5CO0112 criteria · 7 credits
Organisational performance and culture in practice
How an organisation's structure, strategy and outside environment shape each other — and where people practice sits in that.
CIPD
What each criterion is actually asking for
Most referrals aren’t about knowing too little. They’re about answering a different question from the one the criterion asked. These pages set out, criterion by criterion, what the command verb demands and where the marks go missing.
Core units — everyone takes these
- 5CO0210 criteria · 6 credits
Evidence-based practice
Making decisions you can defend — the tools, the data, the ethics, and how to show the value of what people practice did.
- 5CO0311 criteria · 5 credits
Professional behaviours and valuing people
The behaviours side of the qualification — ethics, speaking up, inclusion, and evidencing your own development.
Pathway units — everyone takes these too
- 5HR0110 criteria · 6 credits
Employment relationship management
Employee voice, conflict and the lawful handling of discipline and grievance — the unit where getting the law wrong is expensive.
- 5HR0210 criteria · 6 credits
Talent management and workforce planning
Reading the labour market, planning the workforce against it, and what turnover costs when it goes wrong.
- 5HR0310 criteria · 6 credits
Reward for performance and contribution
How pay and benefits are structured, what they do to behaviour, and the law that constrains both.
Optional units — you choose one
- 5OS0110 criteria · 6 credits
Specialist employment law
The legal framework, and how it constrains recruitment, reorganisation, pay and working time in practice.
- 5OS029 criteria · 6 credits
Advances in digital learning and development
Learning technology, digital content, and facilitating live online — the last of which you have to actually do.
- 5OS0310 criteria · 6 credits
Learning and development essentials
How L&D connects to the business, how solutions get designed, and why learning so often fails to transfer back to the job.
- 5OS0411 criteria · 6 credits
People management in an international context
Why people practice cannot simply be exported — culture, institutions, and the practicalities of moving staff between countries.
- 5OS059 criteria · 6 credits
Equality, diversity and inclusion
The law, the barriers, and two pieces of work you have to carry out — an organisational review and an equality impact assessment.
- 5OS0610 criteria · 6 credits
Leadership and management development
What leaders and managers actually need, how you develop it, and how you tell whether the development worked.
- 5OS0710 criteria · 6 credits
Wellbeing at work
Why wellbeing is a strategic matter rather than a perk — and a programme you have to design, implement and evaluate.
Taken from the CIPD qualification specification, version 2.6 (February 2026).
- 3CO019 criteria · 5 credits
Business, culture and change in context
What shapes the organisation from outside, what culture is on the inside, and why change goes wrong when nobody plans it.
- 3CO028 criteria · 4 credits
Principles of analytics
Using evidence and data to make decisions you can show your working for — including the calculations you have to actually do.
- 3CO035 criteria · 4 credits
Core behaviours for people professionals
Ethics, inclusion and your own development — the unit that asks you to evidence how you behave, not what you know.
- 3CO0425 criteria · 11 credits
Essentials of people practice
The big one — recruitment, selection, employment law, performance, reward and L&D, with tasks you have to actually carry out.
Taken from the CIPD qualification specification, version 2.3 (February 2026).
The command verb is doing more work than you think
Every criterion opens with a verb — evaluate, analyse, discuss, explain — and that verb sets the standard. An answer that explains a criterion asking you to evaluate is a referral however well it is written, because the marker has a criterion to tick and the evidence for it is not on the page.
The command verbs, and what each one wants covers it once, and every unit page points back at it.
We are not a CIPD centre
MarkReady is not a CIPD approved centre and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the CIPD. Your provider marks your work; we help you understand what it is asking for. Assessment criteria are quoted from the published qualification specifications, which are © CIPD.
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