After Heaps of Sexual Harassment Cases on Maersk Ships, the Company Admits it Has a Problem

Via: Berlingske, Denmark’s Most Influential Daily Newspaper

Translated from Danish to English via Google Translate

December 4, 2022

By: Maria Outze

A disturbing case of harassment sent shock waves through Maersk last year. Since then, several infringement cases have appeared. Berlingske talks to Amalie Grevsen, who is head of cultural transformation in Mærsk's fleet and is at the forefront of a sweeping cultural change at sea.

She was the only woman on board the ship.

At first she was met with sexist comments that women should not be on a ship.

But that was not the worst that the then 19-year-old American woman was exposed to when she was doing an internship on one of Maersk's ships in 2019.

In an anonymous blog post last year, she put into words a horrible episode in which she was sexually harassed, drunk and later raped by a male officer – a 60-year-old so-called first master.

Several cases of harassment on the ships have since affected the country's largest company, which has a total of 12,500 employees in the fleet and 700 ships.

And now Amalie Grevsen, who is in charge of cultural transformation in Maersk's fleet, acknowledges that the company has not done enough to ensure a safe working environment for the employees on the ships.

"It is very serious and we have not done it well enough. On the other hand, we are investing massively now. It's not just me who works on it, but a fully dedicated team, and we at Maersk take full responsibility for the culture that is on board our ships,' says Amalie Grevsen.

She will be at the forefront of a sweeping cultural change in the Maersk fleet. A change that, according to Amalie Grevsen, should eliminate "all forms of sexual abuse or sexism in the fleet".

"It is clear that the cases in Maersk Line Limited last year were definitely a wakeup call ," she says.

An increasing number of cases

There is no doubt that the shipping giant Maersk faces some major challenges when it comes to harassment of women at sea.

Back in June, a Maersk investigation into women's conditions on the company's ships showed that Maersk generally faces a major challenge when it comes to harassment.

Several cases of harassment appeared when Mærsk began to investigate the conditions on the ships.

At the same time, a female naval officer came forward and said that she had been subjected to "extreme sexual harassment, unwanted touching and discrimination" from a colleague on board - according to the accusation - the Maersk ship "Alliance Fairfax".

When the impartial investigation saw the light of day, Maersk would not say how many cases the company had received.

Nor will Amalie Grevsen give a concrete number on how many cases of harassment against women have been on Mærsk's many ships. Nevertheless, she says that the company has received more and more cases.

"We see an increase in the number of cases that come in, and it is probably because we put a massive focus on this, and when we put a massive focus on it, we also invite the employees to tell us their story," she says:

"It is, of course, extremely serious, but it is also an expression that the effort is working."

Have you had a greater focus on the business people at Maersk offices rather than the people who work on the ships?

"It is very difficult to put a reason why it has not been worked on more thoroughly in the past. But I can say that focusing on these things is necessary, and it is a lasting transformation that we want,' she says.

Maersk has already introduced a number of measures to put an end to harassment against the female employees on the ships.

It happened in the wake of the disturbing rape case on the Mærsk ship back in 2019, which resulted in five sailors being fired.

The company subsequently chose to reach out to the 360 ​​female employees in the fleet so that they could talk about their experiences. In the same vein, they sent out questionnaires to all employees so that they could report in anonymized form about any incidents of violations on the ships.

The next step has been to initiate a so-called "anti-infringement campaign", with Amalie Grevsen now at the helm.

This has resulted in several initiatives to shed light on the problems that Maersk is facing.

The employees must be equipped

One of the areas where the company has focused is the employees' possibilities to complain if they have been subjected to harassment, says Amalie Grevsen.

"This means a simplified complaint procedure, so that all employees can easily and safely raise a complaint at Maersk. And then we have scaled up the team that handles all complaints that come in,' she says:

"What is central is that we support a speak-up culture, so that all employees at Mærsk know that it is safe and secure to raise a complaint."

The employees can, among other things, raise a complaint through a whistleblower scheme, while they can also get in touch with employees from the HR department via e-mail and telephone at all hours of the day, if they experience violations at sea.

And then Mærsk's 3,000 managers, of whom 2,500 work on the ships, must dress better in relation to handling cases of sexism.

"Our managers will drive the change on a daily basis, and that is why it is central that we equip them to be able to drive that change," says Amalie Grevsen.

"The first part of the training is simply about equipping all of our leaders on the fleet to understand what sexual abuse looks like and what responsibility you have as a leader in the situation in question."

But it is no longer about prevention, so that you do not reach the point where you have to complain or go to a manager. What do you intend to do about it?

"There are many stages to it. We have both a situation now and here, which we have of course had to deal with. Therefore, it has been central to strengthen our procedure. It is absolutely the first place you should start as a company when you want to ensure that all employees feel safe in raising a case,' she says:

"In relation to prevention, we are, among other things, in the process of rolling out a two-year management program for the entire fleet's managers, where they are trained in building psychological safety on a daily basis."

Maersk's 12,500 or so employees in the fleet must also go through a so-called training course, where they must become better at handling sexual abuse on board the ships.

"It's fundamentally about us all having to train and practice speaking up, and that everyone has to know that we support a speak up culture. We have a responsibility for ourselves, colleagues and each other,' says Amalie Grevsen.

Although the initiatives have already been started, she acknowledges that it will take several years before the company reaches its goal of completely overcoming the problems at sea.

"When you initiate a cultural transformation, it is not something that can succeed overnight or in a few months. It is actually a long cool move to change the culture for the better. It is something we will be working with for many years,' she says.

In November, Maersk's American subsidiary Maersk Line Limited announced that the company has entered into a settlement with the American woman Hope Hicks, who accused a 60-year-old officer of consummated rape when she was undergoing training at Maersk in 2019.