Interorient Shipmanagement have taken positive steps towards crew wellbeing by introducing the “Mental Fitness Gym”, a product of Impact Wellbeing, across their fleet of full technical managed vessels following a successful trial on some of their managed vessels.

Mark Parrotte, the Group Fleet Personnel Manager at Interorient says he is “excited about rolling this project out for our seafarers. They have been through a very tough time over the last 2 years and so we decided to set a goal for ourselves to do more in the area of crew wellbeing. We wanted to do more than provide helplines or to just simply supply the ships with more entertainment items – because that didn’t seem enough. What we have with the MFG is a program geared towards prevention. Together with Impact Wellbeing, we will be providing our crew with fresh material on a monthly basis. The material consists of short video and audio clips with some pictorials to accompany those clips. We will be introducing topics such as “Breathing Exercises”, “Worry & Anxiety”, “Focus & Concentration” and even “Conflict Management”. The aim of all of the modules that will be supplied to crew is to build and maintain mental resilience. Not only will the crew benefit from this in the short and long term but we are quite confident that we as a company will also benefit from this program with our seafarers being able to build on their own resilience and in turn it will have a positive impact on crew engagement and performance”

Impact Wellbeing (also a Cyprus entity) and the Mental Fitness Gym is focused on ingraining positive habits that enhance the mental wellbeing and practicing skills beneficial for creating coping mechanisms to deal with stressors. Their approach seeks to empower individuals to manage their wellbeing, whilst also creating the case for change and transformation. Seafarers will learn and use practical tools to help them shift their behavior and they will experience first-hand transformative potential and long-term benefits of practicing positive habits. The program gives participants the insights they need into the effectiveness of mental practice to ensure their commitment to developing new skills and habits.

Aneta Fyfe, Managing Director at Impact Wellbeing says, “Helping seafarers build resilience in today’s unpredictable environment is of paramount necessity. The need for solutions in the area of mental wellbeing is growing and with an increasingly challenging business landscape, we are pleased to partner with Interorient and offer a practical program called the Mental Fitness Gym. This is a program in which we focus on building skills that help individuals to manage stress, deal with challenging situations, work better with others, cope with uncertainty and unpredictability.

With prevention being a key element in addressing issues related to crew wellbeing, Interorient have taken a proactive approach to a long-term strategy of enhancing wellbeing of their crew and building resilience. The positive feedback we have received from seafarers motivates us to continue promotion of the Mental Fitness Gym in the industry and to assist companies in supporting their strategies in taking care of their people and creating a conscious culture of wellbeing.”