8600-321 Understanding Health and Safety in the Workplace

Unit Overview

8600-321 Understanding Health and Safety in the Workplace is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that focuses on boosting the understanding of the principles of health and safety within the workplace. First-level managers and other leaders within the organisation should ensure that they make positive contributions towards putting up a work environment that is healthy and safe for employees within the organisation. The workplace environment has a significant role to play in influencing the performance of the individuals.

Additionally, organisations exist in a highly competitive labour market and addressing the issues of health and safety in the environment is critical in ensuring that organisations are competitive in attracting and retaining the top talented employees within the organisation. Middle managers have a central role to play in achieving this goal and objective of ensuring that healthy and safe environments are managed for effective workplace integration and interaction.

The main purpose of this unit, therefore, is to develop an understanding and ability of the managers to create and manage a healthy and safe environment which is a requirement of practising and potential middle managers within the organisation. This unit, therefore, plays a critical role in setting up an understanding of the workplace environment and health and safety principles that should be met within the setting up of the workplace. The unit is taught in 7 hours of guided learning and contributes 2 credit values towards the completion of the ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

8600-321 Understanding Health and Safety in the Workplace is a versatile unit that different leaders within the organisation have to purpose. The unit is mainly designed to improve the abilities of the first-line managers within the organisation. These are managers tasked with the duty of directly interacting with different stakeholder sot ensure that the goals and objectives of the organisation are achieved sustainably within the organisation.

Within this unit, the first-line managers are provided with theory and practice that is important in building their awareness of the organisation and health and safety principles. However, the unit is not limited to these individuals. The top management tasked with the responsibilities of making critical decisions within the organisation needs to mate the skills of managing a healthy and safe environment.

The unit is, therefore, suitable for them to boost the information on which they base their managerial decision to ensure that it is centred on health and safety principles developed within the organisation. Other forms of leaders, including junior managers, line managers and supervisors or team leaders within the organisation, can pursue the unit to boost their mastery of principles and information relayed within the unit, which is critical in boosting their contributions to the organisation in their different areas of responsibilities by ensuring their personal activities and managers duties are based on improving the health and safety principles within their areas of responsibilities.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Identify the current legislation and industry regulations in relation to health, safety and welfare within the workplace as relevant to the organisation

• Understand the organisation’s policy in relation to the different items of legislation or regulation

• Identify the difference between a hazard and a risk

• Describe effective measures to conduct a risk analysis

• Identify eh main areas of own responsibility in facilitating health and safety within the workplace

• Identify approaches that can be used to ensure that the team is aware of the health and safety requirements and principles within the workplace

• Describe effective strategies to monitor health and safety in the workplace

Key Learning Areas

Health and Safety Policies First

Line managers should show an understanding of the basic principles that are applied in creating and managing a healthy and safe environment. In this area of learning, the learners are provided with information and guidance based on the UK legal frameworks that are put in place to govern the process of creating and managing a working environment within the workplace. This information is important in putting into context the practices and procedures within the organisation, especially with a focus on the well-being of employees and stakeholders within the organisation. The area further helps the learners to develop skills that are important in analysing their specific environments to generate an effective understanding of the benefits that safety and health policies aha on the organisation. This includes focusing on both the ethical, legal and business obligations of the organisation to their stakeholders in relation to health and safety

Risk Assessment and Management

This area of learning provides the main principles of managing a healthy and safe environment. Within this area of learning, the learners are introduced to the principles that they can use to conduct an effective risk assessment and generate recommendations within their areas of operations and responsibilities. They are also guided to appreciate the active roles that they should play in creating and implementing the policies of health and safety within the organisation.

First-line managers have a huge responsibility to ensure ether effectively put in place standards and approaches that contribute towards setting healthy and safe environments for team members. This area of learning of the unit helps them to understand their roles on top of being able to effectively conduct a health and safety assessment evaluating the hazards and risks within their areas of responsibility.

Evaluation

On completion of this unit, the learners are assessed using different approaches. The first method of assessment is a written assessment comprising 2500 to 3000 words responding to questions provided in the area of study. Additionally, supervised practice is sued to evaluate the ability to implement learned principles in a real-world context.