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Investing in Cadets today

31 Jan, 2023

Sailors' Society CEO Sara Baade shares her thoughts on our ground-breaking new report ‘Passport to the Future: Investing in Cadets Today’.

I’m really proud to launch our ground-breaking report ‘Passport to the Future: Investing in Cadets Today’.

This report follows our trailblazing global wellness and mental health conferences designed exclusively for cadets, which began in 2022. It’s the first report of its kind, using exclusive and wide-reaching data collected during the conferences to give a unique insight into the minds of Generation Z cadets.

Cadets are the lifeblood of the maritime industry. It’s their passion for a career at sea that keeps the engines running.

Working at sea may be the best way to provide financially for your family, a great adventure with the chance to travel the world. And seafarers are resilient.

But let’s not kid ourselves. There are easier options. Less challenging paths. Jobs where you get to see your children at the end of every day.

So, we need to look after them; understand what motivates them and what worries them. And that needs to happen from the very start of their careers and continue well beyond, so employers can retain their crews and ensure they are valued. After all, today’s cadets are tomorrow’s workforce and the industry’s future leaders.

At Sailors’ Society, we have placed a strong focus on cadets in recent years, allowing us to complete a circle of care for our seafarers from the beginning to the end of their maritime journey. We wanted to give them a basic toolkit to help identify issues for themselves and their crew mates and to ensure they knew where to turn for more information and support if they needed it. We wanted to start a relationship that would last their whole career and we want to help the maritime industry understand more about, and engage successfully with, their future employees.

In 2021 we held a pilot conference in India for maritime school cadets. The need for an event like this was instantly clear and the feedback was incredibly positive. We learnt a great deal from this one event and last year launched three Wellness at Sea Maritime Schools’ Conferences with just under 5,000 cadets from 40 maritime colleges attending virtual events in India, Africa and the Philippines, preparing and empowering cadets to face the realities of life at sea before they even step onto a ship. We also produced a fourth downloadable conference designed to be used by European maritime schools whenever it suited their curriculum.

Questions on everything from why the cadets chose to be a seafarer to what they looked for in an employer were asked throughout and the results are all in this report.

Each generation of cadets has its own characteristics. This report looks at what makes Generation Z, the young seafarers of today and first generation of digital natives, tick. There are often clear regional differences, and every company should take note of these divergent perspectives. Alongside our findings, prominent figures in the industry have reflected on the data and the regional distinctions they unearthed.

It is a first step in hearing the voices of cadets, rather than listening to those who talk about cadets.

Developing wellbeing solutions for the industry and specifically for cadets must be based on reliable and relevant data and this report will serve as a beacon. It provides insight that can shape future work in seafarer wellness and mental health throughout the maritime industry.

Sailors’ Society will continue to lead in this field, providing the data, creating a benchmark and enabling us to tailor every solution we develop for cadets according to their specific needs.

We have begun a new journey supporting the future generation of seafarers and are delighted to welcome the industry on board to join us.

‘Passport to the Future: Investing in Cadets Today’ can be downloaded free of charge at: https://sailors-society.org/ca...

Our thanks go to Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement for seeing the value of this research and sponsoring the report. Thank you also to everyone who has contributed, including our cadet ‘voices’ Shaina C Moriones, Takshita Patel and Wilfried Shipiki, our industry experts Kuba Szymanski, Peter Broadhurst, Dr Lauren Natalie Brown, Deepti Mankad, Martin Slade, Capt. Anand Subramanian and Mrs HK Joshi, and to the team at Sailors' Society, especially our head of wellness Johan Smith, for your hard work and efforts in bringing this together. Here’s to the cadets of today and the seafarers of tomorrow.

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