Table of Contents
5CO03 Professional behaviours and valuing people Learner Assessment Brief Assessment ID / CIPD_5CO03_26_01
Case Study
For the last two years you have worked successfully as team leader of a small people practice team at the southern site of Plyton, a manufacturing organisation. You report to the organisation’s people director, who is based in the head office at Plyton’s northern site, but has operational responsibility for the southern team, comprising six team members of varying levels of experience.
Your team’s responsibilities include the majority of first-line people practice functions for the site. Your four most experienced team members, Jak, Lea, Tom, and Shavi, tend to specialise in particular areas of work (Jak = recruitment, Lea = L&D, Tom = employee experience, Shavi = employee relations) but all team members come together on different projects as needed. There is a lot to do, and you want all of the team to build up a range of experience and expertise.
Managing the team is an area you particularly enjoy. You came into people practice because you have always believed in fairness of opportunity and in helping people to thrive, and your combined role of people professional and team leader seems to suit your values very well.
Along with managing the team, you enjoy supporting the people director on the design and development of new people practice initiatives. You are currently working on a new employee benefits programme which, if the pilot is successful, will be rolled out across the organisation later in the year.
Questions
Question 1 (AC 1.1)
Discuss the activities that might be involved in either Tom or Shavi’s ‘specialist’ areas of work in the context of what it means to be a people professional, and how this work might contribute to Plyton’s success.
Question 2 (AC 1.2)
Explore how your values (‘fairness of opportunity and helping people to thrive’) align with your role at Plyton, and different ways these values might impact your work as a people professional.
Question 3 (AC 1.3)
One of the newer members of your team, Monique, is quite low in confidence and tends not to contribute her views at meetings and discussions. You believe that being able to communicate in an informed, clear and confident way is an essential skill for a people professional and have worked hard to develop this skill yourself.
Explain why you consider this skill area so important and provide two techniques or pieces of advice you could offer Monique to help her with this issue.
Question 4 (AC 1.4)
One of your team members has come to you with a serious concern. Whilst assisting with a health and safety issue, they discovered that a manufacturing operative regularly took home materials from manufacturing processes (such as cables, wiring and various electrical parts) to use in their DIY projects or to give to friends. The operative felt that as they ‘usually only took waste materials, they were not doing anything wrong’.
Consider how and why you would take the matter forward.
Question 5 (AC 2.1)
In your last monthly ‘catch-up’ with the people director, she asked you to help her prepare a paper for discussion at the next Board meeting. She is impressed with your growing knowledge of people practice and the theory that underpins it and would like you to include some of this in a section of the paper (around 400–500 words in length) covering fair and inclusive working practices. You have agreed and decided to entitle your section ‘The human and business benefits of Plyton employees feeling included, valued and fairly treated at work.’
Draft your content for the section, ensuring it discusses two relevant theories that argue for these benefits.
Question 6 (AC 2.2)
After the Board meeting, the people director contacts you to say how well received the paper was. Your section on fair and inclusive practice was of particular interest and led to questions about the practical steps that the People Practice Team take to ensure initiatives are inclusive and reach all the people they are intended to reach.
The director would like you to attend the next meeting with her to tell the Board about the work you are doing on the new employee benefits programme. In particular she would like you to discuss the strategies you will use:
- to make your design of the programme fair and inclusive
- to check, after implementation, that the programme is as inclusive as you have intended.
In preparation for the meeting, draft notes covering both bullet points.
Note: There is no requirement to develop an employee benefits programme (nor to attend any meeting). You are only required to provide notes about the strategies you will use to make your design of the initiative as inclusive as possible, and the strategies you will use to check inclusivity after implementation of the programme.
5CO03 is the unit on the CIPD Level 5 Associate Diploma that assesses you as a professional rather than testing a body of technical knowledge. It focuses on core behaviours — ethical practice, courage, inclusivity — and on your ability to reflect honestly on your own strengths and development needs. That makes it different from the more knowledge-heavy Level 5 units, and it catches out students who approach it like an essay exam.
This guide covers the 2026/27 assessment cycle (Assessment ID CIPD_5CO03_26_01, version 2, released June 2026 and valid until June 2027, with a final moderation window in September 2027). It explains the Plyton case study structure, what each of the eleven questions is really asking, the word count, referencing and marking rules that most commonly trip students up, and a full reading list organised by assessment criteria.
