Introduction
As a senior leader, making the right decision for your team can be challenging, especially when the data suggests different things.
Turnover figures might say one thing, but your team’s feedback in sessions could tell you something completely different.
Evidence-based HR is an approach developed through a CIPD study that helps you make people decisions you can defend.
This article explores the differences between qualitative and quantitative data types and how you can use both in your HR practice to make the best decision for your organisation, with confidence and credibility.
What is evidence-based HR?
CIPD defines evidence-based practice as a method of making high-quality decisions based on critically appraised evidence from multiple sources.
In this context, ‘evidence’ means verifiable facts and information that can support or contradict a claim, assumption, or hypothesis.
Sources of evidence might come from:
- Research: There’s a lot of scientific literature on topics relevant to people professionals, and data from these studies can support evidence-based practice.
- Organisational Data: Any information, characteristics, structures, processes, or records collected, owned, or managed by an organisation, such as employee records, skill sets, and certifications.
- Professional Expertise: The expertise and professional judgement of practitioners, including colleagues, managers, staff members, employees and leaders.
- Stakeholder Views: Stakeholders may be employees within the organisation or external suppliers. Their interests affect, or are affected by, a decision and its outcomes, and they can also influence the decision.
In short, evidence-based HR is a more effective way to make decisions because it relies on credible facts rather than instinct and opinion alone.
This approach matters for CIPD Level 5 and Level 7 candidates in senior positions, as it’s assessed at both levels. When used confidently, this skill separates a good senior leader from a great one.
Qualitative vs Quantitative Data in HR: Key Differences and Examples
Evidence-based decision-making in HR encourages the use of qualitative and quantitative data.
The table below explores what both of these data types mean, HR relevant examples, and their strengths and limitations:
Quantitative data shows the what, reflected in the stats associated with an organisation, while qualitative data shows the why, the humans behind the data.
Interpreting and combining both data types is where effective evidence-based decision-making happens.
How To Use Qualitative and Quantitative Data in HR Decision-Making
You can apply evidence-based practice in many HR scenarios.
In this section, we’ll apply this process to a realistic HR example to show how you can use it to strengthen your decision-making skills.
HR Scenario: Deciding whether to change a hybrid working policy in an organisation
Working from home a couple of days a week is common in most organisations, and while this style of working encourages flexibility, it can also create culture and collaboration issues.
When a line manager flags that onboarding, mentoring, and cross-team work are harder when people rarely meet in person, HR is faced with the question: should the business move from two to three office days a week, and how would that affect productivity and retention?
Rather than acting on the manager’s concern straight away, an evidence-based approach tests it first. Here’s how that could work in practice, using hypothetical figures:
Step 1: Define the decision or question
Make the question less broad. Instead of asking “Is hybrid working a problem?”, ask, “Would moving from two to three office days improve collaboration and onboarding without impacting productivity or retention?” which gives HR something to investigate. That way you’re separating the concern from the evidence.
Specifying the question gives HR something to investigate and helps separate the concern from the evidence.
At this stage, HR are working with a hypothesis rather than a finding.
Step 2: Gather the quantitative data
This is when you collect numerical data related to the question. In this case, the data might include team attendance, output measures, engagement scores for collaboration and belonging, or resignation rates since the current policy began.
At this stage, you notice that resignations are slightly higher in teams with the longest commutes, which already complicates the idea that more office time is the answer.
Step 3: Gather the qualitative data
Numbers are great, but they can’t capture the emotional response to the decision, so we recommend running focus groups and reviewing open survey comments to assess the qualitative landscape.
Gather perspectives from new starters, mentors, and managers separately, since each group will experience this policy differently.
Structured tools are also available, such as 360-degree feedback, which can provide a more rounded view of how collaboration and mentoring work across levels rather than relying on one manager’s perspective.
You find that employees value flexibility highly, but new starters feel isolated and unsure who to ask for help. Managers also say that cross-team projects move significantly more slowly.
Step 4: Combine and interpret the evidence
Here you have two data types that tell opposing stories: the numbers show no productivity problem, but the interviews point to gaps in onboarding and cross-team work.
In this scenario, a targeted fix, rather than a blanket increase in office days, might be needed to support those with long commutes.
However, when evidence conflicts, HR needs to analyse the findings further before acting. Critical evaluation is key, and HR needs to know how many people were in the focus groups, who spoke up, and how reliable the data is.
This kind of strategic analysis is developed at CIPD Level 7.
Step 5: Decide, act and evaluate findings
HR can approach the scenario in a few ways, but in this case they decide that instead of moving everyone to three days in the office, they will recommend anchor days for new starters and cross-team projects.
They then set measures of success, such as new-starter engagement, collaboration scores, and resignations, and review them after six months.
The business case here is built on evidence, which makes a much stronger argument to take to leadership and is a core part of the senior advisory skills covered at CIPD Level 7.
Common Mistakes in Evidence-Based HR Decisions
Although evidence-based HR practice helps make more justified decisions, it’s easy to make mistakes, especially when leadership is under pressure to decide quickly.
The few mistakes that leadership might make and how to avoid them could be:
Mistake: Relying on one data type.
Fix: Use both qualitative and quantitative data to assess a hypothesis.
Mistake: Using small or unrepresentative samples.
Fix: Ask how many people in the group spoke up, and whether that reflects the wider workforce.
Mistake: Collecting data without a clear question.
Fix: Define and specify the question before collecting any metrics.
Mistake: Acting on instinct or ignoring evidence that contradicts it.
Fix: Treat the concern as a hypothesis and then test it.
Mistake: Not setting a success metric.
Fix: Agree on what you’ll measure and when you’ll review it before acting.
Key Takeaways
Avoiding mistakes when using evidence-based practices isn’t always easy, but it gets easier with practice. CIPD qualifications are the best place to start if HR professionals want to strengthen their decision-making skills.
To summarise:
- Evidence-based HR combines multiple sources of evidence rather than relying on instinct and habit.
- Quantitative data shows what’s happening in an organisation, while qualitative data helps explain why.
- Evidence-based HR is a repeatable, step-by-step process that makes decisions easier to defend, especially when presenting them to senior leadership.
If you’re an HR manager or an aspiring senior leader looking to strengthen your decision-making, our CIPD Level 5 Associate Diploma in People Management builds an ideal foundation, and our Level 7 Advanced Diploma in Strategic People Management takes those skills to a strategic level.
