With a combined fleet of 11 ships, this totals around 18,000 seafarers from 80 nationalities, with staff numbers expected to increase 20% when P&O launches its biggest ship ever in 2020.
Lynn Cossey, Carnival UK’s senior manager of vetting and compliance, says, ‘In terms of the on-boarding function, it’s a legal requirement to have accurate and signed contracts for all our seafarers when they join a ship and for the duration of their employment. Filestream allows us to store all this information centrally so it’s available both at sea and onshore.’
Employment contracts are complex and varied – some are annual, others are fixed term based on the specific ship and voyage – and differ due to the employing entity and nationality of the individual.
Last year alone, 27,000 different documents were generated, Filestream reports.
The Filestream-based SEA allows Carnival UK to meet the International Labour Organisation’s Maritime Labour Convention 2006 rules – now binding in international law – which set out minimum working and living standards for all seafarers.
Filestream’s EDMS integrates with Carnival UK’s HR system, Mistral, which is used to generate each SEA.
This shows the date of employment, terms and conditions, salary, entitlements and so on. This is emailed to each person, signed when they join the ship and then scanned so that a ‘wet’ signature can be shown.
Paul Warren, Carnival UK’s application analyst, explains, ‘Each SEA has a barcode attached to it which is produced based on the person’s name, an employee ID generated in Mistral as well as other details. It’s unique to an individual. When an SEA is scanned and the document ingested, Filestream reads the barcode and then automatically saves it into the relevant personnel file within the system.’
Filestream is accessed using a standard web browser by crew managers on board each ship – individuals who have the responsibility for checking crew documentation – as well as manning agents onshore.
Information is stored centrally at Carnival UK’s data centre in Southampton.
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