5CO02 Evidence-based Practice (AC 1.3), (AC 1.4) and (AC 1.5)

5CO02 Evidence-based Practice (AC 1.3), (AC 1.4) and (AC 1.5)

There’s a moment in almost every people professional’s career where things feel murky. You’re faced with contrasting ideas, both of which seem reasonable. One colleague’s view is rooted in data, another’s is based on lived experience. And you? You’re somewhere in between, trying to make sense of it all. That’s where the heart of 5CO02 Evidence-based Practice (AC 1.3), (AC 1.4), and (AC 1.5) really starts to speak. It’s not just about ticking boxes, it’s about learning how to think, decide, and act when the answers aren’t always clear-cut.

We’ve all had situations where instinct says one thing, and the facts say another. Or where two different ethical views both feel fair, but lead to different paths. This module asks you to pause, weigh up what’s really there, and think not only about what works but what’s right. That process, we believe, is far more human than we often admit.

Scenario

Your manager has asked you to complete a briefing paper for her to give to a visiting team of people practice graduates who are particularly interested in how evidenced-based practice is used in the context of people practices. The content needs to give them critical insight into what evidence-based practice is and how it is relevant to people professionals. She has also asked you to include practical examples of the types of data analysis that people professionals use.

Briefing paper – Part one

For part one, you need to provide the graduates with knowledge and understanding of what evidence-based practice is and identify approaches that can be taken for effective critical thinking and decision-making that ensures integrity and value is upheld.

You must ensure that you: Explain the main principles of critical thinking including how these might apply to your own and others’ ideas to assist objective and rational debate. (AC 1.3)

Introduction – Why This Matters

Imagine you’ve just walked into a meeting where everyone’s got strong opinions. Your manager, your colleagues, even the new interns, each with a different take on how to handle an ongoing issue, say, declining staff engagement across your cluster of hotels. Now, you might be tempted to go with the most confident voice in the room, or maybe just trust your gut. But that’s where critical thinking steps in. It forces us, gently or not to pause, step back, and ask: What do we actually know? What are we assuming? And does the data support it?

And that’s what this part of the paper is about. You’re helping those visiting graduates understand what critical thinking really means in people practice. Something they’ll need daily if they’re going to make fair, and reasoned decisions.

What Is Critical Thinking?

Let’s not overcomplicate this. Critical thinking is, in its most basic sense, thinking carefully and clearly. It’s asking questions before accepting an idea as true. It’s about slowing down that automatic “yes, that makes sense” reaction and going, “Hang on, does it?”

There are a few main principles here. We’ll go through each, using examples from your current role supporting the eight hotels in the Inter Luxe cluster.

1. Questioning Assumptions

It starts with not taking things at face value. Let’s say your hotel managers believe staff turnover is due to pay. That sounds plausible, but is it true?

You might ask:

• Have we checked exit interviews?
• Is it really pay, or is it work-life balance?
• Could it be that newer staff feel unsupported, especially during night shifts?

Applying it: In your role, you could review recent survey data or HR records and notice that exit reasons are logged as “lack of progression.” That immediately challenges the original pay assumption. So you’d bring this up in your discussions and shift the conversation in a more accurate direction.

2. Seeking Evidence

Critical thinking isn’t about being cynical; it’s about looking for proof. We’re not saying “everyone’s wrong,” we’re saying “prove it to me.”
If someone claims a new onboarding process is “working brilliantly,” you’d ask:

• What metrics are we using to define ‘working’?
• Have new hires actually stayed longer?
• Is satisfaction up, or are we just assuming because complaints are down?

Back to your case: If one hotel in your cluster introduced a digital onboarding platform, you’d want to compare pre- and post-data: time-to-productivity, turnover rates in the first 3 months, maybe even feedback from the new hires themselves.

3. Considering Multiple Perspectives

This is where it gets uncomfortable sometimes. You’re listening to someone you don’t agree with, perhaps even someone junior, and realising, actually, they might have a point.

Let’s say the Head of Operations wants to cut back on training costs during off-peak seasons. Meanwhile, a junior HR officer says that’s the only time staff are actually free for in-depth learning. Now, both sides have valid arguments.

