Emerging Recruitment Trends proven by pragmatic situations
Based on the forum of the "Career4Sea Talk" that took place on February 25th, 2021, we expedite more of our CEO's speech providing more details. Expediting Elvictor’s answers to the forum of career4sea
Elvictor's focus on technology since 2001 has identified before the pandemic the emerging recruitment trends that have been proven in today's maritime workplace. We have experienced the major emerging recruitment trends that form the future maritime path that is inevitable not to follow: teleworking and future work style, digitalization of quality, e-recruitment, e-learning, and agile cross-functional teams.
The job landscape that Elvictor has envisioned provides incentives to its personnel. At the same time, the home becomes the office for any Elvictor officer, allowing home and office integration to be vital, convenient, and human-focused. Elvictor was the first in Greece, before the first governmental lockdown, to send beginning of March 2020 all its employees to work from home. From October 2020 until today, 95% of Elvictor employees work from home, having established a home and office integration with SIP phones, laptops, and Elvictor's cloud system.
Digitalization of quality standards was the foremost priority of Elvictor, starting from electronic web-based checklists, procedural metrics, key performance indicators, and control engines.
The digitalization of quality continued, and the pandemic proved to be the originator of new metrics and key performance indicators. Control and monitoring remote operations led to more sophisticated e-recruitment management techniques. Elvictor tested and developed new web tools and fine-tuned the past digitalized procedures, resulting in a successful virtual screening and selection.
Focused training rate and building the seafarers' skillset were increased through interactive training and focus on the areas for improvement for each seafarer, filtered out of their appraisals and debriefing reports.
A significant development that was measurable was the multi-development of agile cross-functional teams throughout Elvictor's organization.
The cross-functional teams proved to be eligible to manage and tackle varying obstacles caused by the pandemic lockdowns. Through teleworking and with the cloud systems as their arsenal, the team members worked to respond, managing mild recruitment embarkations and disembarkations that needed proactiveness and speedy reactiveness. The cross-functional team members had to be stand by and ready to act. Timing and coordination through team collaboration was the key to success.
New skills in demand in this evolving landscape
Elvictor has invested highly in digitalization in the last two decades, forecasting the latest skills in demand in this evolving landscape. All succeeding levels of Elvictor's organization are trained continuously to possess digital proficiency and knowledge of GDPR with expertise in data privacy and information security. The last is orchestrated and structured intelligently by the DPO and CTO of the group with the team of programmers and specific rights for viewing, editing, and deleting information that goes in line with the GDPR procedures compliance. The cloud technologies that Elvictor uses that are top-tier and globally renowned include GDPR compliance tools that allow the observation for GDPR to be more effective and above best practice. Thus, the technology helps secure high-end compliance and commitment for data privacy, respecting all individuals' private information.
As mentioned above, the agile cross-functional teams structured in Elvictor with a common platform that integrates them and allows them entire interaction, minimizing the electronic bureaucracy, have resulted in cross-team collaboration. Cross-team collaboration is one of the most challenging skills for an individual to possess, simply because an individual has to maintain an agile mindset, be multitask and multifunctional, and at the same time be a problem solver.
The individual that acquires the above skills becomes more proactive and then reactive. The strive of Elvictor is to continuously develop its employees' skills and improve them on their time management, making them identify time-wasters.
All the above skillsets require the individual's flexibility, staying in the loop with their team, self-advocacy, good negotiation skills, and emotional intelligence. In the end, the individual member should be clear and to the point, building trust and rapport, and be keen on remote education.
Digital and non-cognitive skills like communication, planning, and teamwork are increasingly necessary to seize emerging job opportunities. For this reason, technology is a crucial driver of new forms of work.
Upskilling is the future to transform the workforce
Digital platforms and technology enable those with winning ideas, and for this reason, businesses innovate to create personalization and find ways to improve customer-centricity with a focus on digitalization.
Being Green with the help of technology is to have substantial social compliance, with a sense of environmental responsibility and a focus on diversity, human rights, and a recognition that business has an impact that goes well beyond the financials.
Having the above in mind, upskilling must be a priority today and not in the future.
The upskilling priority should be adaptability to unforeseen circumstances, further increase business agility, communication-based on empathy, and digital preparation by always putting people first.
Other priorities are to start with high-impact roles, promote and highlight innovation and change. These priorities will lead to a plan with a commitment to the company's vision and track results and course-correct by continuously injecting the know-how into the digital ecosystem, easing the employees' workload.
For all the above reasons, the critical challenges in the recruitment and retention that Elvictor focuses on and invests in are career development, provision of a safe and secure environment, freedom to act, and impose no-blame culture.
The mindset to lead to successful digitalization and the priorities
The first is to think of digital transformation and measure through approach to data and the benefits. The initial step, we may call "Self-Criticism," is to identify the way we currently operate and why we work in such a manner. This leads us to the approach to data and allows us to measure operational efficiency and compliance. The benefits out of this are gap analysis, areas for improvement, and restructuring design.
The second step is "dissection," where the company goes deeper into why the company operates in this way, compared to the market trends. This allows us to analyze the current processes and restructure the functions in full detail. The approach to date is reverse engineering, benchmarking, and route-cause analysis. Benefits are digitalization strategy, improvements for the status quo.
The third step is "to Focus" on what the company aims to achieve and the remedies that should change. The data approach is made through big data analysis, segmentation, decision trees, and cause-effect modeling. The benefits may be strategic initiatives, forward-looking, decision making, and vision focused.
- The last step is "the Change," and it has to do with what the company wants to possess as a competitive advantage, and this is innovation. May complete the data approach with Machine and Deep Learning models and APIs, optimize the processes and procedures, scenario building and planning, data-driven decision-making tools, and control engines. The benefits are:
- Data products
- Data validation actions and mechanisms
- A higher rate of success and minimization of risk
- Mirroring the company's vision and seeking supremacy
Watch the full video coverage
Career4Sea Virtual Talk: Working in the maritime industry in 2020s: The new trends
If you are seeking a career path with the latest emerging recruitment skillsets and innovation-driven business processes, Elvictor is happy to receive your application.
Office Personnel
Elvictor Group is currently a growth company. Therefore, it is imperative that we look for skilled and knowledgeable individuals to reinforce our ranks. However, this does not exclude us from looking for individuals with an appetite for professional growth. When it comes to work, we leave personal bias aside and, in our best judgement, reward our employees through merit alone.
Internship
We believe in the untapped potential that every successive generation carries with it. Thus, we are actively seeking for passionate young individuals that wish to begin their journey in the Shipping Industry.