07 | Social impact
Talent development, training, and education
With our People First approach, we believe in hiring for mindset and training for skills
Hafnia believes in educating young professionals through a combination of theoretical and practical training. We offer a traineeship program that accepts fresh college and university graduates on an annual basis. Hafnia also collaborates with Danish Shipping’s organization Blue Denmark on a mentorship programme, which has secured a strong pipeline of talented trainees.
Our trainees go through a two-year shipping curriculum, alternating between lectures and on-site teaching in relevant subjects, including ship knowledge, commercial negotiations, business ethics, economics and maritime law.
The trainees study this curriculum in conjunction with related work experience in rotating departments at Hafnia, such as chartering, operations and our bunker desk. They are also exposed to other departments such as claims, controls and projects to gain a well-rounded and holistic understanding of how a modern shipping company works. This allows the trainees to continue expanding their maritime education while supplementing it with practical hands-on commercial experience.
Hafnia also invests in trainee program for seafarers, where cadets from India, Philippines, China, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Denmark, Romania and Ukraine are provided with trainee berths on board in order to cater to our future seafaring officer’s pipeline.
We have offered a variety of training sessions to our employees:
- Anti-corruption training (mandatory)
- Mindfulness
- Unconscious bias training
- Cyber-security
- Ambitious leadership (mandatory for all people managers)
- Various competency and soft skills training for seafarers
Through quarterly appraisal dialogues Hafnia encourages managers and employees to mutually reflect on ways to develop each employee’s talents in service of the organisation. During these dialogues, employees discuss how they can develop in specific focus areas through our tailor-made talent development programs, which include:
- Additional training and courses
- Coaching
- Mentoring
- Job rotation
- Overseas attachments
- Networks
- Career and succession planning
- Feedback sessions
- Promotions
Training to defend against our unconscious biases!
We conducted an unconscious bias training programme facilitated by Sara Louise Muhr, Academic Director of the Copenhagen Business School Business in Society Platform ‘Diversity and Difference’.
Our ambition was to help Hafnia employees foster awareness and tools to start blocking their own biases – allowing us to create a more inclusive workplace which would not only lead to improved employee wellbeing but also superior business results.
We all have biases that affect our choices and decisions. Unconscious bias usually refers to prejudice or unfounded perceptions in favour of or against a person or group of people in a way that is considered unfair. Many researchers suggested that this happens as the brain makes quick judgments based on past experiences and other influences, which could result in certain people getting penalised unfairly.
Becoming aware of our unconscious bias can help us avoid forming prejudices against others, which ultimately will create a more diverse, inclusive, and fair workplace.
The training was introduced as mandatory for all people managers at Hafnia, but the invitation was extended to all our shore-based employees as we could see from the Diversity Study Group questionnaire conducted over the summer, that there was an interest to get more training about diversity. We were pleased to see more than 80 people participate.