The point here is to weigh these perspectives fairly, without letting rank, popularity, or pressure dictate what you take seriously.

In action: You might pull together short focus groups from both departments to get a broader understanding and check the logic behind both views.

4. Reflecting on Bias, Yours and Others’

Everyone has biases. Even those who pride themselves on being “objective.” We’re all influenced by our experiences, preferences, and sometimes laziness.

Maybe you personally prefer recruiting from within, but is that always the best move? Does that blind spot stop you from considering strong external talent?

You might have a manager who always dismisses feedback from younger staff, calling them “entitled.” That’s a bias. Critical thinking requires you to spot that and challenge it carefully.

How you’d handle it: Perhaps when discussing leadership development, you present anonymised feedback from junior staff without revealing their age bracket, then watch how the reaction changes. A good way to test bias without triggering resistance.

5. Drawing Conclusions Cautiously

It’s easy to jump the gun, especially when deadlines are tight. But critical thinking says: wait. Do we have enough to make a decision? Are there gaps?

You might be analysing why one hotel in your cluster has dramatically lower absence rates. It could be tempting to praise the GM for great people management, but wait. What if staff there feel afraid to report sickness? What if the culture rewards presenteeism?

A cautious approach means you collect a bit more information before drawing your final conclusion. Maybe send out an anonymous pulse survey. Compare sickness reporting patterns. Talk to a few staff informally.

Using These Principles in Debate and Decision-Making

Here’s the second part of the question, how do these principles apply to your own and others’ ideas in a rational debate?

Let’s return to your actual scenario. You’re in a team meeting trying to decide whether to invest in a new scheduling tool. Your manager loves it. One colleague is worried it’ll be too rigid. Another thinks we should just stick with Excel.

You could apply critical thinking like this:

• Challenge your own instinct. You like new tech, but are you overlooking practical concerns?
• Ask for evidence. Does this tool actually save time or improve staff wellbeing elsewhere?
• Invite quiet voices. Someone junior might have used this tool in a previous job, they could have real experience.
• Hold off judgement. Don’t decide just because the loudest person in the room says so.

Critical thinking doesn’t mean freezing. It just means making sure decisions aren’t rushed, biased, or shallow.

Quick Thought

Let’s be honest, no one always thinks critically. We’ve all let assumptions run the show at some point. But people professionals need to make a conscious effort. Why? Because what we recommend often affects others’ pay, wellbeing, career paths, and dignity.

You won’t get it perfect every time. You’ll miss a blind spot or forget to check the data. That’s fine. The key is to stay open, keep questioning, and try to challenge your own thoughts just as much as others’.

That’s the heart of critical thinking.

AC 1.3 – Principles of Critical Thinking Answer

Let’s begin here because it’s foundational. You can’t really talk about evidence-based practice without addressing how we think about the evidence in front of us.

Critical thinking, simply put, is about not taking things at face value. It’s a process of questioning, challenging, pausing, and digging a little deeper, especially when the surface story seems too neat.

In the context of Inter Luxe, this might show up when someone says, “Staff are leaving because pay is low.” It may sound plausible. But a critical thinker wouldn’t stop there. They’d want to know: How many staff? Which departments? Was it mentioned in exit interviews? Could it be related to management culture or work-life balance instead?

There are a few core principles worth passing on to the graduates:

• Objectivity: Looking at the data or issue without personal bias. If your friend in housekeeping says the manager is unfair, you might believe them, but a critical thinker checks multiple perspectives before concluding.
• Clarity: Asking what’s really meant. For instance, if a report says, “staff morale is low,” a critical thinker will ask, “How was that measured? Are we talking about one hotel or all eight?”
• Logic: Do the conclusions follow from the evidence? Let’s say our customer complaints rose after a schedule change, was that really the cause, or did something else shift too?
• Open-mindedness: Being willing to accept that your initial idea might not hold up under scrutiny. Maybe you thought training was the issue, but the real block is lack of leadership.

