Duty of Care Level 1 certification
Meet your guide to duty of care:
Christine Williamson
Christine Williamson, Founder and Director of Duty of Care International, will lead this course.
For the past 20 years, Christine has worked in highly challenging environments and supported and led the HR function in many humanitarian responses across Africa and Asia. She has published articles, guides and tools and undertaken extensive research on people management and duty of care issues.
Who is this for?
This course is intended for people managers
- Human Resource professionals,
- legal practitioners,
- security professionals, and
- others from organisations that wish to develop their own competencies and improve their organisation’s commitment to duty of care.
- Participants from the global South and/or local NGOs are especially encouraged to participate.
Your organisation does not need too have a humanitarian or development mission to participate.
What will you do?
- Explore how the most current frameworks and practice in duty of care are applicable to your role and organisation
- Learn from both the course team and from other participants.
- Determine where duty of care matters most at each stage of the employment cycle.
- Produce an action plan for yourself and your organisation.
- Identify and strengthen the competences required to implement the plan
- Develop the expert voice on duty of care in your organisation.
Course schedule outline
Week 1 – Diagnosis
Week 2 – Write
Week 3 – Peer review
Week 4 – Revise
Where are you now?
Review current practices to benchmark your organisation’s current action and challenges.
Outline your draft action plan.
Where do you want to be?
Identify barriers to duty of care in your context and develop strategies to overcome, implement, and embed.
Clear roles and responsibilities.
Peer review the draft action plans of other course participants. Explore ways to grow your competence in duty of care.
Risk management, monitoring, and learning
Revise, improve, and finalise your action plan, using the feedback received from your peers.
The next course starts on 25 May 2020.
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Duty of Care
650 CHF
Level 1 certification
- Practical learning focused on your organisation’s needs
- Expert-designed rubric and guidance
- Peer review to strengthen your learning
- Weekly live problem-solving workshop
What competencies will you develop in this course?
This course will help you:
- Test your current employment practices and understand the impact of duty of care throughout the employment cycle, from recruitment to exit
- Risk assess your duty of care system
- Continually improve by keeping it on the agenda
- Manage your duty of care knowledge
- Share the organisation’s duty of care responsibilities with the right stakeholders
- Use duty of care practices to prevent and enable your workforce, even in higher risk environments.
Flexible options
The course offers a range of flexible options that you can add on to support your learning and help you lead change for duty of care in your organization. You will be able to add these paid options when you enroll.
Personalized tutoring
Calls during the course to provide individualized support.
Individualized expert feedback
Expert review and individualized feedback about your course work and performance.
Post-course support
Guidance on how to act on the plan you developed in the course.
Career mapping
One hour session to discuss how your duty of care knowledge can strengthen your career.
Why your organisation should support staff in this course
Understanding what your duty of care obligations are and how to embed great practices and meet your responsibilities as an employer is essential for all organisations.
- Legally, employers must abide by relevant health and safety and employment law, as well as the common law (or other laws such as civil) duty of care.
- Employers also have a moral and ethical duty not to cause, or fail to prevent, physical or psychological injury, and must fulfil their responsibilities with regard to personal injury and negligence claims.
Duty of care
650 CHF
Level 1 certification
- Practical learning focused on your organisation’s needs
- Expert-designed rubric and guidance
- Peer review to strengthen your learning
- Weekly live problem-solving workshop
Confidentiality
There is a great learning benefit to sharing and collaboration between colleagues.
However, we recognise that duty of care involves sensitive, internal issues.
Participants in the course will be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Please contact us if you have any concerns about confidentiality.
What is duty of care?
All employers have a duty of care towards their employees, and to those they work with or come under their care. This means employers are responsible for taking all reasonable steps to provide their workforce, including their employees, volunteers, consultants and partners, with a healthy and safe working environment.
An employer has a duty in contract, common and civil law or in tort, to take reasonable care for the health and safety of its workforce. Failure to comply, could place individuals at risk of physical and psychological injury and harm, and the organisation at risk of breach of contract, liability and negligence claims.
