Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference

The Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference is an annual one day hybrid event funded by the WorkCover Board Tasmania and delivered by WorkSafe Tasmania.

The Conference will be held on 31 July 2024: in person in Launceston, and online. It is an opportunity for those with a passion for work health and safety and injury management to come together to share best practice, be challenged by what they see and hear in presentations and to build valuable networks.

Register to attend the Conference now!

Early Bird registration for the 2024 Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference is now open!

Register now for in-person and virtual attendance.

Registration for each individual attending is required. Each attendee for the virtual presentation will get a single individual log in (which means multiple people on different screens/devices cannot sign in to the same event).

If you wish to register a group from your workplace, please complete the WorkSafe Conference 2024 Group registration form and submit to naomi@eventsphere.com.au.

Prices include GST.

• All sessions are recorded, and all attendees will be provided a copy of recordings after the conference.
• Registering for in-person attendance provides full-day Conference entry, day catering, delegate pack and name badge.
• Registering for virtual attendance provides access to the Attendee Hub to watch presentations in real time, ask questions and interact with other attendees. You can also watch presentations at other times through the Attendee Hub.

Confirmed Conference speakers

The WorkCover Tasmania Board and WorkSafe Tasmania are delighted to announce the first Keynote Speakers to be joining us at the 2024 Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference. Stay tuned for more speaker announcements, and the conference program to be released soon!

Jack Riewoldt

Jack Riewoldt is a proud Tasmanian who has been involved in professional football for 17 years.

He currently works in the culture and belonging space for Authentic Leaders Group and Tasmania Devils football club. Jack is always searching for that biggest of gold that connects people in all types of industries, and is happy to be an agent of change.

Presentation:  Beyond the boundary: Winning leadership strategies for safe bodies and safe minds

Dr Sidney Dekker

Sidney Dekker is Professor and Director of the Safety Science Innovation Lab at Griffith University in Brisbane, and Professor in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Sidney has lived and worked in seven countries across four continents and won worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking work in human factors and safety. He coined the term ‘Safety Differently’ in 2012, which has since turned into a global movement for change. It encourages organisations to declutter their bureaucracy and provide people freedom-in-a-frame to make things go well—and to offer compassion, restoration and learning when they don’t.

Sidney is an avid piano player, a trained mediator and chaplain. He is also a pilot and has been flying the Boeing 737 for an airline on the side.

Sidney is bestselling author of books including Random Noise, Stop Blaming, Foundations of Safety Science, The Safety Anarchist, and Safety Differently.

He has co-directed the documentaries Safety Differently, Just Culture, The Complexity of Failure, and Doing Safety Differently.

Stanford University has ranked Sidney among the world’s top 1% most influential scientists since Newton; his work has well over 19,000 citations and an h-index of 61.

Presentation: Just cultures and safety differently

Conference MC: Jane Longhurst

Following wonderful feedback, we are delighted to once again have Jane Longhurst join us MC for the 2024 Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference.

Jane is an award-winning actor, broadcaster, voice artist and popular presenter of events big and small. She has worked extensively in theatre, television and radio since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts. Her television credits include Bay of Fires, Deadloch, Rosehaven, Death or Liberty, and Blue Heelers.

Jane is well known and loved from her regular fill in roles presenting for ABC Local Radio across Tasmania for the past 13 years. In that time she has presented all the programs on the local radio schedule, plus ABC Rural, ABC Classic and ABC Grandstand. In 2020 she presented the Sunday Morning program for ABC Local Radio. She is also a regular presenter with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra for major concerts and touring throughout Tasmanian schools.

Jane has been the Master of Ceremonies for events including Teaching Matters for Catholic Education Tasmania and Catholic Education Canberra-Goulburn, Palliative Care Symposium, the inaugural Youth Symposium presented by the Youth Network of Tasmania, and the 2024 International Women’s Day fundraising breakfast for Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation with special guest Christine Finnegan, CEO of Tasmania JackJumpers.

Accommodation for the Conference

We have secured group rates at a selection of Launceston hotels. You can book your accommodation at the same time as you register to attend the Conference.

• Best Western Plus:  superior king room, $139 a night, room only
• Hotel Verge: king room, $195 a night, room only
• Mercure: superior queen room, $185 a night, room only

Register to attend and book your Launceston accommodation.

Read about the selected Launceston hotels (selection coming soon).

Call for presentations - Closing  19 April 2024

The WorkCover Tasmania Board and WorkSafe Tasmania are seeking submissions for presentations.

Deadline for presentation submissions  is 19 April 2024.

The Conference will be delivered in-person at the Tailrace Centre, Launceston, and virtually. Presenters will have the option to present in-person or remotely via a virtual platform.

Presenters should keep in mind that the Conference may need to be entirely delivered and attended virtually due to unforeseen circumstances, such as a significant increase in COVID-19 in the community.

See the Conference presentation guidelines below.

Streams and topics

The Conference is seeking presentations that fit into one of the three streams:

• Work health and safety
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Workers compensation and injury management.

Conference sub-streams may include but are not limited to:

• Creating positive safety cultures
• Creating mentally healthy workplaces
• Emerging technologies and the rise of artificial intelligence
• New ways of working, such as the gig economy
• New and young workers
• Health and safety leadership
• Health and safety risk management
• Industry sectors such as construction, manufacturing, transport and health care and social assistance
• Personal injury and disability in the workplace
• Prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders
• Managing the risk of exposure to respirable crystalline silica dust exposure / asbestos
• Psychosocial hazards, including:
  • identifying and responding to psychosocial hazards in the workplace
  • harmful behaviours in the workplace, including work related harassment and/or workplace bullying and violence
  • job design/working environment factors including work pressure and mental stress
  • workplace trauma including post-traumatic stress disorder
• Return to work/Recovery of workers with injuries
• Sedentary behaviour and chronic illness
• The ageing workforce
• Work health and safety investigation learnings
• Work health and safety law and compliance.

Interested presenters are welcome to propose other topics that would benefit delegates, providing they fall under the theme and one of the streams of work health and safety, mental health and wellbeing, or workers compensation and injury management.

Presentation submissions must include:

• presenter contact details including title, first name, last name, organisation, position, email and contact number
• presenter biography (150 words. If there is more than one presenter please keep combined biographies to 150 words)
• presenter/s CV
• presentation title (no more than 15 words)
• presentation stream and topic
• detailed presentation outline including ‘practical takeaways’ or ‘learning outcomes’ and how they can be applied at work (350 words).

Who can submit

WorkCover and WorkSafe are particularly interested in receiving presentation submissions from:

• academics and researchers
• business and industry leaders
• health and safety practitioners and professionals.

Key dates

• 19 April 2024: Deadline for presentation submissions
• 17 May 2024: Presenters notified about the selection decision
• 31 July 2024: Safe Bodies, Safe Minds Conference

Submit a proposal

See the Safe Bodies Safe Minds Conference guidelines 2024 (PDF, 2.8 MB)

Submit your Conference presentation submission

See also Call for presenters for WorkSafe Month 2024

For further information, please contact WorkSafe Tasmania.