Applying this way of thinking to our own work means fewer rushed assumptions and more grounded decisions. It also encourages healthy debate, we can disagree on a policy change, for example, but still agree on the value of checking the data first.

Explain two decision-making processes for achieving effective outcomes. (AC 1.4)

Why Decision-Making Deserves Attention

It’s easy to think of decisions as one-off moments, a “yes” or “no” said quickly in a meeting, or a gut feeling you go with under pressure. But in people practice, decisions ripple. A single call on whether to hire externally or promote internally could shift culture, affect morale, or even impact turnover.

In your cluster of Inter Luxe hotels, decision-making happens constantly. Whether it’s about shift planning, recruitment priorities, or training budgets, people professionals are expected to not only make the right call, but to show their working, too. Especially in today’s data-conscious world.

So this part of your briefing paper needs to explain two different decision-making processes. Not in abstract terms, but in ways that new graduates can see themselves using, perhaps even this month, in a live setting.

1. Rational Decision-Making Process

This one’s fairly structured. It’s the kind you’d use when there’s time to think things through, and where evidence really matters. A sort of step-by-step approach. In your people role, it comes into play more often than you might realise.

Let’s walk through the key stages, using a practical example from your hotel group.

Example Scenario

Problem: Staff absences are peaking during off-seasons, which is unusual. Senior leaders assume people are just “taking advantage” of quiet months.

But that assumption doesn’t sit right with you. So you take a rational approach.

Step 1: Identify the Problem Clearly

Instead of going with the gut instinct that people are slacking, you define the problem precisely: There’s a higher rate of sick leave across three hotels during February and September, this needs understanding, not just reacting.

Step 2: Gather Information

You pull absence records, speak to team leaders, and maybe even run a short anonymous questionnaire. You find a trend, staff in these hotels report low morale during quiet seasons, less guest interaction, fewer tips, more idle time.

Step 3: Develop Alternatives

Based on what you’ve found, you come up with a few possible responses:

• Introduce optional short-term redeployment to busier city hotels.
• Offer wellness or engagement programmes during quieter periods.
• Allow staff to take part in cross-training workshops.

Step 4: Evaluate Alternatives

Here, you’d assess cost, practicality, staff willingness, and whether each option addresses the real root of the issue (morale, not just time off).

Step 5: Make the Decision

Let’s say you go with cross-training workshops, staff stay engaged, morale improves, and you’re not displacing anyone from their hotel.

Step 6: Implement and Monitor

You roll it out in February at one hotel, then gather feedback. If absence drops or feedback improves, you build the case for wider rollout.

Why It Works
This method gives you a traceable path, from problem to solution, and allows you to justify decisions to senior stakeholders. And more importantly, it avoids knee-jerk assumptions that could demotivate staff further.

2. Intuitive Decision-Making Process

Let’s contrast that with a second type, more instinct-led. Less structured. Still valid. In fact, this is often how experienced people professionals operate when time is short, or when they’ve faced the same issue dozens of times.

Intuition in people practice is not guesswork. It’s fast pattern recognition, built on experience, context, and a gut-level understanding of people dynamics.

Example Scenario

You’re sitting in on an interview panel. The candidate ticks every box on paper, but something feels off. There’s a slight hesitance in how they speak about teamwork. Your colleague doesn’t pick up on it, but you’ve seen this before, someone who may not mesh well in a close-knit team.

Without running a full psychometric test or digging into more data, you quietly recommend moving forward with another candidate who ranked just slightly lower but showed real emotional intelligence in the group task.

You’re drawing on:

• Observed behaviour
• Past experience with similar hires
• Cultural fit within your specific hotel cluster

That’s intuitive decision-making in action.

When Is This Useful?

• When time is limited and there’s no time for a six-step process.
• When data is unavailable or inconclusive.
• When a decision relies heavily on interpersonal dynamics or cues (e.g. conflict between staff, emotional tone in interviews, response to feedback).

A Word of Caution.

Intuition isn’t always reliable. It’s shaped by our biases, blind spots, and even our mood that day. It works best when it’s informed by real experience, not snap judgement.

