Chapter 7 – Time Travelling

A typical Monday afternoon at Nor Tankers in Oslo: after a stream of meetings, Norleif Fjeldheim goes time travelling. Norleif is responsible for career planning and business strategy – it is his central task to think ahead with regard to the company’s future. This includes employing the right number of persons with the right qualifications – not only today, but years ahead as the personnel market may be short of certain qualifications at times. Thus, Norleif‘s ability to forecast movements in the market is crucial for Nor Tankers’ success now and in the future.

Three hours ago in Nor Tankers’ conference room, the management has made plans for the next five years. “As you all know”, explains CEO Olav Akerson, “the market development requires a shift in the composition of our fleet. Plus, we will have new chart systems and new types of engines, saving us lots of time and fuel.” “On the other hand”, replies Norleif, “both systems and engines will require additional training capacities, training expenses, and expanded workforce.”

Indeed, international regulations require up-to-date ECDIS (Electronic Chart And Information System) and engine licenses for all nautical and technical personnel. In former times, a general license used to be fully sufficient. Today, nautical personnel has to be trained on exactly the ECDIS version available aboard their vessels. The same applies to engines and engineers. As a result, the market movements leading to the actual development of the fleet are associated with additional training needs as well.

Checking the Nor Tankers’ personnel pool in HansaCrew, Norleif immediately oversees the situation: 2nd engineers are rare now and will be more than rare in five years. Norleif’s first step is to identify a couple of 3rd engineers obtaining their 2nd engineer licenses in their home countries right now.

In a second step, he also finds that a number of captains and chief engineers are due for retirement. Against this background, he is more than happy that Lukasz and some other 2nd engineers will be promoted to chief engineer in the next two years while a couple of 1st officers are about to become captains soon. Nevertheless, Norleif uses HansaCrew to “travel back in time” to derive decisions from past market movements and finds proof for his statement in the conference: the company will need even more captains and chief engineers, and all of them will have to obtain the respective ECDIS or engine license.

One week later, the management has another meeting. Norleif presents his strategy plans. “I think, we will see an increase in both recruiting and training expenses. However, this will be more than made up for by the savings in time and fuel.” “What about 3rd engineers?” asks Olav. Norleif points out: “Look at this graphic, please. We have learned from the last couple of years that we‘re on the right path holding our employment level steady here. I think, we should continue to pursue our strategy to be the first to identify the most promising new blood in the market.” “Thank you, Norleif. I guess that proves us right. Next issue!”

Satisfied, Norleif closes his presentation. Once more, Nor Tankers is an example for HansaCrew’s philosophy to “permanently occupy all positions with the best persons available.”