Brenda At Work

The picture shows me at work in my office. I have a small lounge area in my office for the many meetings I have with crew as part of my job.

It has been an incredibly busy few months as we ramped up for this new field service. We have had over 150 new crew in the first 6 weeks. We have an average of 50 new crew per month, so the HR department continues to be one of the busiest on board. One of my main areas of responsibility is assigning cabins to all the incoming crew, based on their previous tenure, age, position they are going to be in and how long they will be staying. Each of these criteria give points and housing is assigned on a points system. The higher the points the better cabin you get and less people to share with. If you have never served before and you come short term for example, you will most likely be in a 6, 8 or even 10 berth cabin!! It is like a huge jigsaw puzzle and the picture constantly changes. Housing is assigned during the application process. The reason for this is that we can't approve someone until we have verified that there is a cabin space available for the timeframe they are due to come. Once approved they then go ahead and book their travel arrangements and there is often some small change in their arrival date due to flight availability. The applicant then notifies me and this can impact the cabin assignment depending on the departure date of the person in the bunk before them and also the arrival date of the person going into the bunk after them...It get's tricky at times!

In recent weeks there have been some organisational chart changes which mean that the Staff Development Department now report to HR, increasing my responsibilities.