What’s the deal with ‘evidence-based practice’? Aren’t we all evidence based?

Part of the challenge is that it can be hard to find practitioner-focused evidence. A lot of academic research is aimed at other academics (rather than people managers) and adopts a language that many HR professionals find hard to understand. Also, the research often follows fads and fashions, so we don't necessarily get the evidence base in the right areas of people management.

Yes I completely agree Charles. A lot of academic research is not practitioner-focused, and for good reasons. Similarly the language is not helpful - often not even to other academics! And fads and fashions are just as evident in academic research.

On the other hand, academic research is just one source of evidence and like any source of evidence it needs to be judged for it's relevance and trustworthiness. And it's also about using the best available evidence. So even if the evidence isn't great it's still worth checking out.

As you probably know, more and more academics are becoming concerned about scientific (mal)practices. There's a great summary here by John Antonakis where he discusses what he calls the five diseases of academic publishing:

retractionwatch.com/.../

Thanks Jonny, I haven't seen the Ted Talk - one for the commute home. I had seen Kahneman's mea culpa (#mancrush). What a guy ;)

I reckon you're spot on - appealing and do-able are great words (as are desirable and feasible from the Rubicon Model). I also reckon the tendency of evidence based peeps is to lean towards the latter (i.e tools and resources), and the tendency of less credible solutions is to lean towards the former (for obvious reasons).

So, 'appealing'... how far do you go? Likening 'test, learn and adapt' methodology to the agility of startup cultures that big corporates so admire? Tie up with publications like HBR? Go full on with branding academic research like this from Francesa Gino... hbr.org/.../let-your-workers-rebel.

I know this will make many academics squirm, but I also supsect that practioners subscribing to the continuum approach may sympathise. I saw a criticism of an IOPsych approach as 'old wine in new bottles' recently, and thought, 'if the old wine is good and the new bottles sell more of it, what's the problem?'

So maybe the 10 questions will work, but maybe that offers an alternative answer. What are the solutions that EBHR are most confident about? Which will be easiest to land in a big organisation? How can we repackage those in the sweet spot to be attractive to a practioner audience?

Another Kahneman fanboi, here. Great to see James raise (and Jonny acknowledge) his important contribution to this field, especially in commercial HR.

I recently sat down with Jacques Quinio of Manpower Group who's an evangelist for EBHR and has some great insights on how organizations can make practical use of big data, but I challenged him a bit on how much harder it is for SMEs to acquire people data on the scales necessary to make really evidence-based decisions. Both in terms of the quantity of data we have available and the time we have within which decisions have to be taken, we don't have that luxury. HR practitioners in SMEs, with small teams, most of whose time is occupied with transactional pratice, have to straddle the line between data-led and instinct-led decision-making and Kahneman is our guru for this.

Our instincts are fallible, but time spent considering the available evidence will inform and improve our instinctive decision-making.

I'd take issue with Jonny's assertion that "it gives little more than a 50% chance of success". Not on the 50% figure (I'll take that), but on the idea that HR decision are fail/success binary options. We aren't financial market traders for whom the buy/sell decision is a straightforward win/lose binary state. Our decisions are far more nuanced. Do we hire X or hire Y? If we make the "wrong" decision, we still end up with a qualified, capable employee (most of the time) but just one who might not have been as good as the alternative.

That's not to say that HR is incapable of making business-breaking decisions, but they are usually at the tail-end of a series of failures made at executive level (q.v. bhs).

As a parting thought, if we assume that EBHR is the pathway to the most effective decision making, to what extent will it therefore be possible for even the most nuanced and sophisticated HR decisions to be automated, given sufficient data of the appropriate quality?

Robey said:

"...if we assume that EBHR is the pathway to the most effective decision making, to what extent will it therefore be possible for even the most nuanced and sophisticated HR decisions to be automated, given sufficient data of the appropriate quality?"

That is a question, Robey.

I recall having this exchange about 'empathy' with Peter Cheese and (deleted blog).

