James Llewellyn
P4 Describe the rights and responsibilities of employees and employers in a selected public
service organisation.
Employee rights and responsibilities
The Public service I have chosen is the police
Employees are always given a contract when starting a job, this contract will state how many hours a week they
get, their pay, how much holiday they receive, maternity and paternity leave, sick pay and what their
responsibilities in the job are. In the police a police officer's contract would state their responsibilities and if
they changed departments from local policing to CID, they would need a new contract because CID overtime
hours are different. Police officers are also given pay slips, these state how many hours they have worked and
for what rate, this will mean they can see if they have been under paid at all, it clearly puts their hours and then
their overtime hours. In the police officers are paid monthly and will receive an electronic pay slip which goes
into detail on their hours and tax. Police officers pay starts at £24,177 and then rises to the top of the scale at
£40,878 a year. The employee also has the responsibility to support the aims of the employer to develop their
career and training through professional training, in the police force there are 3 tiers or emergency driving, tier 1
is using the blue lights to get to an incident, tier 2 is to pursue vehicles and then tier 3 is to perform a tactical
manoeuvre to stop vehicles, in the police the employee would have the responsibility to develop themselves and
take test and train to gain their advanced driving qualifications.
Employees have the right to access mental health and counselling support for free and with ease so that they can
remain stable whilst working, in the police because of the nature of the job officers see very disturbing scenes
so there are organisations like the blue light care which is a police organisation that performs occupational
health counselling for free for officers to benefit their mental health. Employees also have the responsibility to
have access to a safe workplace and they must support this and do their part to keep the workplace as safe as
they can, in police stations they must routinely test fire alarms, they must wear their stab proof vests in case
they get stabs whilst on duty, they must have fire marshals in the workplace who evacuate everyone and are
trained on how to use a fire extinguisher. Every police officer is also trained in first aid so they can perform first
aid to members of the public at incident scenes or even other police officers if someone does get injured.
Employees have the right to modern and efficient resources so they can perform their job to a good standard, in
the police force they all have Samsung devices which have access to the crime database so they can look people
up, they also have access to modern equipment like tasers and now drones for surveillance, in police stations
computers and WIFI is provided for investigations.
Employers also have the right to correct PPE to stay safe whilst at work, currently with Covid-19 officers have
all been equipped with masks and gloves so they can work safely, but they are always given body worn camera
to protect themselves from false claims and allegations and they are given pepper spray and tasers and the
appropriate training to use these to stay safe at work. Employers also have the right to training which they are
responsible for attending and if they feel like they need extra training it is their responsibility to request more, in
the police, officers get specialised training for tasers for example so if someone does not feel comfortable
operating a taser they can request more time for training and then the police force will give them the training.
Employees also have the right to a trade union; this is true in the police force, and they have the Police
Federation Union which will protect rights of officers in courts and will fight for better pay for police officers.
The police also have unions for minority groups like the LGBT police union or the black police federation so
that minority groups can feel safer at work.