In practice, it’s often balanced with evidence. For instance, you might use a rational process for a big structural decision (like changing shift patterns across hotels), but rely on intuition for a quick, sensitive response (like handling a team dispute on a weekend shift).

Combining Both Approaches

In reality, most decisions in people practice are made using a bit of both. You might start rationally, collecting facts, outlining options, but then notice a pattern your gut recognises, prompting you to lean in a particular direction.

For example, during a disciplinary process, you follow a clear policy (rational), but how you communicate outcomes, or spot when someone’s struggling emotionally, that often comes down to intuition.

And that’s perfectly okay. In fact, it’s often necessary.

Final Reflection

If you were explaining this to the visiting graduates, you might say: Think of decision-making like driving a car. Rational thinking is the sat nav, it gives you the route. But intuition? That’s what helps you react when someone brakes suddenly in front of you. You need both to get anywhere safely.

AC 1.4 – Decision-Making Processes for Effective Outcomes Answer

In people practice, there’s a constant balance between time pressure, business needs, and fairness. We can look at two broad processes:

1. Rational Decision-Making This is a logical, step-by-step process. It’s especially useful when dealing with operational or strategic challenges. Let’s use the example of unexpected staff absences in your quieter, coastal hotels.

• Identify the problem: Absences spike in February and September.
• Gather evidence: You collect rota patterns, talk to staff, look at shift feedback.
• Generate options: Maybe staff could temporarily support city hotels. Or maybe the issue is boredom during low guest volume, and training programmes might help.
• Weigh pros and cons: You evaluate costs, willingness, and long-term benefit.
• Decide and act: You launch a cross-training pilot in one hotel.
• Monitor results: If it helps, consider expanding it.

2. Intuitive Decision-Making This works differently. It’s faster, instinct-based, and built on experience.

Say you’re interviewing someone who looks great on paper, but something, a slight reluctance when asked about teamwork—doesn’t sit right. You’ve seen this before. You quietly recommend another candidate. That’s intuition at play. Not irrational, just unstructured.

In practice, we blend both. Rational methods give clarity and accountability. Intuition helps when there’s no time or when people dynamics are subtle.

Assess how two different ethical perspectives can be used to inform and influence moral decision-making. (AC 1.5)

A Familiar Dilemma

Picture this, one of the Inter Luxe hotels is considering reducing contracted hours for part-time housekeepers during the low season. It’s positioned as a business survival move, cut back now to stay afloat. But from a people perspective, it’s murky. These are workers who already live close to the financial edge. It’s legal. It’s even contractual. But is it fair?

This is where ethics gets real. Not a philosophical debate in an abstract setting, but a practical tension people professionals face more often than we’d like.

So how do we decide what’s right?

You’re now being asked to explain how two different ethical perspectives can shape moral decision-making. Let’s walk through them clearly and apply both to situations you might actually face in your role.

1. Utilitarianism The “Greatest Good” Lens

Utilitarianism is all about outcomes. The basic idea? A decision is morally sound if it creates the most benefit for the largest number of people. It’s less concerned with individual rights and more focused on the overall result.

Let’s test that out in your current context.

Scenario: Downsizing Staff Hours During Low Season

If we take a utilitarian approach, we might argue:

• Reducing hours protects the hotel’s long-term stability.
• By taking short-term measures now, we avoid full redundancies later.
• The majority of employees (and customers) benefit if the hotel stays open and solvent.

So, based on this logic, cutting a few hours from part-time contracts might be seen as morally justified, because it supports the broader good. But, here comes the human part, it doesn’t always feel right. Some employees may be disproportionately affected, especially those already earning the least. Utilitarianism doesn’t always prioritise the individual. And that’s where tension creeps in.

How This Influences You as a People Professional

This perspective can be helpful when making tough calls. Maybe during pandemic recovery, or in crisis planning. It supports decisions like:

• Closing one site to save others
• Delaying pay rises to protect long-term jobs
• Restructuring a team for better overall service delivery

But it can leave out OTHER aspects, especially the emotional or relational cost to individuals. Which brings us to the second ethical lens.

