Shipping is a people’s business. It’s something we often say – and we mean it every single time. Because without our staff, our vessels wouldn’t sail a single nautical mile. Without our staff, ForestWave wouldn’t be ForestWave. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a pool of about 600 dedicated, skilled, and hard-working seafarers, and we are proud of our high retention rate. To ensure our crew stays happy, we constantly strive to improve the working conditions and facilities on board, as well as our employee benefits.
When you’re on board a vessel for weeks on end, your colleagues become your (albeit temporary) family. At ForestWave, we cherish that family feeling. We value knowing our staff and their families. Twice a year, we visit the home countries of our crew members. By organising activities for everyone in the ForestWave family, we get to know each other and have fun together. For those living in Europe, we organise events near our office twice a year. The next time our seafarers set foot on one of our vessels, chances are they’ll already know the rest of the crew!
Having access to good healthcare shouldn’t be a luxury. Sadly, it sometimes is. At ForestWave, we want all of our employees to be able to get the care they need. That’s why we offer free health insurance to our seafarers and their families. Because their health truly matters to us.
Do you consider yourself ambitious? Good! At ForestWave, we applaud ambition and personal growth. That’s why we offer various training opportunities and support career development. With our new crew development programme, every crew member can easily track their personal progress in an app. The best part? The app tells our staff exactly when they’re ready for a promotion to the next rank.
Working at sea can be physically demanding. To keep up with the physical demands of the job, a healthy diet is essential. Our crew members can count on three tasty meals a day, freshly prepared by their chef. To ensure the food doesn’t just taste good but is also good for them, ForestWave recently teamed up with a catering company. For every journey, the caterers design a menu of nutritious meals. The meals are prepared by the onboard chef, who not only knows about tasty and healthy food but also regularly receives training on topics such as hygiene and the shelf life of fresh products.
Family matters. We completely understand our crew members want to keep in touch with their families. While all of our vessels were already equipped with wifi, we’re currently upgrading to Starlink, which will provide a faster, more stable connection. FaceTime with the family? No problem!
ForestWave is very keen on being a good employer – it’s something we want to continually improve. We regularly ask our employees for feedback, whether it’s through an official survey or just in a conversation. And we carefully listen to everything we’re told. For instance, feedback recently led us to invest in new working gear. And the Starlink internet? That’s another result of the feedback we received. At ForestWave, we focus on more than just vessels. We focus on people.