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.
Report: Part one
You are required to prepare a report to senior managers at their forthcoming annual meeting. The report needs to:
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Appraise one approach an organisation can take to measure financial and non-financial performance. (3.1)
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)
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.
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.
Represent the turnover per year as a percentage of the total number of employees in each department.
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)
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)
It is essential that you relate to academic concepts, theories and professional practice for the tasks to ensure that your work is supported by analysis. Please ensure that any references and sources drawn upon are acknowledged correctly and supported by a bibliography.