2. Deontological Ethics The “Do the Right Thing” Approach

Deontology doesn’t care about outcomes as much as principles. It’s about duty, rules, and doing what’s morally right, even if it doesn’t benefit the majority. The question here is not “what happens after?” but “is this action itself fair and respectful?”

Back to the same hotel scenario:

Scenario: Cutting Staff Hours

From a deontological perspective, you’d be asking:

• Is it morally acceptable to change someone’s contract purely for financial gain?
• Do we have a duty to treat part-time staff equally to full-timers?
• Even if it’s legal, are we upholding their dignity and respect?

This view might lead you to push for alternatives:

• Voluntary hour reductions
• Redeployment across sister hotels
• Temporary pay support schemes (if feasible)

How This Plays Out in Your Role

Deontological thinking is valuable when:

• You’re dealing with dignity at work
• Making decisions that affect a vulnerable group
• Upholding fairness even when the business might prefer an easier route

For example:

• Protecting an employee’s right to appeal, even if it delays a restructure
• Speaking out when a senior leader skips grievance procedures to “resolve something quickly”
• Refusing to bypass safeguarding training for short-term convenience

So, Which Approach Is Better?

Honestly, neither is perfect on its own. Utilitarianism helps with scale. It’s practical. It weighs outcomes. But it can feel cold and dismissive of individuals. Deontology gives you moral clarity and a sense of fairness. But it can be inflexible and overlook wider consequences. In people practice, we’re often dancing between the two.

Practical Takeaway for the Graduates

If you were explaining this during your manager’s briefing, you might say: You won’t always have clear guidance. You’ll have policies, yes, but people are messy. The best people professionals don’t just pick one ethical view and stick to it, they move between them. They question, pause, and sometimes just sit with discomfort before making a call. And they document their reasoning, so if challenged later, they can say, not just what they decided, but why.

That’s what evidence-based people practice really involves, not just facts and figures, but a conscience, too.

AC 1.5 – Ethical Perspectives and Moral Decision-Making

No decision is made in a vacuum. And in people practice, many of the most difficult calls are moral rather than operational. What we’re doing here is introducing two ethical frameworks that can influence how decisions are shaped.

1. Utilitarianism This perspective asks, what decision produces the greatest benefit for the most people? Let’s take the scenario of reducing contracted hours during the low season. A utilitarian view might support the move because it protects the business and the wider staff population. The logic being, temporary cuts now may save jobs overall. The outcome justifies the action.

2. Deontological Ethics Here, the focus is not the outcome, but the action itself. Is it fair? Is it right? Cutting hours from low-paid part-time staff might seem legally fine. But ethically, from this viewpoint, it could be seen as treating workers as a means to an end. This view might lead you to argue for different solutions, voluntary hour-sharing, redeployment, or at least open consultation.

The key difference? Utilitarianism asks, “What works?” Deontology asks, “What’s right?” In practice, people professionals often wrestle with both.

Final Note for the Graduates

Critical thinking, structured decision-making, and ethical reflection are not abstract academic ideals. They’re daily tools. In this hotel cluster, just like any other setting, you’ll be faced with ambiguity, imperfect information, and competing interests.

The point of evidence-based practice isn’t to guarantee perfection. It’s to help you pause, reflect, ask better questions, and act in ways you can defend, to others and to yourself.

FAQs

1. What’s the actual point of critical thinking in people practice?
It helps you avoid rushing into decisions based on gut feeling or assumptions. And trust us, those decisions catch up with you.

2. Isn’t decision-making just common sense?
You’d think so. But when money, people’s jobs, or wellbeing are on the line, “common sense” suddenly feels less obvious.

3. Do we really need to think about ethics at work?
Absolutely. People remember how they were treated more than the outcome itself. Ethics shape trust, even when no one’s watching.

4. What if two ethical views clash, how do I choose?
Sometimes, you don’t choose one over the other. You try to balance both, or compromise. It’s less about perfection, more about responsibility.

5. Can I apply these ideas outside of HR?
You already do. Every time you weigh up what’s fair, what works, or what feels right, you’re using this without knowing it.