Safety and compliance

Article by ONBOARD Magazine

With an ever changing legislative framework within the yachting industry, it is now necessary more than ever to keep one step ahead in terms of safety and compliance

The landscape of crew employment has increased considerably over the past ten years. Looking back at the turn of the last decade, it appeared the Maritime Labour Convention would be the biggest challenge we would face in the yachting industry. Most are now familiar with the Maritime Labour Convention but as the industry has become familiar with these requirements, other changes have passed by. The Voyonic Crew Management Group have led the way within the crew employment sector, being one step ahead and ensuring our clients are well prepared for change.

There are further changes to come. The next ten years will see an ever increasing complexity of superyachts which comes with a need to invest in the training and development of our colleagues on board. It’s essential that the retention rate of crew in the yachting industry increases so that we maintain the knowledge base required to operate yachts particularly when the training required to operate on board equipment becomes more complex. As we all know, with a training course comes a certificate to keep up to date and available for audits.

This last year has seen the launch of Voyonic’s crew management software which is provided as part of the employment package. The system speeds up the take on process, taking much of the information needed to employ a seafarer and distributing that information to create the SEA and other joining documents. It will automatically validate the seafarer’s bank details and performs many of the necessary checks within seconds. The app which is available on iOS and Android allows crew to update their own details within the app and download employment documents such as payslips due to it being linked to the payroll software. The benefit to the Captain is that a full overview of the status of crew certificates including a signed SEA is available at a couple of clicks of the mouse. The Captain and seafarer will be emailed a reminder of when a certificate is in the expiry range ensuring an ENG1 will never expire midseason again.

There are also benefits for the crew. They can change their bank details and other personal information themselves and maintain a sea service log making it much faster to issue a sea service testimonial.

Our aim is to help reduce the amount of administration that is undertaken on board. The day worker function will allow a yacht to provide dockwalkers with an URL where they can upload their CVs for the individual yacht to view. They will be able to mark down when they are available and detail training courses as and when they are undertaken, hopefully reducing the amount of paper that makes its way to the bridge at the start of the summer season.

The pandemic has allowed all of us to take stock of what it is we want to achieve both individually and as an industry. Voyonic are committed to contributing to the development of crew and the new software is just one of the ways in which we do this.

If you would like further information on this software or further details on how Voyonic can help you, please contact
enquiries@voyoniccrew.com

Tags: Safety and compliance

Safety and compliance

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