Employment Opportunities Getting a Boost in FCCA Partner Destinations

Cruise lines are looking to give a raise to the employment of seafarers hailing from destinations around the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico, with a recent increased push by FCCA Member Lines to work with those destinations to not only source crew members (whose onboard lives bring a host of options for upward mobility), but also foster ways to create bridges leading to high-level positions including captains, engineers and more.

Michael Bayley, President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International (with a multinational workforce of over 58,000), and Amy Alexy, Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer of Royal Caribbean Group (with more than 80,000 employees worldwide), joined a Platinum Member webinar on March 31 to discuss some of those initiatives and opportunities. A lightly edited transcript follows:

Michael, you joined Royal Caribbean more than 40 years ago as a purser, can you tell us more about this amazing journey?

MB

I joined in 1981 as an assistant purser on the front desk of Nordic Prince, which was one of the only three ships of the fleet of the entire corporation back then. So I’ve seen our company grow over the decades and become a very successful vacation company, and I feel honored to be part of that journey.

I’ve always been incredibly encouraged by my relationships with my fellow employees who bring such passion, dedication and honesty to everything we do and allow us to be creative, innovative, honest and transparent – and I think one of the reasons Royal Caribbean is loved by so many of our partners, employees, travel advisors and guests is we’ve always had a fundamental honesty about our vision: delivering great vacations and wonderful memories.

What’s positive about my experience is I was a kid who joined a ship sailing in the Caribbean, and as the company grew, I grew and saw so many of my fellow colleagues grow – and our company has always been very focused on helping people evolve and develop within our corporation. Our ships’ captains have all been with us for decades. We have generations of employees.

It’s an amazing company and journey, and it gives me great optimism about the future of our company, this industry and our incredible relationship with the Caribbean. Amy, what makes your job so unique and fulfilling?

AA

I started in 2018, and I will tell you that you can immediately feel the passion and energy that our employees and crew members have for the work that we do and the guest experience that we all desire.

Passion’s the word that continues to come to mind when you think of that experience, and at the end of the day our guests are left with memories – and our job is to leave them with the best memories possible. The energy is really contagious.

Even though this past year has been a challenge, I’m confident we’re going to emerge from this as a stronger organization and industry. Just the collaboration through the different cruise lines and the connections we’ve built despite the virtual environment and hardships have been outstanding.

The employment landscape for us is extremely positive. We have five ships on order for the Royal Caribbean International brand alone, and we’re growing.

There are a lot of dynamic employment opportunities for people to join our organization, and one of the main goals we have as a company is to bring in great talent to help us grow and talent that can flourish with us as an organization for many years to come.

How has the pandemic changed your view on how you will crew ships, and what will life be like onboard?

MB

I think this has been an extraordinarily difficult time for our crew members. When we first voluntarily stopped sailing as an industry, all of us had tens of thousands crew members who needed to get home. Every country had introduced new rules and regulations, and it was phenomenally difficult to get our crew members home to their families, and the whole industry worked together.

Many crew members decided to stay on our ships because they didn’t want to go home and were fearful for their families.

And then our crew got home, and it was just as difficult in dealing with the pandemic in their home countries, concerned about their families and their livelihoods.

As a company, we tried to care for them and pay them as much as we could before they went home and created a fund for hardship to help with medical bills, mortgages, etc. to try to help them through this.

Nevertheless, this has been a long period of time and extremely difficult for our employees all over the world.

The world changed, and many lost family members, but what has been amazing is we have been in constant communication with our employees. Not long ago, we sent a survey and asked our more than 80,000 employees if they are coming back, and 98% said they were excited to come back.

During this period, we have operated our ships with minimal crew, around 100 per ship, and now we are starting to open operations – announcing 7-8 ships starting in May-July. We’re starting to now bring crew to the ships, and today we took delivery of Odyssey of the Seas and already have hundreds of crew on that ship.

Things are starting to become more optimistic, but crew today have to go through a lot of hurtles related to COVID that are not easy for them. We have entered a new phase, and the vast majority of crew understand that and the fact that we will have protocols, vaccines and guidance. But we will soon get through this, and life will return to a new normal.

The thing about our crew is they are always optimistic, they have a can-do attitude, they’re great problem solvers, wonderful communicators and will always find solutions to the issues we have to deal with.

As Amy said, we’ve got new ships coming and a lot of employment opportunities – and the thing about growing is it gives you promotion opportunities. Our entire system is built on promotions. We love to promote our people because they have the passion for our company, they learned a lot about our business, they understand our customers and are experts at making them happy.

In my whole career, especially as I was shipboard, I watched so many of my colleagues be promoted up to senior management positions – so many of those people were from the Caribbean.

This is the way Royal Caribbean has always worked, and I think that is how we will continue to work.

What is a change you have seen in crew over the decades?

MB

We have always recruited around the world – and one of the aspects our guests love is the ability to interact with crew from around the world. However, in the 70s, the majority of our crew came almost exclusively from the Caribbean, and recently that has shifted to large sourcing from the Asia/Pacific – and it would be great if we could find more balance, certainly for the Royal Caribbean brand, we would love to have more Caribbean crew working on Royal Caribbean ships.

Why do you think this shift has happened?

MB

I think one of the reasons is related to the disproportionate number of claims we have received from our employees from Caribbean countries, possibly related to the active lawyers in Miami creating a network in Caribbean countries to solicit and talk to former crew members.

