Crew members spend months at sea, and it’s pretty given that connectivity is a top demand for individuals who are sailing across countries. While at sea, seafarers usually have access to satellite internet.

However, onboard satellite connections are slow, limited, and tightly controlled by shipping companies. While the connection can be sufficient for text, it can be frustrating for crew members who would like to make a video call home or stream content.

Over time, poor connectivity can lead to low morale and low satisfaction. This is why connectivity is considered a perk for crew members, and trends show HR teams may win workers over with crew perk eSIMs in their benefit packages.

The HR Recruitment Challenge in Maritime

Recruiting crew members today continues to grow harder than it has ever been. As global trade expands, the maritime industry is faced with a growing talent shortage, especially for skilled officers. Some of the causes cited for this shortage include rising demand against limited supply, an aging workforce, and fewer young people entering the industry due to the nature of the work.

The work is far from home, less appealing to land-based careers, and is carried out under harsh working conditions, long contracts, and limited connectivity. More so, companies and countries continue to compete for limited talent in the industry.

As such, HR in maritime has to provide benefit packages and several perks when hiring members. It also favors companies to retain their workers, because when a crew member leaves, the company bears the cost of recruitment, onboarding, and training, only to lose the worker once their contract ends.

However, many benefit packages are still missing out on the perks of adding an eSIM. Staying in touch with family and personal lives is essential to modern seafarers, and should be considered alongside other perks like paid leave or health coverage. This is a unique benefit that can provide HR with the edge to compete for talent in the industry,y as it appeals to today’s workforce.

Why Connectivity Matters to Crew Welfare

Crew welfare is a crucial consideration for operational stability, and global crew connectivity is rapidly becoming a new benchmark, much like how health insurance and the onboarding processes. Offering crew eSIMs as a perk, seafarers can enjoy better connectivity when closer to the shore.

The better connectivity available with eSIMs allows crew members to video call, message home, share instant updates, and bridge emotional gaps. This can be great for crew morale, productivity, and employers are likely to retain workers for a long time.

More so, knowing that you can check in with home and personal life after a shift also ensures less distraction while at work. Offering eSIM perks that are active within reach of coast can keep the crew happy, and could inadvertently help with fewer resignations mid-contract, and save costs for rehiring and retraining.

Understanding How eSIMs Work

Up until this point, this article has discussed eSIMs, especially as a perk for crew and the role it could play in recruitment. But what exactly is this eSIM?

An eSIM is a digital SIM that’s built directly into devices for connectivity purposes in place of a physical SIM. So instead of inserting a physical SIM on your device, you can activate mobile connectivity by downloading a carrier’s eSIM profile over the internet.

This technology has provided great benefits for roaming services, allowing users to download local eSIM profiles abroad, compared to paying for costly roaming services. Sometimes, users can even activate their abroad profile before leaving the airport, and this ease of acquiring an eSIM has changed a lot for travelers.

Furthermore, this is a great deal for seafarers who are away from home for months, allowing them to connect with their families and personal lives. eSIMs don’t help much in the open sea due to the lack of cellular coverage, but they work pretty well in areas where seafarers spend significant time, like ports, coastal waters, near shorelines, straits, and busy sea lines, because the ship is usually within range of a cellular network on land.

eSIM perks can therefore be another add-on for crew members, and could assist HR professionals by making the hiring process easier.

Recruitment Advantage: eSIM as a Differentiator

In competitive hiring markets like the maritime industry, perks can be a differentiator when hiring. Skilled seafarers often have multiple jobs to choose from when looking for the next contract. As such, HRs often count on their benefit packages to win workers over.

Additionally, offering eSIM perks positions your firm as crew-friendly, enhances employer branding, and leads to more satisfied workers less likely to jump ship. But beyond the branding boost, here are some more operational & cost benefits for employers.

Lower roaming reimbursements: eSIMs are one of the fastest-growing alternatives to traditional roaming, and this could significantly reduce operational expenses for companies that offer crew members roaming reimbursements. eSIMs are cheaper to distribute, and they can be topped up with sufficient data for workers to take advantage of in coverage areas.

Centralized Management: Some companies would prefer to have managerial oversight over global crew connectivity, allowing them to monitor usage and top up data from a single dashboard. eSIMs make this much more possible, especially in partnership with a white-label eSIM service. At the same time, built-in compliance can be ensured as eSIM onboarding can be easily linked to digital identity verification.

How HR Teams Can Deploy eSIM Benefits

Even without technical expertise, rolling out HR recruitment eSIM perks is pretty straightforward with ready-to-use industry services available for the technology. Here’s how HR teams can capitalize on eSIM benefits to maximize both cost-efficiency and recruitment impact.

• Partner with a white-label eSIM provider: All that needs to be done in this regard is to choose a partner like Limitflex, which allows you to brand eSIM services as part of your benefit packages. With white-label platforms like Limitflex, you only have to worry about branding and leave the technical setups to the team.

• Integrate perks for the crew into recruitment offers: HR teams can include eSIM data plans in employment contracts to highlight them as a perk from day one. More so, the benefits can be tiered depending on skill level. For example, subsidized plans for junior crews and fully covered plans for senior officers. This might not be the preferred standard in varying crews, but you should design something that scales with your retention priorities.

Future of Recruitment: Connectivity as Standard

Global crew connectivity has become more than a basic requirement that could give HR teams the edge to win over and retain crew workers in the competitive maritime industry. And in the coming years, eSIM benefits will likely evolve from being a considerable differentiator to being a baseline expectation for seafarers.

When crew members enter employment contracts with maritime companies, they will expect digital connectivity alongside the other standard benefits like salary, safety, and benefit packages. So now is the time for HR leaders to get ahead of the competition and leverage the advantage that eSIMs could give them in the job market for seafarers.

Partner with Limitflex today to create a branded eSIM store for your firm and start providing global data plans to employees.