What Does This Unit Mean?
This unit is about understanding how emerging technologies, biological hazards, ecological impacts and ergonomic risks affect occupational health and safety performance.
The unit requires learners to evaluate how digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and robotics influence workplace health and safety, both positively and negatively.
The learner is also expected to demonstrate how biological hazards, ecological risks, ergonomic risks and biological outbreaks can be identified, assessed and controlled to protect workers, organisations and the wider environment.
In simple terms, this unit is asking:
“Can you evaluate emerging risks and opportunities arising from technology, biological hazards, environmental impacts and workplace design, and develop effective strategies to manage them?”
What Competence Does This Unit Require?
You are expected to demonstrate that you can:
- Evaluate the impact of digital technologies on health and safety performance.
- Assess the opportunities and risks associated with artificial intelligence and robotics.
- Assess biological hazards and infection risks.
- Develop infection prevention and control strategies.
- Evaluate ecological risks associated with organisational activities.
- Assess environmental impacts on ecosystems.
- Evaluate ergonomic hazards and develop suitable controls.
- Assess organisational preparedness for biological outbreaks.
- Develop risk control and recovery strategies following biological incidents.
The learner should demonstrate how digital technologies influence health and safety performance and how opportunities and risks associated with these technologies are managed.
What to Prepare
Prepare a report, presentation or project that explains how digital technologies, artificial intelligence and robotics affect occupational health and safety performance within your organisation.
Important Context
The report must be based on your organisation's actual activities, technologies, management arrangements and workplace examples. Generic descriptions of artificial intelligence, automation or robotics alone will not be sufficient. You should demonstrate how these technologies affect your own organisation and support your evaluation with relevant organisational evidence where appropriate.
Your Report Should
- Evaluate the impact of digital technologies on occupational health and safety performance.
- Explain how artificial intelligence, robotics or automation can reduce workplace risks.
- Evaluate the potential negative effects of digital technologies on workers, including mental health and wellbeing.
- Explain how the organisation manages the risks and opportunities associated with digital technologies.
Supporting Workplace Evidence
The report should reference relevant organisational evidence where appropriate. This may include technology implementation projects, risk assessments, wellbeing surveys, performance reports, incident records, automation projects, management reviews or other relevant workplace documents.
Assessment Criteria Covered
1.1
1.2
1.3
The learner should demonstrate how biological hazards are identified, assessed and controlled to protect workers and others who may be affected.
What to Prepare
Prepare a report, presentation or project that explains how biological hazards and infection risks are assessed and controlled within your organisation.
Important Context
The report must be based on your organisation's actual activities, biological hazards, infection control arrangements and workplace examples where relevant. Generic descriptions of infection control principles alone will not be sufficient.
Your Report Should
- Explain how biological hazards are identified and assessed.
- Explain how exposure assessments are used within risk management.
- Explain how infection prevention and control measures are implemented.
- Explain how infection risks are communicated to workers and other stakeholders.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the organisation's infection control arrangements.
Supporting Workplace Evidence
The report should reference relevant organisational evidence where appropriate. This may include risk assessments, infection control procedures, health surveillance records, training records, emergency arrangements, communication records or other relevant workplace documents.
Assessment Criteria Covered
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
The learner should demonstrate how ecological risks associated with organisational activities are identified, assessed and controlled.
What to Prepare
Prepare a report, presentation or project that explains how ecological risks associated with your organisation's activities are identified, assessed and managed.
Important Context
The report must be based on your organisation's actual activities, environmental aspects, ecological impacts and workplace arrangements. Generic descriptions of environmental management principles alone will not be sufficient.
Your Report Should
- Explain how ecological risks are identified.
- Explain how ecological risks are assessed and quantified.
- Evaluate the potential impact of organisational activities on ecosystems.
- Explain how ecological risks are controlled and monitored.
- Explain how ecological risk management supports organisational and sustainability objectives.
Supporting Workplace Evidence
The report should reference relevant organisational evidence where appropriate. This may include environmental risk assessments, environmental monitoring records, environmental permits, compliance reports, sustainability reports, environmental audits or other relevant workplace documents.
Assessment Criteria Covered
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
The learner should demonstrate how ergonomic hazards are identified, assessed and controlled to improve health, wellbeing and organisational performance.
What to Prepare
Prepare a report, presentation or project that explains how ergonomic risks are identified, assessed and controlled within your organisation.
Important Context
The report must be based on your organisation's actual workplace activities, ergonomic hazards and workplace improvement initiatives. Generic descriptions of ergonomics principles alone will not be sufficient.
Your Report Should
- Identify and evaluate ergonomic hazards within the workplace.
- Explain the operational and strategic implications of ergonomic risks.
- Explain how ergonomic improvements are developed and implemented.
- Evaluate the costs and benefits of ergonomic improvements.
Supporting Workplace Evidence
The report should reference relevant organisational evidence where appropriate. This may include ergonomic assessments, workstation assessments, manual handling assessments, injury data, improvement plans, cost-benefit analyses or other relevant workplace documents.
Assessment Criteria Covered
4.1
4.2
4.3
The learner should demonstrate how biological outbreak risks are assessed and how effective control measures are developed and implemented.
What to Prepare
Prepare a report, presentation or project that explains how your organisation would assess, manage and recover from a biological outbreak.
Important Context
The report must be based on your organisation's actual arrangements, emergency preparedness activities and workplace context. Where a biological outbreak has not occurred, the report may be based on a realistic organisational scenario.
Your Report Should
- Explain how biological outbreak risks are identified and assessed.
- Explain the immediate control measures that would be implemented.
- Explain the medium and long-term control measures that would be implemented.
- Explain how post-incident reviews, lessons learned and organisational improvements would be managed.
Supporting Workplace Evidence
The report should reference relevant organisational evidence where appropriate. This may include business continuity plans, emergency response procedures, pandemic plans, risk assessments, management reviews, lessons learned reports or other relevant workplace documents.
Assessment Criteria Covered
5.1
5.2
5.3
Important Note for Learners
The competence requirements outlined above describe the practical workplace activities, systems, processes and records that may be used to demonstrate competence against this unit.
As this is a competency-based qualification, learners are expected to demonstrate that they can apply their health and safety knowledge and skills within their own workplace or working environment.
In addition to the competence-based assessment criteria, this unit also contains a number of knowledge-based assessment criteria. These are typically assessed through:
- Written responses
- Professional discussions with the assessor
- Assessor questioning
In most cases, the knowledge-based assessment criteria relate directly to the same workplace activities, systems and processes described above. Learners will therefore often find that the workplace evidence gathered to demonstrate competence also helps them prepare for and satisfy the knowledge assessment requirements.