Key Areas of Legal Compliance

Aimed squarely at Assessment Criterion 1.2 of 3CO03, this video maps the key areas of legal compliance that people professionals must navigate consistently in day-to-day practice. The three domains it covers are employment law, data protection, and health and safety, approached through the lens of ethical and professional conduct rather than as abstract legal theory. The video addresses compliance across the full employment lifecycle, from recruitment and selection through to the ending of employment, and examines what consistent conformity with relevant regulation looks like at each stage.

On the employment law side, the video takes in recruitment obligations, the right to work in the UK, written statements of employment particulars, national minimum wage requirements, working time rules, family-friendly rights including maternity, paternity and shared parental leave, flexible working procedures, and the management of dismissal and redundancy. Each of these areas is considered in terms of the specific legal requirements and procedural standards that a people professional must uphold. The data protection section addresses the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, covering the lawful bases for processing personal data in an employment context, the data protection principles, and the individual rights employees hold — including subject access requests and the one-month statutory timescale for responding to them.

The health and safety strand draws on the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, covering employer duties and the contribution people professionals make through risk assessments, policy development, training and employee consultation. The video also addresses psychological wellbeing as a component of health and safety compliance, not only physical safety. Taken together, the three areas are framed around what demonstrable conformity and consistency with law and codes of practice actually requires, which is the precise focus of AC 1.2 within the context of ethics and professional practice.