Important: this is a study guide, not a model answer. CIPD’s authenticity rules require your submission to be entirely your own work, and the 2026/27 brief explicitly prohibits using AI to suggest ideas, generate content, or structure, edit or enhance your assessment in any way. Submitting work that isn’t your own risks referral and disciplinary action under CIPD’s malpractice policy. See our academic integrity policy for how we support students within those rules.
How the 2026/27 assessment is structured
The 2026/27 version of 5CO03 has two tasks and eleven questions in total.
Task 1 is a case study. You take on the role of a people practice team leader at Plyton, a two-site manufacturing organisation, managing a small southern-site team of six while reporting to a people director at head office. Four experienced team members each lean toward a specialism — recruitment, learning and development, employee experience, and employee relations — and you are also supporting the director on a new employee benefits programme. Six questions (Q1–Q6) test how you’d act, advise and communicate in scenarios drawn from that role.
Task 2 is a professional review — five activities (Q7–Q11) about you, not the case study. You reflect on your own inclusive working, the impact of AI on your development, your strengths and weaknesses (informed by feedback from at least one other person), and your past and planned CPD.
A common structural mistake is letting the case study bleed into Task 2. The brief is explicit that Task 2 is unrelated to Plyton — assessors expect genuine self-reflection grounded in your real work or study experience.
Before you start, watch the CIPD supporting video for the unit if your centre provides it, and read CIPD’s word count policy — both are referenced directly in the brief.
Word count: how it actually works in 2026/27
The overall acceptable range for the whole assessment is 2,925 to 3,575 words. Exceed 3,575 words and your work is automatically referred under CIPD’s word count policy — this is applied mechanically, not at the assessor’s discretion.
Within that, the guideline split is roughly 2,400 words for Task 1 (Q1–Q6) and 850 words for Task 2 (Q7–Q10). These per-task figures are guidance: you can redistribute words between questions as long as your total stays in range. Two things sit outside the count entirely — the feedback you append for Q9, and the CPD record or report you attach for Q11.
A sensible working budget is around 350–450 words per Task 1 question, with Q5 at the top of that range (the brief itself specifies 400–500 words for the board paper section), and roughly 200 words per Task 2 question.
Referencing: only two questions need it
This is the single most misunderstood rule in 5CO03. Because the unit assesses behaviours, in-text citations and references are only required for Q1 (AC 1.1) and Q5 (AC 2.1). Every other question explicitly states that no reference is needed.
That doesn’t mean wider reading is wasted elsewhere — the marking descriptors reward evidence of reading and research throughout — but formal citations are only mandatory in those two answers. Use a recognised referencing style with in-text citations plus a full reference list at the end of the assessment. In Harvard style, a short in-text citation looks like (CIPD, 2025) or (Armstrong, 2023), and the full entry follows the pattern: CIPD (2025) Ethical practice and the role of people professionals. Factsheet. Available at: [URL] [Accessed: date]. If you cite multiple CIPD sources from the same year, distinguish them as (CIPD, 2025a), (CIPD, 2025b) and so on, ordered alphabetically by title.
Task 1: what each question is really asking
Q1 (AC 1.1) — the people professional’s contribution — reference required
📌 Q1 · AC 1.1 · Reference required
Choosing either Tom (employee experience) or Shavi (employee relations), discuss their specialist people practice activities in the context of what being a people professional means, and how their work might contribute to Plyton’s organisational success.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
You’re asked to discuss the specialist work of one of two team members — Tom (employee experience) or Shavi (employee relations) — in the context of what it means to be a people professional, and how that work might contribute to Plyton’s success. The trap here is writing a generic job description. A strong answer connects concrete activities in the chosen specialism to professional standards (the CIPD Profession Map is the natural anchor) and then draws an explicit line to business outcomes at Plyton — retention, engagement, dispute avoidance, productivity.
Q2 (AC 1.2) — values in practice — no reference required
📌 Q2 · AC 1.2 · No reference required
Your character holds two personal values — fairness of opportunity, and helping people to thrive. Explore how these values align with your team leader role and the different ways they would impact how you approach your work.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
The scenario gives your character two stated values: fairness of opportunity, and helping people to thrive. You need to explore how these align with the team leader role and the different ways they’d shape your day-to-day work. Weak answers assert alignment; strong answers illustrate it — how those values would influence how work is allocated across a team of mixed experience levels, or how development opportunities are shared rather than hoarded by specialists.
