesh Kawal, AFNI As a rather reactive Industry (atleast for a large part ) , your analysis holds good. The reason to train is what gets mostly lost in translation. Not only training, but , anything done with a tick box mentality will NEVER be effective. And then comes the BIG question of the quality of training (You may also read TRAINERS) . As far as Online Training is concerned (am talking of one that involves a webcam) , I would like to simply put it as - Most actors fail to keep the audience attention once the word "Action" is shouted off - so, expecting our guys to do a good job, is a long shot indeed. Yes, there is a lot more NOISE than GOOD MUSIC
Director, Commercial Maritime at International SOS
4 年Good points Nilesh. I disagree with the sentiment that digital training (in Covid times) is adding on to the strain of training matrixes. It’s quite likely that most training has turned online. As a result, simply more training has been made possible. I rather see it as a great opportunity for L&D/ training teams to reassess their training needs, because access to Trainers which was previously constrained by location or travel has been removed. This opens up the training possibilities tremendously. The need of the hour is rather to embrace these webinars etc that might be temporarily available, till the situation improves - so that maximum use is made by the people it reaches.
Master Mariner at Scorpio Marine Management (I) Pvt. Ltd.
4 年Agree Nilesh. Training is actually being misused as solution for lot of unpleasant occurrences in shipping. Its effectiveness though, we all know isnt at level we want it to be.
Principal / Director at Stripes Academy
4 年Thanks Nilesh. Agree with you completely. Wonderfully worded article.