We are focused on developing a working environment that actively promotes the health, safety, and wellbeing of all our employees. We have begun understanding how we can meaningfully work with our supply chain to ensure our values are mirrored across all actors. Social
Collaboration is a key value of ours – we make the effort to listen to our colleagues and use their experiences to inform our decision making processes. This collaboration has been formalised in our engagement with Partners in Maritime Safety (PiMS). The initiative focuses on visible leadership, reflective learning, and behaviour. To enhance leadership visibility and learn from colleagues, regular visits are scheduled whereby senior leaders and managers visit ships and talk with crewmembers. Reflective learning aims to deliver more effective incident learning by using facilitated group discussions to talk through issues, share personal experiences, and stories. This method of engaging with colleagues has been seminal in prompting changes of behaviour, and learning from incidents and near- misses Our crew and colleagues are the most important element in our business functions. In 2021, our global network of Mental Wellbeing Champions continued their work in providing a vital source of support for employees. In combination with V.Group’s work with the International Seafarers’ Welfare and Assistance Network (ISWAN), the Sailors Society, and our Let’s Talk podcast, we hope to carry on removing the stigma associated with mental health issues. Additionally, we continue to provide all colleagues with access to 24/7
confidential mental health counselling services, and we strongly encourage colleagues to use this service as they wish. The industry is under more pressure than ever before. Quite rightly, stakeholders are inquiring into not just our environmental interaction, but the wider impact we have on society. Shipping has provided meaningful employment to many millions around the globe for centuries, not just directly, but in facilitating trade in all reaches of the world. It is insincere to declare that this genuine positive does not come with increased risks. The transportation of illegal cargoes, the facilitation of illicit money transfers, and the potential for human rights infringements all could be features in the industry: only a portion of ESG risks are housed in the core operations of a company; the remainder extend across multiple layers of the value chain. We have long engaged with suppliers to ask that they mirror our ethics and values, however, we have now realised that an enhanced due diligence process is a strong demonstration the industry that more must be done, and we are going to do it. V.Group are voluntarily commissioning the development and implementation of a framework to increase the robustness of our current supply chain due diligence, being the first in the industry to do so. As part of this process, a selection of our 10,000+ suppliers will be subject to a rigorous due diligence process undertaken with the assistance of a third-party consultancy. Supplier selection will be based on criteria considering key ESG risks associated with the activity and location of the suppliers. We are excited to be the first in our industry to develop such a programme and will openly share our learnings so that our peers can grow with us. Successful implementation of this programme will see a significant increase in the level of visibility throughout our supply chain, enabling better business decision making, all while improving the lives of all the people involved, directly or indirectly, in V.Group’s operations.
us to focus on the adherence and attendance of relevant processes and trainings, as well as realistic safety indicators. At V.Group, everything starts with training. It is the pillar of advancing our health and safety culture. To provide the highest quality of service to our clients, V.Group offers a multitude of tailored further and advanced learning courses to our employs that go beyond basic training requirements. Creating learning opportunities and helping our employees reach their potential is beneficial for all parties. As part of our ongoing commitment to invest in the development of our talent, V.Group has partnered with Skillsoft, a global leader in online learning. All shore colleagues will have access to this platform, which provides online learning across a selected range of business and personal competences such as leadership, commercial, financial, project management, customer service and wellness. This significant investment by V.Group will play a vital part in achieving our strategic objectives. In 2021, we published our V.Group Safety Climate Assessment Report, in collaboration with Lloyd’s Register. We commissioned this report to evaluate links between safety climate perceptions and performance, identifying areas of improvement to help keep our workers safe. Results were overarchingly positive, with communication, learning and leadership all scoring very highly. We identified opportunities for improvement including managing shoreside workloads differently to permit more time to be taken to get the job done safely, plus working to identify any further barriers and enablers in reporting near misses. We are optimistic that the changes we are making as a result of this work will result in a safer workplace for our people. Photo: Cabildo Bentalan, MT Cabo Kamui
We frequently engage with all colleagues on the issues that matter to them, helping create a better understanding of how to identify and manage the most important issues. We believe this approach is the best way to achieve our mission to be the safest, most highly skilled operation in the industry. In 2021, COVID-19 continued to impact our operations, with constantly changing laws across multiple jurisdictions making a uniform approach nigh on impossible. Despite this, we achieved improvements across several key metrics, including a 42% drop in marine incidents and a 96% drop in those marine incidents that were classified as serious. This improvement is a credit to our colleagues and their admirable engagement with numerous safety trainings and initiatives, subsequently executing their work with a degree of unrivalled professionalism. We target zero accidents and injuries across our operations, though incident rates are not the only indicator we use to monitor our health and safety performance. We track multiple KPIs that are designed to challenge us to continually progress, with a focus on near-miss reporting, training and safety culture development. We encourage our colleagues to record and report all incidents, no matter how small, to ensure we can learn from each other. Our KPIs are not designed to be a show piece, but to challenge us to continually perform and monitor our progress and development. We encourage our colleagues to record and report all incidents, no matter how small, to ensure we can learn from each other. Our strong belief is that to execute our vision of a transparent and progress-driven work environment, employees must feel empowered to openly raise issues. The performance indicators we disclose are reflective of this culture and allow
Photo: Capt. Marlon Cataquis, Tradewind Legend
Key Metric
2021 Data
2020 Data YOY% (+/-)
Lost Time Incident Rate [TR-MT-320a.1]
0.25
0.23
+8.70%
Total Port Calls in countries with the 20 lowest rankings in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index [TR-MT-510a.1]
270
268
+0.75%
Bribery and Corruption Charges [TR-MT-510a.2]
$0
$0
0
Total Number of Marine Incidents % of which classified as very serious [TR-MT-540a.1]
39 0.06%
67 1.49%
-41.79% -95.97%
Avg. PSC Deficiencies / Detentions Per Inspection [TR-MT-540a.3]
-18.14% / -73.33%
1.0027 / 0.0082
0.88 / 0.0048
12 | V.Group
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