So as we often argue when training and teaching is that EBP is definitely not about certainly but rather trying to reduce uncertainty. The more we find about something the more we realize (usually) that our we know less than we thought.

I don't think there's any need for a compromise between progress and rigor - EBP is about using the best available evidence and being clear about the quality of that evidence. So you can still do stuff without much if any good quality evidence - but the point is you know that's what you're doing.

And more generally, in relation to 'progress', clearly the more better quality evidence you have better-informed your analysis and action is likely to be and the more progress you'll make. What feels like progress may sometimes turn out to be going backwards.

I think academics should do more - the problem is we are completely disincentivized to do this. All that counts is publishing new papers and new research.

And as for knowledge transfer partnerships these are often about conducting new research and new data collection - which is not what EBP is about. Rather, in relation to the scientific evidence part of EBP, we always start with systematic reviews of the existing evidence-base not new research.

Thanks for clarifying that Rob, that's interesting.

Feels like a gap does exist there though, pre-EBP, to be the catalyst for establishing more and good quality evidence.

Totally agree with all.

The better quality evidence you have the better informed your analysis and action is likely to be and the more progress you'll make.

But how do you encourage practitioners to adopt that approach? By changing their minds? By giving them tools and resources? It's very 'System 2'...

Should that great work be bolstered with the sorts of techniques management consultancies or national governments are using to sell us their ideas or change our behaviours? When we know these are more likely to have an effect?

That's the compromise I'm referring to, and it's the bit I think will make academics nervous. Maybe rightly so, maybe not?

Nice comments. Making better decisions is the key thing. And not every problem need a meta-analysis to solve, let alone big data. But there are other things we can do on a smaller scale.
So, the 50% argument is basically descriptive, to say that technically speaking, some evidence is no better at predicting outcomes than the toss of a coin. It's to recognise that we all like to latch on to evidence that supports our pet theory, especially if it tells an intuitive story, but don't kid yourself about being evidence based if the evidence is not trustworthy.
It's a very different point from marginal gains and what decisions are important. Gary Klein has done some really interesting work on this - he argues that some decisions probably ARE best made by the toss of a coin, if you've eliminated the no-nos and are quibbling over minutiae. I enjoyed this book of his wordery.com/the-power-of-intuition-how-to-use-your-gut-feelings-to-make-better-decisions-at-work-gary-klein-9780385502894 . Incidentally, Klein wrote a paper with & gets name-checked by Kahneman in T,F&S. He's good, even if his book has a corny title.
Don't think Kahneman is a champion of instinct-led decision-making, tho. If anything, the opposite!
One other thing I'd flag is the different sources of evidence - in particular there's published scientific research as well organisational data and expertise. Someone will be posting more on that here soon I think...

I have a working example of 'reducing uncertainty'. I was recruited in part to progress our organisation's use of technology to support learning. The results of my initial research into its wider use by other organisations were highly inconclusive. There appears to be little reliable evidence to support the use of technology to enhance learning within organisations so I found myself drawing on reports from consultancies and literature from research on its use in academic contexts.
This didn't stop us moving forward, it just meant my recommendation was to move forward with caution, namely to take small steps, gather data about it as we went and definitely not spend money on a bright new shiny LMS!
After a year I've collected small amounts of data from a handful of experiments and other sources to identify what has worked well, and crucially what we could have reasonable success in trying to measure this year. From that I've made a proposal for how to progress over the next 12 months, which I'll do with a little (only a little) more certainty.

Exactly. Evidence-based practice IS ABOUT PRACTICE - not about evidence or research. In other fields I get the impression that researchers tried to push or impose 'their' research onto practitioners. That doesn't work. Need to start with practice, practitioners, and real problems.

Exactly. Evidence-based practice IS ABOUT PRACTICE - not about evidence or research. In other fields I get the impression that researchers tried to push or impose 'their' research onto practitioners. That doesn't work. Need to start with practice, practitioners, and real problems.