Question 7
AC 2.3 Analyse major legal and regulatory developments in employment and the labour market, including the importance of mitigating risk.
What are the main principles that underpin health and safety law in your country? Illustrating your answer with examples, analyse why it is in the interests of employers to comply with these requirements?
Pointers for students:
Introduce the answer by discussing the main Health and Safety Law in your own country. For the UK, this is the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Outline the main principles of the law such minimize risks and dangers through safe systems of work, adequate training and supervision, duty of care to employees etc.
Outline the criminal duty and the role of the Health and Safety Executive. What are the main implications of non- compliance? You may want to use legal cases, research and academic opinion to illustrate. You may want to use particular risks for your own industry.
Outline the civil duty and the implications. Again, use cases to illustrate the risks of noncompliance.
It will also be useful to use health and safety data from your own country and perhaps internal data to illustrate and to evidence your points.
You may want to discuss one or two laws/ regulations may be particularly relevant to your organisation:
Manual handling
Food safety
COSHH
RIDDOR etc
Or you may want to look at the challenges for health and safety in general in your own context. It may for instance be a large organisation where implementation is inconsistent, parts of your operation may be open to the public and as such may be at risk of attacks.
What can PP’s do to reduce risk and ensure compliance? E.g.:
Review or harmonise policies and procedures.
Improve incident reporting.
Training and awareness.
Risk Assessment etc.
Again, take one or two and assess your own organisation’s readiness for risk and make suggestions for improvement. You may want to append an implementation plan.
