This unit highlights the importance of gathering strong quantitative and qualitative evidence to generate meaningful insight and strengthen critical thinking. It also explores how to interpret evidence through an ethical lens to support better decision-making, and why measuring the impact of people practice is essential for demonstrating and creating organisational value.
Table of Contents
Task One
AC 1.1 Evaluate the concept of evidence-based practice, including two examples of where Camellia’s People Team could use it to ensure sound decision-making in people practice
Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a decision-making approach that supports professional practice through the use of the best available evidence from a range of sources, including organisational data, professional knowledge, stakeholder views and external research. Rather than relying primarily on intuition, assumptions or established traditions, EBP enables decisions to be informed by evidence about what is most likely to be effective (CIPD, 2025). This is particularly relevant to Camellia’s People Team, where existing people practices are outdated and heavily reliant on paper-based processes. Such practices can increase the likelihood of incomplete records, inconsistent information and subjective decision-making. Therefore, adopting EBP could help the People Team move towards more systematic, transparent and defensible people management decisions.
Advantages and Disadvantages of EBP
One significant advantage of EBP is that it can improve the quality and reliability of decision-making by encouraging practitioners to base decisions on evidence rather than assumptions (CIPD, 2025). For Camellia’s People Team, this could involve using HR metrics such as employee turnover, absence rates, performance data, training completion rates and employee feedback to identify patterns and inform appropriate interventions. This would enable the People Team to move beyond simply responding to individual issues and instead identify wider organisational trends. For example, if employee turnover is consistently higher within a particular department, available evidence could be examined to determine whether workload, management practices, career development or other factors are contributing to the problem.
A further advantage is that EBP can reduce the risk of decisions being based on personal opinion or organisational assumptions. This is particularly important for a growing organisation such as Camellia, where increasing operational complexity may make informal decision-making less effective. Using reliable evidence can provide a stronger justification for people management interventions and potentially improve organisational outcomes (CIPD, 2023). However, the value of EBP depends heavily on the quality, relevance and reliability of the evidence available. If Camellia’s existing paper-based records are incomplete, inconsistent or outdated, decisions based on these records may still be unreliable. Therefore, simply collecting more data would not necessarily result in better decisions; the organisation would first need to improve its processes for collecting, recording and evaluating information.
There is also a limitation in assuming that evidence alone can determine the appropriate course of action. People management decisions often involve complex organisational and human factors that cannot always be fully captured through quantitative data. Professional judgement and contextual understanding therefore remain important when interpreting evidence. However, this also introduces the possibility of bias if practitioners selectively interpret evidence to support a decision they have already made (CEBMa, 2024). Consequently, Camellia’s People Team should use EBP as a structured decision-making approach rather than treating data as an automatic substitute for professional judgement. Triangulating different sources of evidence would provide a more balanced basis for decision-making.
Application to Camellia’s People Team
Outdated Learning and Development (L&D) Practices
EBP could be applied to evaluate whether Camellia’s existing Learning and Development (L&D) practices are meeting organisational and employee needs. Rather than assuming that existing training programmes are effective because they have historically been used, the People Team could analyse training completion rates, employee performance data and skills gap analysis reports. This evidence could help determine whether training is improving employee capability and contributing to improved performance (CIPD, 2025).
For example, if evidence shows that employees in particular departments continue to demonstrate significant technical skills gaps despite completing existing training, this may indicate that the current L&D approach is not sufficiently relevant or effective. Camellia’s People Team could therefore use this evidence to justify a shift towards more targeted and modern learning interventions, such as role-specific training, digital learning or practical skills development. This demonstrates the value of EBP because the proposed intervention would be based on identified organisational needs rather than simply introducing training because it is customary.
However, training completion data alone would provide only a limited assessment of L&D effectiveness. Employees completing a course does not necessarily mean that learning has been transferred into the workplace or that performance has improved. Therefore, the People Team should combine training data with performance outcomes, employee feedback and evidence of skills application. This would provide a more comprehensive assessment and reduce the risk of drawing conclusions from a single source of evidence.
EBP could also be used to investigate employee attendance and wellbeing concerns. Camellia’s People Team could analyse attendance records alongside information from return-to-work interviews and employee wellbeing surveys. Examining these different sources together could help identify whether absence is associated with factors such as workload pressures, working conditions or wider employee wellbeing concerns (Kenton, 2022).
For instance, if attendance data shows an increase in absence within a particular team and employee feedback indicates high workload pressure, this would provide a stronger evidence base for investigating workload as a potential contributing factor. The People Team could then introduce targeted interventions, such as workload adjustments, additional wellbeing support or changes to working practices. The effectiveness of these interventions should subsequently be evaluated using relevant evidence to determine whether employee attendance and wellbeing have improved.
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