May 18 | Happy International Day for Women in Maritime!

04.06.2023
On the International Day for Women in Maritime, we celebrate all women at Odfjell and in the industry. A diverse industry is vital to ensure progress, and we have so many interesting opportunities and challenges to solve. Read on to learn more about what we do to improve gender balance.

Improving the gender balance in our organization – and in our industry – is an important objective at Odfjell, and we’re on the right track. We have:

  • Better gender balance among job applicants
  • More female cadets
  • More female new hires within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics) fields. Increased share of younger employees, which contributes to age diversity
  • Diverse participants in leadership programs
     

“Odfjell is one of the leading recruiters in the Norwegian maritime industry, with a record number of women hired in recent years. We believe that increased diversity will improve our ability to innovate, solve problems and stay relevant. We are committed to continuing this positive trend."

- Harald Fotland, CEO

To prepare Odfjell to meet future challenges in the best way, we seek to retain and develop our current team. Odfjell’ers collective experience and competence are key strengths! At the same time, we seek to recruit more diverse candidates to join our team. And, together, we want to ensure a workplace where everyone of you feels that you belong.
 

What’s our target and what do we do today?

To succeed in our mission, we’re taking a systematic approach, starting from the top:

Odfjell’s Executive Management and Board are committed to increasing organizational diversity. In 2019, we set a key target for our shipping shore-based organization to reach a minimum 30% gender balance, at all levels, by 2030. When hiring graduate students into the company, we aim for a fifty-fifty gender balance.

We work toward this target through systematic actions taken over time, in the day-to-day decisions related to recruitment, development, promotions, and compensation. We account for gender balance across the company, in the boardroom, and in leadership positions.

Some examples of our measures at work:

  • Adjusting our recruitment processes to drive improved gender balance, at sea and onshore
     
  • Decoding language used in job advertisements to make sure they appeal to both men and women equally  
     
  • Removing self-rating in our onshore performance management process, as studies show that women tend to rate their performance lower than men, and this can influence how managers evaluate their performance
     
  • Conducting annual compensation analysis to identify any potential systematic inequalities
     
  • Offering generous parental leave policies for mothers and fathers
     
  • Seeking to combine promotions and recruitment processes to encourage holistic decision making
     
  • Communicating openly: We support increased transparency by annually participating in EY’s SHE Index in Norway, and by making gender pay gap reporting available on Odfjell.com
     
  • Making concerted efforts to improve gender balance on board our ships. When recruiting, we aim for an equal number of intakes between female and male cadets, and we intend to significantly increase the number of female cadets
     
  • Looking beyond Odfjell, we also work with, and support, industry networks and encourage our employees to join WISTA and YoungShip. We have per today many female and male WISTA members at all levels of the organization, and we have contributed to WISTA’s mentor program for several years.   


As we’ve mentioned many times: Diversity goes beyond gender, and it goes beyond age and nationality. It is about all people, all backgrounds, all phases of life. It is about ethnicity, experience, educational background, age, competence, culture, point of view, sexual orientation, religion, and disability. It is also about different perspectives and diversity of thought. Inclusion puts diversity into action by creating an environment of belonging and respect.

“Our targets to improve gender balance in Odfjell are strategically important. They are also ambitious, and we are working to find the best way to ensure a positive progress. As we implement measures, we learn, evaluate, and adjust our approach. We welcome your ideas and suggestions on how to increase diversity and ensure that working in Odfjell is perceived as inclusive, rewarding and safe for everyone.”

​​​​​​​– VP Corporate HR, Ingjerd Morland Nettestad