One of the tasks I have in my consultancy is assisting the Safety Institute of Australia to promote their Safety In Action conferences. As part of this I have been able to provide some videos from the May 2008 conference. The videos are excerpts from the presentations of four of the chief executive officers and company directors who spoke of day one of the conference about their experiences with workplace safety issues at board level.
One speaker is Dr Ziggy Switkowski, current chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and former CEO of Telstra Corporation. Dr Switkowski’s video is the longest and possibly the most interesting. His manner is relaxed and chatty as he builds on some of the comments of the former speaker, Jerry Ellis.
Peter McMorrow, managing director of Leighton Contractors, was perhaps the most instructional in terms of safety management. I have written briefly about his full presentation before. In this video, he talks about his early engineering days, how he went clay pigeon shooting with a shotgun and hard hats and how he was too close to an explosive charge. These tales contrasted well with his presentation of contemporary safety standards.
Glenn Henson of ExxonMobil speaks about accountability and the human role in safety, and Colin Blair, deputy CEO of Standards Australia, discusses how experienced a near miss in his early days as a young engineer.
Each of these speakers were asked about what motivated their interest in workplace safety. These casual introductions to their main presentations reminded us in the audience that early work experiences, intense or humourous, do provide a structure or shadow to how senior managers in major corporations approach safety.
Until the end of August 2008, the videos will only be accessible at www.siaconference.com.au to those who sign up for a regular conference newsletter.