WE have often spoken, both in large conferences and in smaller groups, about safety training for seafarers. What makes the new Personal Safety and Social Responsibilities (PSSR) course different?
It was IMO Resolution MSC.560(108), adopted on May 23, 2024, that amended the Seafarers’ Training, Certification and Watchkeeping Code (STCW Code) and entered into force on Jan. 1, 2026. The resolution focused on the enhancement of Basic Safety Training, introducing new topics such as prevention of and resistance to violence and intimidation on board ships, including sexual harassment, bullying, and assault. To safeguard seafarers’ mental health and are made better aware of their rights at sea, they are mandated to receive appropriate training before assuming their assignments.
Before STCW, training standards varied from country to country, making compliance inconsistent. With PSSR included in Basic Safety Training, every seafarer has a fundamental understanding of safe conduct onboard. It is not only an addition to firefighting and first aid training; it is the foundation that underpins them: the best procedures are bound to fail if people do not communicate, cooperate or take responsibility.
PSSR focuses on people, not equipment. It is receptive and responsive to people’s needs and values. In a people-centric culture, leaders understand what their teams need to perform well, and provide the tools and support necessary for them to be at their best.
For the first time, PSSR is explicit in the prevention of violence and acts of vexation, including bullying and sexual harassment. Safety at sea used to be viewed only in physical terms such as fires, collisions, equipment failure. Now it is also regarded in social and psychological terms. How people behave and treat each other onboard is now officially recognized as a safety issue. MSC.560(108) brings concerns about crew welfare, mental health and onboard culture into the regulatory framework.
Being people-centric places the individual at the heart of everything. Operating with a one-size-fits-all set of expectations and frameworks is unlikely to yield the same results.
The course makes seafarers aware of the realities of working onboard: how days are structured, living in close quarters, bond with fellow crew members, how individual behavior affects collective safety, how ships are organized, how responsibilities are shared. It covers communication, teamwork, hazard awareness and procedures, alongside fatigue, stress and the human factors. PSSR answers the question: how does one behave safely on a ship? With multinational crews, the answer cannot be ignored.
The evolution of PSSR reflects a wider shift: the industry is moving beyond a purely physical view of risk towards a more holistic one, where behavior, culture and well-being are seen as equally important. MSC.560(108) is not just about updating a course; it redefines what safety at sea really means, for all workers out at sea.
Every undertaking has to place the people whom it will affect in the center. In Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” he says “We are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human.”
Published on Monday, May 25, the encyclical by signed by the Pope on May 15, the 135th anniversary of the promulgation of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. In it, Pope Leo XIV appeals to people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human.”
Pope Leo XIV then identifies five principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church: The common good, which he defines as “the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person”; the “universal destination of goods,” to ensure that technologies are not concentrated in the hands of the few; to place shared responsibility above “any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life”; bearing in mind people and future generations; and social justice, which ensures fair access to opportunities for all people, protecting the most vulnerable, keeping as guiding principle the dignity of every person and the common good of all people.
There is a great deal of truth in Loren Eiseley’s assertion that “a future worth contemplating will not be achieved solely by flights to the far side of the moon. It will not be found in space. It will be achieved, if it is achieved at all, only in our individual hearts...” and when that happens, “(people) will know, with the greater insight they will then possess, that it is not a human victory, but nature’s new and final triumph in the human heart — perhaps that nature which is also God.”
