People professionals are often involved in solving complex organisational problems and need to understand ‘what works’ and 'what makes sense' in order to influence key organisational outcomes. The challenge is to pick reliable, trustworthy solutions and not be distracted by unreliable fads, outdated received wisdom or superficial quick fixes.

This challenge has led to evidence-based practice. The goal is to make better, more effective decisions to help organisations achieve their goals.

At the CIPD, we believe this is an important step for the people profession to take: our Profession Map describes a vision of a profession that is principles-led, evidence-based and outcomes-driven.

This guide sets out what evidence-based practice is, what evidence we should use, why it’s important, and how the step-by-step approach works. 

People professionals may be thinking: “How do I follow the six steps if I’m not a qualified researcher?” But evidence-based practice is not about trying to turn practitioners into researchers. It’s about bringing together evidence from different sources, including research and practice and this guide will help you do that. 

What is evidence-based practice?

Why do we need to be evidence-based?

What evidence should we use?

Diagram showing four sources of evidence: Professional expertise, scientific literature, organisational data and stakeholder views

How to make evidence-based decisions: A step-by-step approach

Diagram illustrating 6 steps. Step 1 is asking, Step 2 is acquiring, Step 3 is appraisaing, Step 4 is aggregating, Step 5 is applying and Step 6 is assessing. These steps increase the likelihood of a favourable outcome.

How to move towards an evidence-based profession

Notes

Acknowledgements

Appendix

Evidence-based practice:
Essential Insights

Get to the heart of evidence-based practice and recognise the types of evidence that best inform your professional judgement and decision-making

Callout Image

More on this topic

Data

Data hub

Explore the evidence behind workforce trends

Thought leadership

Thought Leadership | Evidence-based HRM: Navigating evidence for creating effective HR practices

Claire McCartney, Policy and Practice Manager at the CIPD, invites Brigitte Kroon, Associate Professor for Human Resources at Tilburg University, to share her thoughts on the importance of evidence-based human resource management (HRM) practices and solutions which are contextually appropriate

Thought leadership

Building an evidence-based people profession

We all know that being evidence-based helps us make better decisions, but how can we turn this into a reality?

Case study

Hybrid working and employee wellbeing: International SOS Foundation

A case study on using evidence-based practice to better understand how to support hybrid workforces

Latest guides

Guide

Employee voice channels: Guide for people professionals

Practical advice for people professionals to maximise the impact of engaging with all employees through employee voice channels

For Members
Guide

People manager guide: Managing stress at work

Practical guidance for managers on preventing and reducing stress at work

For Members
Woman sitting at a laptop with notebooks
Guide

Learning and development for people professionals

This guide provides a practical introduction to the role of an L&D function in an organisation. It offers support on the key steps to offering effective L&D, including creating a learning strategy, undertaking a learning needs analysis, designing learning interventions and measuring the impact of learning.

For Members
Guide

Strategic workforce planning: Guide for people professionals

Understand what strategic workforce planning is and how to do it

For Members
All guides