Because of all the time we may spend in the various litigations that come from that, it changes the whole dynamic – and we just do not see that from other parts of the world. How can the destinations work with FCCA to increase employment opportunities?

MB

If you’re competing, albeit for a job or in business, you need to understand the competitive landscape. We’ve had conversations in many Caribbean countries about what is happening in different parts of the world and what’s favoring more hiring in different regions, and a contributing factor to that is legislation put into place by various countries focused on both seafarer rights and ensuring a process and dispute resolution where things are fairly handled.

For example, the Philippines – which has seafarers as one of their largest exports – has tried to figure out seafarers’ rights and put in a mechanism that protects the employee and the employer while making things fair in terms of resolution. That’s a model that Caribbean countries should look at and understand.

With FCCA’s help, we should have discussions on seafarers’ rights and ensuring things are set up the right way so that it works for the employee and employer. We’ve had more detailed conversations with some countries, and they seem more open to this idea.

Royal Caribbean Group has been named one of the world’s most ethical companies – and has been for a number of years. We pride ourselves on how we connect with, manage, support and provide for our employees wherever they come from, and we have a very focused culture in terms of making sure everybody can do well and thrive.

From our ongoing surveys of our employees, we consistently score in terms of employee engagement on the very high end compared with other companies or industries.

The other thing is that there is an actual maritime labor convention that provides a good framework for the rights of crew and obligations of employers, but interestingly a lot of countries have not ratified that agreement.

There’s work that needs to be done in this space by Caribbean nations, and I think FCCA could help facilitate that. Maybe when we have our next Conference, we could place this on the agenda for a discussion with the industry and communities to at least start exploring this.

We would also encourage our destination partners to individually explore this idea of enacting seafarer legislation which would contain things like arbitration in their country that can resolve any disputes that may come up and think about things such as compensation and damages – all of these issues that can be better resolved than this system that is an international legislation landscape, with legal representatives that make more out of the disputes than the employee does.

Please understand that I joined as a crew member and worked as a crew member for 11 years. I am 100 percent familiar with how it works on a ship, and I can assure you that it is an incredibly positive environment, a very caring environment, and everyone only wants a win-win outcome for our employees and their families. We care about our employees, and we need to figure out how to get a mechanism in place that cares for people and protects people.

If the legislation is in place, what type of trainings or programs can you implement to support the crew?

AA

We know that there are a few enablers that would allow us to unlock the potential of the hiring goal we have. We have said internally 10 in 10, with an aim to hire 10,000 crew members and promote 10,000 crew members every year.

Every year we go back to the sheer opportunity that exists within our organization, and the enablers in addition to having some type of a harmonized seafarer legislation would also include building up the hiring partner network.

We know this is an unlock because we do it in other countries, partnering with very reputable hiring partners to facilitate this process. We know it would be little to know money to join and that this would allow crew members to get access to quality healthcare.

Another enabler is partnering with training schools. We have a number of partnerships around the world with local governments and different schools that provide extensive training. A lot of times you’ll find us on campus several times a year. We’ve actually provided curricula to schools to help crew members prepare for life onboard. We’ve gone in and trained ourselves with shoreside staff members. We also have done workshops at local schools with resume writing and interview skills.

The goal is not just getting crew members on board our ships and to our private destinations, but also providing life skills that they can take with them far beyond their time with Royal Caribbean.

A success story we do have is our partnership with Saint Lucia, which first had roadblocks including students’ limited access to the internet; inability to pay for medical testing or travel to ships; and not having an approved medical facility to conduct our testing – so we worked closely with the local government and Monroe College to overcome the barriers, and as a result over two quarters increased the number of Saint Lucians on board our ships by 50 percent.

We know there can be ways we can work together to achieve this common goal.

Can you explain the potential career path for crew and how to get in more senior roles?

AA

As Michael mentioned, we have three generations of family members that have been with us, and we have people who retire from Royal Caribbean and start their own successful business in their home country with the skills that they gained with us.

When we’re looking for people to join us, what we see a lot is entry level positions such as cleaners, galley, assistant waiters – roles where people can join us and have the ability to learn the skills onboard our ships and advance with us. A number of years ago, we developed a comprehensive training program to teach our crew members about jobs they might be interested in before actually getting in the position.

There are also opportunities for skilled professionals, specifically in managerial roles like hotel operations and marine, and interestingly enough nine percent of our shipboard managerial roles are held by crew members from the Caribbean – so we know when we hire Caribbean crew members, they stay with us longer and advance to these managerial positions, which is what we’re looking to do more of in the future.

We also have international partnerships with maritime universities, including scholarships that hire them into the cadet program when they graduate, and there are always opportunities for training and advancement.

Why are you looking to increase Caribbean hiring?

MB

When our guests book a cruise for the Caribbean, they want to experience the culture and connect with people who are from the Caribbean, which enhances their enjoyment and creates memories.

After all, we are Royal Caribbean, and our whole vibe is Caribbean. We have a calypso band on every one of our ships, even in China. It’s kind of our DNA, and being Royal Caribbean, having more Caribbean crew would be fantastic.

What’s the game plan moving forward?

MB

I think we should talk more together. Countries, destinations that are interested in developing a stronger connection for employment should think about it individually as groups. I’d suggest two things: 1. Reach out to Russel Benford, Vice President Government Relations, Americas of Royal Caribbean Group, and start talking how to move forward, and 2. If people are interested, let FCCA know so we can come together to talk it through and see what we can develop for the future as a community.

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