Simon Harvey Joins Dovaston Crew UK

Dovaston Crew is delighted to welcome Simon Harvey to the team who has recently been recruited to represent Dovaston Crew in the UK.

It is almost one year on since Sovren House Group took over ownership of Dovaston Crew. Since then, Dovaston Crew have built up a brand new team, and increased representation globally by once again defining their place in the crew recruitment market.

The latest addition to the family is Simon Harvey who has recently joined Dovaston Crew as the UK representative.

Simon has a rich background, not just in yachting but also in behavioural skills, which puts him in a prime position to fulfil the Dovaston Crew promise of their superb crew selection. With the skills that Simon has, he can match the correct candidate to the right job.

Simon has enjoyed a lifelong relationship with sailing and yachting, naturally working his way up the ranks on superyachts from deckhand to captain. After nine years he moved ashore and continued to work for the same yacht owner for eleven years working his way up the corporate ladder, from manager, corporate officer and finally president of the owner’s Real Estate development company. While working in these managerial and leadership roles he became certified in the psychological type instrument (MBTI®), and trained as a facilitator of the behavioural tool DISC.

From the management and leadership experience he knew if you wanted top performance from employees, you needed to make sure they had the resources to continually develop their skills base. Not only that but leadership and management had to be on the same boat. If excellence is expected, training and continual development of skills is required.

Simon formed N2 People Skills to bridge a growing gap. With the size of the vessels and regulations increasing in the industry, and a lack of managerial skills and courses available to keep up with the industry movements, Simon wanted to be able to offer owner, captain, officers, and crew access to valuable training resources. N2 People Skills brought to the industry; on-board people skills training, recruitment analysis, on-boarding, leadership and management workshops and team building training.

“ As the founder of N2 People Skills’, says Simon, ‘I worked hard to find a crew agency that was willing to go that extra meter or two to get the results that owners expect, and captains want. I found with the wealth of first hand industry knowledge Helen Warren brought to Dovaston’s leadership, and the company’s willingness to do look outside the box meant Dovaston was the perfect company to work with in bringing profiles into the selection process.

Personally, taking on the role as Dovaston agent in the UK made complete sense. It allows me to be at the front end of the process of recruitment, and means N2 can adapt and adjust to new needs of captain and candidate. While I may have hung my captain’s hat up some years ago, the problems created ‘if’ the wrong person is put into a position are still large, perhaps today even larger. Finding the right person for a position is never easy, yet most successful onshore companies today use some type of profile system. Today we offer captains the same opportunity but with industry experience and knowledge. Making the wrong decision costs a lot more than a little extra time it may take in using profile analysis in your recruitment process.”

Simon is UK agent for Dovaston Crew and has been serving on the International Superyacht Society (ISS) Board of Directors since 2013. He has been a contributor to the Human Element publication ALERT and various other maritime publications and serves as a CHIRP Maritime Ambassador.