This unit covers the main areas of employment law and the legal framework around it. It explains how people professionals must follow legal requirements in different countries or regions when carrying out the various parts of their role.
The CIPD Level 5OS01 Specialist Employment Law assignment example covers the key employment law topics people professionals need for effective people management. It includes equality and discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, legal requirements in recruitment and selection, and employees’ statutory rights such as pay, working time, and leave.
It also looks at important issues like redundancy, fair dismissal procedures, changing employment contracts, and how settlement agreements and employment tribunals work.
Through this module, learners build the skills to apply employment law in practice—supporting fair treatment, reducing legal risk, and improving employee relations. This sample assignment shows how employment law can be used across the full employee lifecycle to help organisations stay compliant and maintain good standards.
Table of Contents
Assessment Questions
AC 1.1 A newly appointed commercial director has questioned whether the UK’s employment law framework is ‘fit for purpose’ in a competitive retail market. He argues that regulation increases costs and makes it harder to respond quickly to changes in consumer demand. He asks you to evaluate the aims and objectives of employment regulation for the organisation and its staff.
The Commercial Director’s question is a fair one, and answering it requires separating what regulation is trying to achieve from what it costs us.
Correcting a market failure in bargaining power. The first aim is social protection. A part-time store assistant negotiating individually with a business employing 4,000 people has no meaningful leverage, and the statutory floor in wages, hours and dismissal exists because bargaining alone would not produce one. The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the Working Time Regulations 1998 illustrate the point directly: both set minima the market had not delivered.
Securing fair access and preventing exclusion. The Equality Act 2010 aims to ensure that decisions are made on merit. For a retailer recruiting continuously across stores, contact centre and warehouse, this is also commercially rational, since exclusionary practice narrows the recruitment pool in a tight labour market.
Maintaining a level competitive field. Regulation prevents rivals gaining advantage by undercutting standards. Without it, our compliance would be a competitive disadvantage rather than a baseline.
Providing procedural certainty. Statutory frameworks and the Acas Code give managers a known route through difficult decisions, which reduces both dispute frequency and the cost of the disputes that occur.
Weighing the Director’s objection. He is right that regulation carries cost. Consultation periods lengthen restructuring, dismissal protections mean workforce reductions cannot be made at the speed a purely commercial calculation would suggest, and compliance consumes management time we could deploy elsewhere. In a sector where margins are thin and demand shifts quickly, that is a genuine constraint rather than an imagined one.
Three considerations weigh against him. The financial exposure of non-compliance is substantial: the maximum compensatory award for unfair dismissal is £123,543 for dismissals from 6 April 2026, and discrimination awards are uncapped (Baker McKenzie, 2026). The agility he wants remains available, since the framework governs how we act rather than whether we can: redundancy, contractual variation and performance dismissal all remain lawful when properly conducted. And the evidence associates fair treatment with retention (CIPD, 2025a), which matters in a warehouse where replacement costs are already significant.
Judgement. The framework is fit for purpose here. It disciplines process rather than preventing decisions, and the organisations that experience it as burdensome are generally those whose practice is weakest. The Director’s agility concern is better addressed by improving how we manage change than by wishing the framework away.
AC 1.2 A store operations manager is preparing a response to a solicitor who has written to her on behalf of a recently dismissed colleague who is threatening legal action. She is unclear about the differences between employment tribunals and the ordinary courts. She also assumes that this unfair dismissal claim, if it is formally brought, will inevitably take many years to work its way through the courts because the employee will appeal any unfavourable outcome. Examine the role played by the tribunal and courts system in enforcing employment law in cases like this.
Two separate systems. Employment tribunals are not courts, and the distinction is substantive rather than terminological. Tribunals were established to provide accessible, specialist determination of statutory employment rights. The ordinary civil courts have general jurisdiction, including contractual claims of unlimited value.
Four practical differences. Jurisdiction: a tribunal hears statutory claims such as unfair dismissal, discrimination and unlawful deductions, and can hear contractual claims only on termination and up to £25,000. Composition: a tribunal may sit with an employment judge alone or with two lay members bringing employer and employee experience. Costs: unlike the civil courts, costs do not ordinarily follow the event, which removes a significant deterrent to claimants and changes our risk assessment. Remedies: statutory, being reinstatement, re-engagement or compensation calculated by statutory formula. Acas early conciliation as a mandatory gateway. A prospective claimant must notify Acas before presenting a claim, and Acas offers conciliation for up to six weeks (Acas, 2025a). The limitation clock is paused during this period. This matters here because the solicitor’s letter may be followed by an Acas notification rather than proceedings, and a substantial proportion of matters resolve at this stage. The appellate route, and why it is narrower than assumed. Appeal from the tribunal lies to the Employment Appeal Tribunal only on a point of law. The EAT cannot rehear the facts or substitute its own view of the evidence. Onward appeal lies to the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, each requiring permission. Correcting the manager’s assumption directly. The belief that the claim will take years is wrong on three counts. Most claims settle before hearing, frequently at conciliation. A tribunal’s findings of fact are effectively final, so an employee dissatisfied with the outcome cannot appeal merely because they disagree. And permission is required at each appellate stage, which most cases do not obtain. Ordinary tribunal claims are typically determined within roughly a year, though listing delays have lengthened in recent years. Practical advice. Engage with Acas rather than treating conciliation as a formality, assemble the dismissal file now while
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