Q3 (AC 1.3) — coaching a quiet colleague — no reference required
📌 Q3 · AC 1.3 · No reference required
Monique, a newer and less confident team member, rarely contributes in meetings. Explain to her why it’s important for people professionals to communicate in an informed, clear and confident way, and offer two techniques or pieces of advice to help her do this.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
A newer team member, Monique, lacks confidence and doesn’t contribute in meetings. You must explain why informed, clear and confident communication matters for a people professional, then offer two techniques or pieces of advice to help her. Note the structure: the “why it matters” part and the two techniques are both marked. Make the techniques practical and specific enough that Monique could actually use them — vague advice like “be more confident” won’t meet the AC.
Q4 (AC 1.4) — the ethical dilemma — no reference required
📌 Q4 · AC 1.4 · No reference required
A team member tells you a manufacturing operative has been regularly taking home materials such as cables, wiring and electrical parts, on the basis that they are “only waste.” Explain how, and why, you would take this matter forward.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
A team member reports that a manufacturing operative has been regularly taking materials home — cables, wiring, electrical parts — justifying it on the basis that they’re “only waste.” You’re asked how and why you’d take the matter forward. This is the ethics question, and the “why” is where marks live: your answer should show ethical reasoning (honesty, consistency, the risk of normalised misconduct), awareness of proper process (investigation before judgement, following organisational and Acas-aligned procedure), and the courage-to-challenge behaviour the unit is built around. Avoid jumping straight to disciplinary outcomes — the question tests your process and reasoning, not your verdict.
Q5 (AC 2.1) — the board paper — reference required
📌 Q5 · AC 2.1 · Reference required
Draft a 400–500 word section of a board paper on the human and business benefits of Plyton employees feeling included, valued and fairly treated. Your draft must discuss two relevant theories and include references.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
You draft a 400–500 word section of a board paper on the human and business benefits of Plyton employees feeling included, valued and fairly treated, and it must discuss two relevant theories. This is the second referenced question and the most technically demanding one. Choose theories you can genuinely apply — motivation, fairness and commitment theories are the natural territory (see the reading list below) — and write in the register of a board paper, not an essay: benefits framed for a business audience, theory used to justify rather than decorate.
Q6 (AC 2.2) — inclusive design and evaluation — no reference required
📌 Q6 · AC 2.2 · No reference required
Prepare notes for a board meeting on the new employee benefits programme covering two areas: strategies for ensuring the programme is designed fairly and inclusively, and strategies for checking its inclusivity after implementation. You are not asked to design the programme itself.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
Building on Q5’s success, you prepare notes for a board meeting about the new employee benefits programme, covering two things: strategies to make the programme’s design fair and inclusive, and strategies to check inclusivity after implementation. The brief stresses you don’t need to design the programme itself — only the strategies. Cover both halves with equal weight: consultation and data use at the design stage; uptake analysis, demographic monitoring and feedback loops at the evaluation stage. Notes format is acceptable — this is one place where well-organised, concise points beat flowing prose.
Task 2: the professional review
Q7 (AC 2.3) — inclusive working reflection — no reference required
📌 Q7 · AC 2.3 · No reference required
Reflect on your own approach to working inclusively, using the CIPD Profession Map’s Associate-level “working inclusively” standards as your framework.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
Reflect on your own inclusive working using the CIPD Associate-level “working inclusively” standards as your framework — the brief links directly to the relevant Profession Map page. Structure your reflection around those standards explicitly rather than writing a free-form account, and be honest about development areas: a reflection with no weaknesses reads as evasion, not excellence.
Q8 (AC 3.1) — AI and your development — no reference required
📌 Q8 · AC 3.1 · No reference required
Explore the impact of AI on the role and work of people professionals, and what this means for your own professional development.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
New territory for many students: the impact of AI on people professionals’ work and what that means for your own development. You don’t need technical depth — you need a credible view of how AI is changing people practice (recruitment screening, people analytics, employee queries, L&D personalisation are all fair game) and a genuine link to your own development plans. CIPD’s factsheets on technology and the future of work, and on people analytics, are good background even though no citation is needed.
