MET-3S – Assessing the Soft Skills of seafarers the right way

The rapidly progressing automation of technical tasks and the changing workforce in the maritime industry lead to the emerging importance of soft skills. The present and future demand seafarers whose skills go beyond what machines are capable of to ensure safe and efficient operations on board. This is the reason why more and more companies are looking for the right tools to measure those critical, yet hard to assess aspects of seafarers’ competence.

MET-3S is a psychometric assessment developed by SafeMetrix, that is specifically designed for assessing the soft skills and ultimately the competence of the seafarers in line with the modern-day environment. It offers the users the ability to gain more in-depth insight into the soft skills sets of their crew and empower their decision making with otherwise hard to obtain data. Unlike other solutions in the market, MET-3S offers rank-specific analysis based on thorough research and current industry norms.

Soft Skills, as opposed to technical (hard) skills, are less specialised, less rooted in specific vocations. They are sometimes referred to as transferrable skills or personal skills, and as the term implies. One of the most significant challenges in measuring soft skills right is that different positions require a different set of soft skills.
MET-3S assesses a total of 13 essential skills that are defined as being of most importance and demand for the maritime industry. These skills were selected following a thorough job analysis of the different ranks on board to match the requirement of the position and grouped into three clusters.

Coordination
Self-Control
Decision-making
Resilience
Perseverance

Achievement striving
Self-sufficiency
Dependability
Flexibility
Openness to experience

Assertiveness
Negotiations
Social Confidence
Social Conformity
Agreeableness
Social sensitivity

MET-3S assessment provides data that is suitable for use in selection, learning and development as well as the promotion of seafarers in combination with other tools such as personal interviews, work samples and technical assessments. Specifically:

✓ It can be used to assess seafarers to establish the level of their competence is at the level desired by the company for recruitment and promotion.
✓ It can be used to identify soft skill gaps of the seafarer and plan appropriate interventions while ultimately minimising time wasted on training that is not considered necessary
✓ It can be used to conduct seafarer attitude checks that will inform you of their hazardous attitudes and any social desirability tendencies.

MET-3S psychometric assessment is based on self-reported behaviours and attitudes. In this way, it complements the practice of using quarterly appraisals by superiors to measure the non-technical skills, thus deepening the understanding of the seafarer’s strengths and weaknesses and counterbalancing for biased or unfair judgement and decision making.