FacebookTwitterEmailLinkedin Human skills are fundamental to safe vessel operations, effective leadership and crew retention, experts stressed during a panel discussion at the 2026 Crew Welfare Week. Speakers argued that communication, empathy, critical thinking and adaptability should not be treated as secondary to technical competence. As shipping becomes more digital, diverse and technologically complex, the industry must modernise how it recruits, trains and develops its people while creating an environment in which every crew member feels able to speak up. RelatedNews MarinePALS calls for engineering safeguards to prevent enclosed space deaths NEMO to examine how seafarer training needs to adapt for nuclear propulsion var jnews_module_21378947_0_6a6886cb431a2 = {"header_icon":"","first_title":"Related","second_title":"News","url":"","header_type":"heading_8","header_background":"","header_secondary_background":"","header_text_color":"","header_line_color":"","header_accent_color":"","header_filter_category":"","header_filter_author":"","header_filter_tag":"","header_filter_cpt_post_tag":"","header_filter_cpt_tribe_events_cat":"","header_filter_cpt_web_story_category":"","header_filter_cpt_web_story_tag":"","header_filter_text":"All","sticky_post":false,"sticky_post_filter":false,"post_type":"post","content_type":"all","sponsor":false,"number_post":"2","post_offset":0,"unique_content":"unique1","include_post":"","included_only":false,"exclude_post":"21378947","include_category":"","exclude_category":"","include_author":"","include_tag":"2193,3166,3863,3673,262,2195,250,2341","exclude_tag":"","exclude_visited_post":false,"post_tag":"","tribe_events_cat":"","web_story_category":"","web_story_tag":"","sort_by":"latest","show_date":"","date_format":"default","date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","pagination_mode":"disable","pagination_nextprev_showtext":"","pagination_number_post":"2","pagination_scroll_limit":0,"ads_type":"disable","ads_position":1,"ads_random":"","ads_im