As individuals, we are imbibed to follow the morals, values and norms of the society that are passed on to us to ensure that we do the right thing even when nobody is watching. In sync with this thought, Mrs Julia Anastasiou, Managing Director, Crew Management, OSM Maritime Group says, “My own leadership is critical as it sets the tone for others to follow so I am careful to ensure I lead with integrity.”

Having over 25 years of experience in maritime industry, Julia is associated professionally with the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers as a Fellow of the institute and academically with the University of Warwick. She has spent the last 14 years in the OSM where she gradually advanced to her current position as Managing Director for their global crew management organization.

Her focus is on driving performance, providing inspiration, motivation, and guidance to other leaders and managers in the Group. She has set objectives for the team and ensure they achieve the goals effectively and efficiently. She informs that currently the OSM Maritime Group, has over 20 offices worldwide, 17,000 seafarers and 1,000 shore staff. “We employ in excess of 60 nationalities and are truly global,” she adds.

In an in-depth electronic conversation with Miss Delphine Estibeiro of Marex Media, Julia expresses her thoughts on coping with the pandemic, empowering women, and OSM strategy to raise awareness about the profession, to name a few.

Covid19 pandemic brought restrictions, how did OSM managed it? And how well-prepared are they for any such situations in the future?

OSM acted immediately by setting up a COVID Task Force. The task force focused on the daily challenges, aligning expectations, setting protocols and reporting into the Neptune Declaration for which we are members. All teams heading specific fleets had daily dialogue with their customers and we kept frequent meetings with union representatives and regulatory bodies to ensure the seafarers and customers were properly informed and attended to during the most challenging of times.

We provided assistance to our seafarers when in need in terms of monetary help, we set up a vaccination centre in the Philippines and we ensured the families of our seafarers were well informed and taken care of.

With vigilance, determination, professionalism and persistence, we maintained all vessels on hire, carried crew changes regularly, chartered aircrafts when commercial flights were not available and found around-the-clock solutions for our customers.

We were even able to fully man vessels ready for delivery and found ways to change our crew while always keeping them safe.

Several and various initiatives were carried out to ensure the continuity of the business and without the aligned effort of all employees, we would not have had such success.

You are known for your commitment to empowering women in shipping; so tell me in a pool of over 87,000 seafarers, what is the ratio of women onboard the vessels of Maritime and Offshore?

The industry average stands at 1.28% when it comes to women at sea. This is a tiny fraction considering the global seafaring pool is 1.89 million seafarers’ onboard approximately 74,000 merchant vessels (International Chamber of Shipping, 2022). At OSM, we are proud to say 5% of our 17,000 are female seafarers. Also, women in our shore organization account for 53% of the workforce out of 1,000 employees, of which 3 hold Managing Director positions.

What is OSM strategy to raise awareness of shipping as a lucrative career to the young generation in India?

Having a visible presence is critical for raising awareness however this must be closely linked to governmental and representative organizations such as FOSMA and MASSA together with the DG Shipping to produce national incentives to attract talent to this great industry.

As a MD for crew management, how do you inspire the seafarers to do better?

I have a fantastic team who champion for the rights and safety of seafarers. With our OSM Values alive in every office, every process and every employee, together we live our values and ensure our colleagues at sea are always prioritized and treated fairly with the utmost respect. That inspires seafarers to be the best version of themselves. Through anti-corruption policies and international memberships with MACN and the UN Global Compact on Sustainability, OSM aspires to be the employer of choice and therefore attract seafarers ready to be inspired.

Many a times seafarers are mistreated for no fault of theirs, in your opinion, what best practice principle a ship management company should adopt?

Similar to what I said above, by seeing seafarers as colleagues, we automatically and consciously choose to treat them with respect and fairness. By practicing deeply rooted company values, we again operate in a manner that will ensure we treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves.

In 2017, IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee agreed to include marine autonomous surface ships on its agenda. Is it a boon or bane if implemented, please comment?

I anticipate we will see a rise in automation in terms of how we deliver products and services with an even greater focus on eliminating unnecessary manual labour as cost incentives and differentiation become even more significant. We have a way to go before realizing complete autonomous solutions for our vessels, however the traditional ship management model as we know it, is, and will continue evolving to become more scalable and cost effective. Creating models for efficiency gains will be supported through the use of artificial intelligence as we are already experiencing today.

Your encouraging message to the seafarers…

When I started my internship as a young aspiring newbie to the industry, it was both exhilarating and daunting at the same time. I was up against people with decades of experience and I felt that my knowledge would never be up to standard so that I would one day be in a position to advise others. Fast-track 25 years later, and I am now encouraging and empowering those impressionable young people to be the best version of themselves. I urge young people to be perseverant, to keep pushing forward and always try their best. It is important for them to gain the trust of others and maintain that trust whilst of course, working smart and putting in the effort needed to make a difference. These steps will pay off one day. Our industry is great and provides endless opportunities so they should not hesitate to consider seafaring and shipping as a career choice.

Family

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, I am Maltese and Greek Cypriot by heritage and Canadian by birth. Cyprus is and has been my home since the early 1990’s. I have been happily married to my husband Tasos for 23 years and we have 2 wonderful adult children named Francesca who is 22 and Stephanos who is 18. We love spending time together as a family, experiencing new places, cultures and traditions and are eager to see what the second phase of life has in store for us as our children go off and focus on their own careers and lives independent from us.

Marex Media