Speech at The Keppel Annual Safety Convention 2007
Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister of State for Education , Manpower, The Chevrons
Mr Lim Chee Onn,
Executive Chairman, Keppel Corporation
Board Safety Committee Members of Keppel Group
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Good afternoon.
I am pleased to join you this afternoon at the inaugural Keppel Annual Safety Convention. Let me begin by commending Keppel's management for this initiative to raise the safety and health standards throughout the entire Keppel group. This reflects the strong commitment of Keppel to be a responsible employer who cares for the safety and health of its 16,000 employees.
Safety Starts With Top Management
2. The safety culture of an organization should be set by the board and the top management. I am glad to note that your board and your chairman have demonstrated their commitment in three ways.
3. First, you have committed significant resources to safety and health. As your Chairman Mr Lim has shared, the Keppel Group plans to spend no less than $15 million to improve safety and health standards in 2008. Second, Keppel Corporation and Keppel Land are among the few listed Singapore companies that have formed a Safety Committee at the Board of Directors level to drive safety performance from the top. Third, Keppel Group's commitment to "Safety First" is clearly shown by your practice of placing safety as the first item on the agenda for all board meetings. I am encouraged by your dedication to safety. It sends a strong signal that safety and health cannot be compromised at the workplace and workers down the line will follow your lead.
Safety Leadership Programme For Middle Management
4. The middle management, i.e. the managers, professionals and supervisors, play a key role in shaping the mindset and sustaining the practice of safety and health at work. To do this effectively, they must be adequately trained. They need to upgrade their knowledge and skills, so that they are able to make decisions and take personal responsibility for safety outcomes on the ground. I am encouraged by Keppel Offshore & Marine's Safety Leadership Programme which focuses on developing effective observation and intervention skills. The programme has successfully trained over 2,800 middle managers. Keppel Group's Five Key Safety Principles to be launched today will further strengthen the Group's safety culture and performance by reaching out to every employee at all levels.
Safety Among Workers
5. Workers on the ground are the building blocks of a company's safety culture. An employee imbued with a safety mindset will take proactive steps to manage his own safety and that of his colleagues. As he goes about his work daily, he will help the company identify, raise and even address potential safety issues. They will be able to do their jobs safely, without jeopardising the lives of others. They can also be a catalyst to help other workers work safely. Such employees are a company's best investment in safety and health management.
6. To recognise these workers at the highest level, the Keppel "Chairman's Safety Challenge" Award was created to celebrate exemplary safety workers.
Showing Subcontractors and Community the Way
7. If all stakeholders in the industry work together, including suppliers and subcontractors, we can establish a stronger industry-wide safety and health culture and one day achieve zero fatalities at the workplace. This is important, especially for Keppel Offshore and Marine, where about three quarters of the workforce are subcontractors and their employees. I would like to urge Keppel to do more to ensure that its subcontractors and suppliers also adopt strong safety culture and integrate it more fully into their business processes. Given that most of these companies are small and medium-size companies (SMEs), I urge Keppel to tap on bizSAFE, to help your contractors build capability and enhance safety standards. bizSAFE is a programme developed by the Workplace Safety and Health Advisory Committee. It involves a 5-step process to put in place a comprehensive safety and health system. Through bizSAFE, you can also better assess the workplace safety and health performance of your subcontractors.
8. Building a strong and proactive safety culture is a challenging task and it is better for us to start early. Therefore, it is important for us to instill greater safety consciousness among our children while they are in school. By starting young and instilling safety consciousness in our students, we build strong safety values in our future workforce. Safety awareness is part of our school programmes and co-curricular activities. For example, our pupils attend road safety education at the Road Safety Communication Park and some pupils join the Singapore Civil Defence Force's Uniformed Group where they learn about safety. Whenever they participate in any school activities, teachers will always remind them of the need to observe safety rules.
9. We need to continue to build in them a strong sense of safety consciousness as they progress through our education system. I would like to encourage large corporations like Keppel to work with our education institutions to reinforce such safety messages. Keppel could start by holding workplace safety promotion programmes like exhibition, safety quizzes and competition for our students. I believe the benefits of such a programme can be far reaching. Firstly, the young will appreciate better the value of a safe and healthy workplace. Secondly, the students can influence and remind their parents to be more safety conscious. Thirdly, the company can benefit from improved industry image on safety and health.
10. Industry leaders like Keppel can contribute significantly to the efforts in building safe communities by taking the lead and showing the way forward. I look forward to Keppel's continued commitment and involvement in raising workplace safety and health standards for its employees as well as for the larger Singapore community.
11. On this note, let me wish you a successful safety convention. Thank you.