8605-411 Managing a Healthy and Safe Environment

Unit Overview

8605-411 Managing a Healthy and Safe Environment is a unit within the ILM Level 4 module which improves the understanding that the middle managers have of their immediate organisational environment and the roles that they should play in ensuring that the workplace environment is improved to achieve a healthy and safe environment. 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. 8605-411 Managing a Healthy and Safe Environment is a core unit within the ILM Level 4 module that is taught in a minimum of 12 hours of guided learning and accounts for 3 credit values in the overall assessment of the module.

Suitability of the Unit

8605-411 Managing a Healthy and Safe Environment is a versatile unit that different leaders within the organisation have to purpose. The unit is mainly designed to improve the abilities of the middle 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 middle 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 in boosting the information on which they base their managerial decision to ensure that it is centered 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:

• Understand the UK law and legislation that gives guiding principles on health and safety within the organisations

• Understand the significance of health and safety policies within the workplace

• Conduct an effective review of the organisation’s health and safety policies and procedures

• Develop and implement a risk assessment plan in their areas of responsibility or operation

• Create an effective risk assessment report that covers the hazards, risks and provides recommendations for improvement within the area of operation

• Effectively set strategies in place that are aimed at implementing the recommendations that are provided in their area of operation or responsibility in regards to health and safety through setting measurable targets

• Evaluate the efficiency of the risk management and mitigation recommendations that have been implemented based on health and safety policies in their areas of operation.

Key Learning Areas

8605-411 Managing a Healthy and Safe Environment focuses on addressing the ability of the middle managers to assess the workplace environment and ensure that critical risks that could arise within the areas of operations are addressed. The unit therefore focuses on two main areas, which are understanding safety and health policy in alignment with UK law and legislation and effective risk management. These areas address information such as:

Health and Safety Policies

Middle managers should show 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. This is a critical aspect in ensuring that the learners understand the contributions that they can make as middle managers in improving the compliance of the organisation to the preset regulations and principles on health and safety.

Additionally, middle managers should have the ability to effectively prepare reports on the risk assessments that they have conducive, including recommendations to improve the health and safety of their areas of operation. This area guides them to effective approaches of reporting and implementing the provided recommendations in their areas of operation, improving their abilities as middle managers.

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 300 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.