SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 2015

Employee Profile
Steven ‘Scooby’ Hodgetts
Steven Hodgetts (AKA ‘Scooby’) is a well-known member of the
Tassal team. Scooby has been with Tassal since 1998, working on
our marine farms in a variety of roles.
He commenced his Tassal career as a farm hand when he was 23 years
old, and is currently the Systems Team Leader at our Bruny Region.
Anyone who has worked in a marine environment will readily tell you
workers require a special set of skills. The environment is subject to
varying weather conditions (rain, glare, fog, wind, sleet and sometimes
snow), employees operate heavy machinery such as cranes, capstans,
boats of varying sizes, forklifts and other specialist equipment requiring a
high level of attention and communication from workers, and employees
are often required to make quick decisions about safety and fish survival.
Our employees need to have excellent communication skills, be able to
make informed decisions – often under pressure, and be able to adapt
to the varying weather and environmental conditions. Scooby possesses
all of these skills, but on a whole other level. Scooby was born deaf to
two deaf parents. On top of working full time, he has three children and
volunteers his time within the Tasmanian community by serving as a
Director/President on the board of Tasdeaf, which is a small not-for-profit
community organisation.
“I come from a deaf
family, where both
my parents and
sister were deaf. We
are actually the only
fully deaf family in
Tasmania.”
Many of us are simply in awe of how Scooby has managed such a long
career in the marine environment and progressed his career into various
leadership roles with his deafness, and wondered ‘how does he do it?!’.
We asked Scooby to provide us with an insight into his personal and
professional lives and the communication strategies he has adopted
growing up, and working in the marine environment:
Personal life
I come from a deaf family, where both my parents and sister were
profoundly deaf. We are actually the only fully deaf family in Tasmania.
One thing that made people smile when I was a kid was the fact our (long
departed) pooch was also deaf – but only due to old age.
Auslan, which is the national sign language of Deaf people in Australia, is
my first language. I only learnt to speak English when I was around 4 or 5
years of age through regular sessions with a speech therapist at primary
school. At home everyone spoke a combination of Auslan, British Sign
language and spoken English – all giving me excellent grasps of bilingual
language, which enabled me to develop a combination of communication
techniques that I still use today – it gave me the flexibility to adapt to the
situation and I’m quite comfortable in communicating with people on a one
to one basis or a small group.
84 Tassal Sustainability Report 2015