How Generation Y and Z Will Transform The Shipping Industry

Adam Lewis joined The International Maritime Employers' Council Ltd (IMEC) in 2010 where he is the Head of Training and Operations. We hope you enjoy the following guest blog post from Adam on how the next generations will transform shipping.

11 years ago I was submitting my university thesis on information overload and the problems it causes the navigator.  It was quite a new topic back then and I was resorting to research from the aviation industry to back-up my claims.  It’s something I have spoken about on a few occasions since graduating, but my paper in the Odessa conference last year may be my last on the subject, the reason being we have a new generation of navigators approaching the shipping industry – ‘Generation Z’.

We often use the term ‘Generation Y’ in shipping to describe the younger generation:  the seafarers that will continue from Generation X and become our future senior officers.  The reality is however, that Generation Y is already here.  Granted, our current recruits are still from this generation but, as a 2005 graduate, I have classmates who are now captains, pilots and company directors.

Next year, the shipping industry will start to recruit cadets from Generation Z, those cadets born after 2001.  The recruitment of this generation is potentially an exciting time for the industry.  They are a generation who still played with wooden toys in pre-school, but who are now digital natives and are trained to process a lot of layered data from one screen.  Try playing a video game against a Generation Z and this will become clear - they can process large amounts of intricate information on one screen, whilst having a different conversation over the headset.  Yet a classic trait of this generation is that they would still be quite happy taking a bike to pieces, just like their parents.

The Manila amendments have pushed training further into a digital age and Generation Z has had the perfect upbringing to meet these demands.  My first cadet salary was used to purchase a CD re‑writer, so that my projects wouldn’t be limited to the capacity of a floppy disk.  Generation Z will never know this problem and are used to handling large amounts of data.

Generation Z will come into shipping having experience in extrapolating huge amounts of information through the small 5 x 2 inch screen of a smartphone, up to 1,500 times as day.  They will be woken up by the alarm on their smartphone before emailing, texting, speaking, Facebooking, Tweeting, Whatsapping, Skyping, Instagraming, Snapchatting and Facetiming on their phone throughout the day.  The device will filter through thousands of news items and send them only the ones they will want to read.  They will then read a chapter of a novel, book a taxi, navigate to the nearest Starbucks, pay for their shopping, arrange some dates, follow an exercise routine, play a game and then search for a train home using various apps, the use of which are now integral in their everyday lives.

In 2028, just some 14 years from now, we will start recruiting ‘Generation Alpha’.  This will be a generation who are even more advanced digital natives.

In December last year, a leading British newspaper reported on research about the ability of 2 year old toddlers operating smart phones.  It reported:

‘Children as young as 12 months regularly use touchscreen devices, with most toddlers handling them completely by the age of two.’

Focusing on toddlers between the ages of 1 and 3 years, the article continued:

‘Half of parents said their child can unlock the screen while 91 per cent can reportedly swipe and 64 per cent can search the device for features’.

There are, in fact, many studies about the way toddlers engage with technology in the modern world.  Some would suggest that this is at the expense of practical skills, but I do not believe this is necessarily the case.  Toddlers are still playing with wooden toys and high school students are still undertaking practical workshop classes.  What I do believe however is that the younger generations are becoming increasingly adaptable to technology, because they have to be.

This is important as we are only touching on the actual capability of integration at present.  I believe that drone technology will soon be commonplace in shipping.  The US Navy are already sending drones into shipboard fires ahead of fire parties, to assess the location of casualties and the Royal Navy have introduced drones to carry out exterior ship surveys whilst at sea.  A merchant ship will soon be able to send up a drone to assess a suspicious craft showing up on the radar in high risk areas or to get a bird’s eye view of a potential navigational hazard or collision situation.   This will feed yet more information to the bridge, but our new generation of officers are already showing they are capable of meeting this demand, to ultimately make a more adaptable, safer industry.

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