CIPD: Evidence-based Practice Assessment

This unit assignment addresses the significance of capturing robust quantitative and qualitative evidence to inform meaningful insight to influence critical thinking. It focuses on analysing evidence through an ethical lens to improve decision-making and how measuring the impact of people practice is essential in creating value.

CIPD’s insight

Evidence-based practice is about making better decisions, informing action that has the desired impact. An evidence-based approach to decision-making is based on a combination of using critical thinking and the best available evidence. It makes decision makers less reliant on anecdotes, received wisdom and personal experience – sources that are not trustworthy on their own. It is important for People Practitioners to adopt this approach because of the huge impact management decisions have on the working lives of people in all sorts of organisations worldwide. Managers have an obligation to find the best evidence when making important decisions to strengthen the well-being of their workers as well as ensuring their organisation’s success.

Case study

The company director has requested that your HR department provides a report to senior management at their forthcoming annual meeting to show how evidence-based practice approaches can be used to inform sound decision-making on people practices and business-related matters. Your departmental manager has asked you to provide this report.

In addition, for the second part of the report, you have been asked to provide them with examples that demonstrate how people practitioners gain understanding and insight through interpretation of data.

Preparation for the Tasks:

• You are encouraged to start with the reading, listening and watching required for this unit before moving on to plan your content with your tutor and agree staged deadlines so that they can help you manage your progress.
• Refer to the indicative content in the unit to guide and support your evidence.
• Pay attention to how your evidence is presented, remember you are the sole instigator for this task and your recommendations are being presented to key stakeholders and final decision-makers
• Make sure that all work generated for this assignment remains your own.
• If you work with others on a Task you must clearly detail your personal contribution so that you can be fairly assessed for your part.

You will also benefit from:

• Acting on formative feedback from your Assessor.
• Reflecting on your own experiences of learning opportunities and training and development processes.
• Reviewing examples of business proposals, the principles of their format and content.
• Reading the CIPD Fact Sheets and related on-line material on these topics.

Your evidence must consist of:

• Report : (approximately 3900 words), refer to CIPD word count policy. Note – this wordcount covers Part 1 and Part 2 – so, 3,900 words for both. Refer to the suggested wordcount for each part of the report as a guide. However, for guidance, divide the wordcount as follows:
• Part 1: 2,800 words
• Part 2: 1,100 words
• Please use the template below to produce your Report

IMPORTANT NOTE: At Associate Level Referencing is mandatory – you must provide a reference where you have drawn from a secondary source; Harvard referencing is preferable. Please use the Reference box.

Report: Part one

You are required to prepare a report to senior managers at their forthcoming annual meeting. The report needs to:

• AC1.1: Provide evaluation of the concept of evidence-based practice and assess how evidence-based practice approaches can be used to provide insight to support sound decision-making and judgments for people practitioners across a range of people practices and organisational issues. (1.1) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Word count: Approximately 450 words.

• AC1.2: Provide evaluation of one appropriate analysis tool and one method that might be applied by organisations to recognise and diagnose current and future issues, challenges, and opportunities. (1.2) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Wordcount: Approximately 350 words.

• AC1.3: Explain the main principles of critical thinking and describe how these might apply to individual and work colleagues’ ideas to assist objective and rational debate.  (1.3) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section. Wordcount: Approximately 400 words.

• AC1.4: Assess a range of different ethical theories and perspectives and explain how understanding of these can be used to inform and influence moral decision-making. (1.4) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Wordcount: Approximately 400 words.

• AC2.3: Explain a range of approaches that could be taken by people practitioners to identify possible solutions to a specific issue relating to people practice. (2.3) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Wordcount: Approximately 450 words.

• AC3.1: Appraise one approach an organisation can take to measure financial and non-financial performance. (3.1)

Note: This means you need to appraise one approach to measure financial performance and another approach use to measure non-financial performance (so, two approaches in all!)

• Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Wordcount: Approximately 350 words.

• AC3.4 Explain how a variety of people practices add value in an organisation and identify a range of methods that might be used to measure the impact of a range of people practices (3.4) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Wordcount: Approximately 400 words.

