BW’s employees are central to our mission and vision to be Best on Water. By creating a healthy and diverse workplace onshore and at sea, BW builds a culture of innovation, high performance, and Zero Harm.
BW Wellness Programme
The BW Wellness Programme’s philosophy is to create a cultural change across the organisation that continually supports seafarers’ holistic well-being instead of focusing on single events.
Holistic well-being means:
- Physical well-being (where your body is cared for to achieve optimum performance),
- Mental well-being (educating oneself and challenging the mind to learn more)
- Social well-being (connecting well with others)
The Programme connects to the internet and mobile-enabled platforms. After keying in their individual health data (e.g. age, weight, blood pressure), crew members can focus quickly on their areas of interest such as fitness, nutrition, wellness, and education.
For example, the Programme may suggest meal plans for crew members, remind them to exercise to burn off excess calories, ask them to plan a game to bond with colleagues or encourage them to improve their mental health through mindfulness exercises.
In 2021, we amplified World Mental Health Awareness Month, and benefitted from a panel of internal and external speakers who explored how we can each help to break the stigma surrounding mental health.
We provided employees with resources such as access to Insight Timer, a website with guided meditation sessions, offered mindfulness sessions where colleagues explored the neuroscience of our brain, and we ran a mental health awareness pilot training for people managers. We know mental wellbeing matters all year round, and we look forward to further supporting employees with this.
Diversity and Inclusion
BW embraces differences that make our employees unique
BW is committed to diversity and inclusion. The collective sum of individual differences, life experiences, knowledge, unique capabilities, and talent that our employees invest in their work represents a significant part of our culture. BW embraces differences in age, ethnicity, family and relationships, and all other characteristics that make our employees unique.
Currently, BW has employees aged 18 to 67 years old from over 60 nationalities, forming a multigenerational and international team. We support the development of our employees throughout their BW journey, and we’re proud that so many of our people choose to remain at BW for a long time.
Gender Diversity
Owing to a combination of traditional preferences and biases, there is a very small number of female seafarers in the industry. They represent only 2% of the world’s seafarers, and 94% of that small number have chosen to work in the cruise industry. For onshore positions, the balance is better, and most of our offices comprise 30 – 50% female employees.
Local recruitment and training
We are committed to developing employees, and we ensure our development programme shortlists are
representative of our diverse workforce. In 2022 we will launch Voyager, a senior leadership development programme designed to equip colleagues with the awareness and capabilities they need to lead in an increasingly uncertain world. We are pleased to have delegates from multiple affiliates and anticipate delegates will enjoy broadening their internal network while on the programme.
Familiarising seafarers with BW and shipping culture is also a priority. For example, in Nigeria, we set up the BW Crew Integration Program to bridge cultural and language differences and develop positive relationships across people of different ranks.
Beyond providing job opportunities for locals in the areas where we do business, BW has set up the BW Group Cadet program to develop our own in-house talent around the world. Having this talent pool ensures a steady supply of officers to all our managed vessels.
Cadets selected from ratings and maritime academies are fully sponsored by BW to pursue their maritime university studies. Over the years, BW has developed more than 1697 cadets from the Philippines, India, China, Nigeria, Russia, Romania and other countries. 685 of them currently sail as BW Officers today.