How do you appraise the performance of your masters and chief engineers?

Master and chief engineer, also referred to as “Top 2”, constitute the senior management on board and as such they are making key decisions concerning the crew and vessel performance. But how are they part of the company performance management today? And who does the actual performance evaluation?

Green-Jakobsen has made a survey that gives you a picture of how your senior officers experience the performance evaluation process.

If you ask: “Who is the boss of the vessel?” many will refer to fleet management or technical superintendents. But in many cases, they do not see themselves as the manager of the Master or the Chief Engineer, more likely they will see themselves as a ‘controller’.

Perhaps this results in the following situations:

In some cases, it is the crewing department who are conducting the meetings with input from superintendents. In other cases, the meetings are held by different superintendents from time to time. We experience that in many companies it is difficult to identify a strong partnership between Top 2 and a counterpart ashore. The relation can be further repressed if the superintendent is a young and less experienced person struggling with building own confidence and respect from the master or chief engineer.

When it comes to making a performance evaluation of the master the performance criteria are often limited to vessel performance results, and the discussion does not include leadership style or crew engagement. Often, this is due to reasons like: “It is difficult to judge the work of someone you cannot observe”.

We see many cases in which master and chief Engineer are not really being part of the performance evaluation; yet, most companies agree to the point that ship-board management and crew engagement are among the top factors influencing the performance of the vessel.

The fact is that having a more structured “people and performance management” approach with the masters and chief engineers will have significant influence on both individual and vessel performance.

Do your senior officers find it engaging? Are your vessel managers or superintendents engaging in the briefing and debriefing?

If you cannot answer these questions with a clear Yes, let us help you get to a point where the performance evaluations provide a much greater value both for the company and the employees.