Prevention is better than cure – always, and whilst prevention may not always be possible, there are ways to prevent an issue or incident getting even worse, avoiding malpractice and, most importantly, further suffering to the individual.
By using a duty of care lens, all areas of employment practice can be strengthened, saving an organisation time and money.
Legal and reputational risks
The legal and reputational risks duty of care carries:
- One issue can escalate into a large tribunal or court case and consume an organisation’s expertise and financial resources as well as significantly damaging their reputation, funding and business as a whole.
- The use of poor employment practices is the road to disgruntled and unhappy employees, causing an emotional and unproductive ripple effect with those involved directly or indirectly, which ultimately wastes a lot of management time and money.
- Employers must abide by relevant health and safety and employment law. They have a duty not to cause, or fail to prevent, physical or psychological injury, and must fulfil their responsibilities with regard to personal injury and negligence claims.
Benefits
The benefits of enhancing your duty of care practices:
- Promoting the physical and psychological safety of your people and being concerned about their wellbeing is a moral, ethical and legal duty, and a key factor for building trust and reinforcing your commitment to your workforce. It can help boost productivity, retention, and lead the way for greater engagement.
- Meeting your duty of care lifts the standard of your employment practices and ensures your workforce feel safe, valued and enabled, ultimately saves an organisation time and money.
- Prevention is better than cure – always, and whilst prevention may not always be possible, there are ways to prevent an issue or incident getting worse, avoiding malpractice and most importantly further suffering.
Want to know more? Join our Special Event
Duty of care: Why you need to strengthen it in your organisation – and how to keep it on the agenda
A conversation with Christine Williamson
Attend Christine's Special Event to learn why you need to strengthen it in your organisation – and how to keep it on the agenda
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What is the duty of care of your organisation in the face of a pandemic threat?
Christine Williamson connects the dots between staff recruitment and management, pandemic threat, and duty care.
Download Christine’s checklist
COVID-19: Basic Duty of Care checks for the recruitment and management of staff in aid organisations
Programme information
What you will do in the course
You may work at any time, from anywhere. Only a reliable Internet connection and a web browser are needed.
- First, you will draft a duty of care action plan for your context of work.
- Second, you will peer review the draft plans of three other participants.
- Third, you will revise your own plan using the inputs and comments received from your peers.
Throughout this process, you will be supported and guided by the course team and engage with your peers in dialogue.
The group will meet online once a week for discussion and expert presentations. A recording of the online sessions will be made available for those who are unable to attend for legitimate reasons.
Workload
Participants should be expected to dedicate a minimum of 3 hours per week to the course. Those with limited fluency in English or digital (i.e. you find online tools difficult to use and/or have never taken an online course before) should double the amount of time dedicated to the course.
Course activities will be broken down into short daily tasks (30 minutes each) to complete each week, Monday through Friday. We encourage you to complete each task on the day it is posted. Nevertheless, you are free to catch up any time during the week, preferably before the weekly discussion group. As each week’s activities build on the preceding week, it is important that you do not fall behind the schedule.
Resources
Curated course material will include tailored models and tools.
Requirements
This course is open to all staff and volunteers responsible for or make decisions on the health, safety and wellbeing of their people.
- Languages: The course’s working language will be English. The writing proficiency needed to usefully participate in the open course is fifth-grade level (ten years old in the U.K.).
- Digital proficiency: Digital proficiency requires familiarity with online platforms at a level of usage equivalent to basic Facebook use and a word processor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
- Information technology: Participants will need to have access to a reliable Internet connection and a modern browser (Safari 5+, Firefox, or Chrome). A headset with a microphone is necessary to participate in the weekly group discussion. You will need to access the course web site on a daily basis.
Research and evaluation
Course participants may be invited to participate in research to evaluate the learning efficacy of this course. Participation in this research is completely voluntary and you may stop taking part at any time. In cases where participants do not consent to data collection, the research and evaluation team will collect no data. Participation/non-participation will have no effect on your present or future relationship with the any of the organizations involved in this initiative.