Broadly, duty of care is your business’s moral and legal responsibility to protect the safety, health, and wellbeing of those individuals involved in your activities.  

Implied Duties  

While employment contracts contain express terms that create duties (i.e., the specific, written agreements such as your job title, pay rate, and holiday entitlement), Certain duties are implied, even if they are not expressly stated in a contract.  

Guidance from Acas highlights that employment contracts include the following implied duties:  

• Duty of care 

• Duty of trust and confidence 

These apply during periods of sickness, leave and holidays and whether working remotely or not. Serious breaches of these duties by either party can materially damage that relationship and sometimes lead to an acrimonious parting of the ways.  

Your business has a legal duty of trust and confidence towards its employees. The implied duty of trust and confidence requires your business to act reasonably and not behave in a way that is likely to seriously damage the working relationship with your employees.  

For example, failing to pay agreed wages or tolerating unsafe or abusive working conditions could amount to a breach of trust and confidence.  

Your business must:  

• treat employees in an even-handed and non-arbitrary way; 

• avoid management practices that are aggressive, abusive, or undermining; and 

• respond to issues in a reasonable and proportionate manner 

A management style that may be considered ‘normal’ within parts of the screen sector may not lawful if it undermines dignity or damages trust.  

For example, a high-pressure production culture does not justify shouting, humiliation or dismissive treatment of employees.  

A breach of your duties will often arise though legal routes, such as:  

• discrimination or harassment claims 

• breach of contract  

• constructive dismissal 

• health and safety detriment claims 

• negligence claims 

Your business should have a grievance procedure, to provide employees with a reasonable opportunity to raise and seek redress for any grievances. You should engage with your employee’s concerns in a timely, fair and transparent way. Failure to do so may undermine trust and confidence.  

Your business should provide:  

• clear reporting pathways; 

• fair investigation processes; and  

• appropriate communication and support. 

Under the Regulations, a key duty is to carry out ‘suitable and sufficient’ written risk assessments where you have five or more employees, and to record and act on your findings.  

In their guidance, Acas describes that an employer’s responsibility for risk management encompasses several key obligations, including:  

• Identifying risks 

• Deciding how to remove or reduce risks 

• Keeping records of risks and associated decisions  

• Regularly reviewing the risks 

• Following a health and safety policy  

Your business also has a duty to provide employees with relevant information on risks; preventative and protective measures taken and give them adequate health and safety training.  

For agency staff, both the hirer and employment agency are responsible for their health and safety. 

Your business must, as far is reasonably practicable:  

• Provide a safe and suitable working environment (including safe systems); 

• carry out risk assessments and act on findings; 

• provide adequate training for employees to ensure health and safety policies and procedures are understood and followed; and  

• provide suitable instructions and competent supervision; 

Importantly, duty of care is not limited to physical safety. The duty to provide a safe workplace is not limited to accidents or equipment.  

Psychological safety and dignity at work are equally as central to your duties, and therefore stress and welfare must be included in your health and safety risk assessments under HSWA.  

For example, this should include managing risks associated with working hours and fatigue. 

To inform your risk assessments, the Health and Safety Executive has identified six Management Standards designed to address causes of stress at work and encourage good practice: 

• Demands: workload, patterns and environment 

• Control: control over how employees work 

• Support: encouragement and resources 

• Relationships: positive working relationships 

• Role: role clarity and potential conflicts 

• Change: management and communication  

The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates 16 basic rights (known as Articles) from the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law.  

 These Articles function as the ethical and legal foundation of an employer’s duty of care. While your specific policies may focus on health and safety or equality, these 16 rights define the minimum standard of treatment required to protect an individual’s dignity, privacy, and autonomy.  

By ensuring these rights are respected, your business meets its broader obligation to provide a working environment that is not only safe but fundamentally respectful of the person. 

See our e-learning module: Human Rights And The Screen Industries

Underpinning your duty of care is a strict legal requirement to protect employees from discrimination, harassment and victimisation under the Equality Act 2010. This means not treating an employee differently because of a protected characteristic and making reasonable adjustments for employees with disabilities (i.e., modifying set access or call times).   

Your duties under the Equality Act 2010 extend to the collective behaviour of the workforce, as an employer can be held vicariously liable for the discriminatory acts of its staff unless it can prove it took all reasonable steps to prevent them.  

For example, a failure to take appropriate and reasonable steps to prevent or address workplace discrimination of an employee could amount to a serious breach of duty. 

Your business should implement clear policies and procedures which serve to establish a preventative and zero-tolerance culture. 

Duty of care specifically extends to Adults at Risk. These are individuals who may have care and support needs (such as a physical or mental disability) that make them more vulnerable to harm or abuse.  

To manage these specific risks, your business should appoint a Designated Safeguarding Officer (DSO) to lead on safeguarding policies, ensuring that Adults at Risk are identified and protected.  

See our saSafeguarding Policy

The Film and TV Charity in collaboration with over 45 organisations has introduced a set of nine core principles and corresponding action points designed to mitigate the startling mental health realities of the screen sector.  

This shift from reactive to proactive is the core of how modern duty of care should be interpreted going forward.  

The 9 Principles at a Glance:  

• Planning & Recruitment: Setting realistic, schedules, and onboarding processes to prevent systemic overwork. 

• Leadership & Culture: Ensuring senior management leads wellbeing strategies and foster an open, zero-tolerance environment.  

• On-Set Support: Actively managing workloads, signposting professional resources, and assessing the impact of sensitive or traumatic content. 

• Review & Accountability: Conducting post-wrap debriefs to ensure lessons are learned for the next production. 

A complete breakdown of the principles and implementation guidance, you can access the full guide here. 

To uphold trust and confidence during sensitive work, businesses are increasingly engaging specialist roles: 

• Intimacy Coordinators: Mandatory for many broadcasters when filming scenes involving nudity or simulated sex. They ensure informed consent is maintained and that boundaries are respected.  

• Wellbeing Facilitators: This role provides a neutral point of contact, helping to mediate low-level conflict.  

Why Duty of Care Matters in the Screen Sector  

Screen work creates distinctive challenges, including long hours, demanding schedules, hierarchical production structures and rapidly changing teams and locations.  

Duty of care extends beyond compliance and relates to day-to-day working culture, including:  

• workload and fatigue management  

• fair and respectful management practices  

• effective handling of complaints and concerns 

Remember: industry norms must not override legal responsibilities.  

Duty of care obligations and the CIISA Standards are closely connected. Applying your duties effectively in day-to-day working practices helps your business build a safer and more respectful workplace, supported by open and accountable reporting mechanisms and a culture that responds appropriately to concerns.  

Your business plays an important role in shaping the future of the screen sector through the standards you set, the culture you foster and the working environment you create.  

What can your business do?  

Duty of care is demonstrated through systems, behaviours, and decision-making. Importantly, your business’s policies and procedures should function as working tools that guide conduct and support consistent practice.  

To support your policies and procedures, training schemes such as the Bectu Creative Industries Safety Passport (CRISP) encourage consistent safety awareness across all workforces in the screen sector. 

At Workwise, we have lots of policies and procedures to help you understand and apply your business’s duties in practice!