Report Part two: Data analysis and review

Section two of the report needs to showcase to senior managers how people professionals use and analyse data on people practices.

1. Below is the data of labour turnover across three departments over a five-year period.

Year	Administration Total in department = 32	Drivers Total in department = 141	Production  Total in department = 385
2016	4	21	39
2017	2	18	54
2018	8	32	82
2019	12	16	80
2020	9	32	112

The costs for recruiting an employee up until 2018 was £2065 however this rose to £3012 from this date onwards.

Present the costings for each year across each of the three departments.

Please complete the calculation table on page 7 and 8 as these will help you complete the other tasks.

	Administration
Year	Leavers	Cost per person	Total
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Department totals

	Drivers
Year	Leavers	Cost per person	Total
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Department totals

	Production
Year	Leavers	Cost per person	Total
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Department totals

Represent the turnover per year as a percentage of the total number of employees in each department.

Year	Administration	Drivers	Production
Leavers	Total in department	Turnover as %	Leavers	Total in department	Turnover as %	Leavers	Total in department	Turnover as %
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020

2. Presented below are two sets of data that has been collected from two departments during exit interviews.

Table 1 shows the feedback that has been elicited from employees in production and table 2 is from payroll.
Review and analyse the two data sets below.
Table 1.

Production – the data represents the number of employees making the comment of their main reason for leaving (52 refused to comment).
Left the job role because there was limited opportunity to enhance career.	24	Left because the work was boring or monotonous	45
Left the role because targets set by their line manager were unachievable.	3	Left because the working hours were unsocial	38
Left the job because their manager was aggressive and difficult to work with.	52	Left because of unforeseen life change	4
Left because there was limited opportunity to develop	12	Left through ill health	14
The role did not afford the opportunity to flexible working	68	Left because I wanted to retire early	7
Left because the working environment was not conducive to well-being	15	Left due to travel difficulties	5
Left to pursue another career	82	Left due to poor pay	94
Left because there was conflict amongst fellow employees	34	Left due to limited reward incentives	87
Left to go to further/higher education	19	Left due to emigrating to another country	1
Left because of leaving the area	5	Left due to care responsibilities	18

Table 2

Payroll – the data represents the number of employees making the comment of their main reason for leaving (27 refused to comment).
Left the job role because there was limited opportunity to enhance career.	4	Left because the work was boring or monotonous	12
Left the role because targets set by their line manager were unachievable.	17	Left because the working hours were unsocial	2
Left the job because their manager was aggressive and difficult to work with.	7	Left because of unforeseen life change	4
Left because there was limited opportunity to develop	2	Left through ill health	1
The role did not afford the opportunity to flexible working	3	Left because I wanted to retire early	0
Left because the working environment was not conducive to well-being	1	Left due to travel difficulties	0
Left to pursue another career	3	Left due to poor pay	2
Left because there was conflict amongst fellow employees	4	Left due to limited reward incentives	5
Left to go to further/higher education	8	Left due to emigrating to another country	0
Left because of leaving the area	3	Left due to care responsibilities	8

• From the analysis present your findings using appropriate methods to highlight themes and trends that appear to be occurring. (2.1, 2.2, 3.2, 3.3)

AC2.1: Interpret analytical data using appropriate analysis tools and methods. (Wordcount: No wordcount here – this section is graphical representations of the raw data covering % labour turnover, costs of recruitment, Table 1 (Production), Table 2 (Payroll).

AC2.2: Review relevant evidence to identify key insights into a people practice issue. . (Wordcount: Approximately 300 words).

AC3.2 Scrutinise key systems and data used to inform people practice in relation to measures of work and people performance calculations. (Word count: Approximately 250 words)

AC3.3 Collate key findings for stakeholders from people practice activities and initiatives. (Wordcount: Approximately 300 words)

AC2.4 Make at least three recommendations to reduce employee turnover based on your analysis.  Provide a rationale for your recommendations based on an evaluation of the benefits, risks and financial implications of potential solutions.  (2.4) (Wordcount: Approximately 250 words)