Q9 (AC 3.2) — self-assessment with feedback — no reference required
📌 Q9 · AC 3.2 · No reference required
Assess your own strengths, weaknesses and development areas, drawing on feedback from at least one other person. State who you involved and how their feedback informed your self-assessment; the feedback itself can be appended and is excluded from the word count.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
This has a hard requirement students miss: your self-assessment must incorporate feedback from at least one other person, and your answer must say who you involved and how their input shaped your assessment. You can append the feedback itself (it doesn’t count toward the word limit). Choose someone who has actually observed your work — a line manager, tutor or colleague — and show where their view confirmed or challenged your own. The Profession Map works well as your self-assessment framework.
Q10 (AC 3.3) — development planning — no reference required
📌 Q10 · AC 3.3 · No reference required
Identify at least two professional development activities you will undertake or begin within the next six months, with a brief explanation of each activity and why you selected it.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
Identify at least two development activities you’ll undertake or begin in the next six months, with a brief explanation of each and why you chose it. Tie your choices back to the gaps identified in Q7–Q9 — the assessor is looking for a coherent thread through the professional review, not a shopping list. CIPD’s CPD guidance is a useful source of legitimate activity types.
Q11 (AC 3.4) — CPD reflection — no reference required; not counted in the word limit
📌 Q11 · AC 3.4 · No reference required · Excluded from word count
Reflect on the two development activities from the last three years that have most impacted your behaviour or performance, and why. Attach a CPD record edited to those two activities, or reports from CIPD’s My CPD Records tool.
Paraphrased — always check the exact wording in your official CIPD brief.
Looking backward: reflect on the two development activities from the last three years that most changed your behaviour or performance, and why. The evidence format matters — you attach either your own CPD record edited down to those two activities, or reports from CIPD’s My CPD Records tool. Informal activities (stretch projects, mentoring, shadowing) are explicitly acceptable alongside formal courses.
How 5CO03 is marked
Each of the eleven questions is marked from 1 to 4, and here is the rule that matters most: you must score at least 2 on every single question to pass the unit. A mark of 1 on any question means referral, regardless of how strong the rest of your submission is. Ten excellent answers cannot carry one inadequate one.
The overall bands are: 0–21 refer/fail, 22–28 low pass, 29–35 pass, 36–44 high pass. The qualification itself isn’t graded — bands are for feedback and moderation — but they tell you what assessors reward at each level: appropriate examples, evidence of reading, direct engagement with the case study (in Task 1), clear expression, and correct structure. You get three attempts; work is “referred” rather than “failed” until a third unsuccessful attempt.
The most common referral triggers we see in 5CO03 are exceeding the word limit, missing references in Q1 or Q5, answering Task 2 questions through the lens of the case study, and Q9 answers that skip the third-party feedback requirement.
5CO03 reading list (2026/27), organised by assessment criteria
References are only required for Q1 and Q5, but the marking descriptors reward evidence of reading throughout — so this list covers every AC. All CIPD factsheets, guides and reports are free to CIPD members via the Knowledge Hub, and as a Level 5 student you have access. Check you’re using the current version of any source and record your access date for the reference list.
Sources signposted in the CIPD brief itself
The brief’s “CIPD’s insight” section points to four core sources, all of which are safe anchors for the unit as a whole:
- CIPD (2025) HR and standards. Factsheet. — cipd.org/en/knowledge/factsheets/hr-standards-factsheet/
- CIPD (2025) Ethical practice and the role of people professionals. Factsheet. — cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/ethics-role-hr-factsheet/
- CIPD (2024) Ethics at work: an employer’s guide. — cipd.org/en/knowledge/guides/ethics-work-guide/
- CIPD (2026) Equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Factsheet. — cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/diversity-factsheet/
The brief also recommends three episodes of the CIPD HR People Pod for current context on the unit’s themes: Episode 6 (conflict and gender imbalance in HR), Episode 8 (sexual harassment) and Episode 19 (toxic cultures). Podcasts aren’t citation material for Q1 or Q5, but they’re useful thinking fuel for the behavioural questions.
Q1 (AC 1.1) — the people professional role — reference required
Anchor your answer in the CIPD Profession Map, then draw on the specialist material for whichever team member you choose: the Profession Map’s employee experience specialist knowledge area for Tom, or CIPD’s Employee relations: an introduction factsheet for Shavi. For the contribution-to-success argument, CIPD’s People Profession 2025: UK and Ireland survey report and the Strategic human resource management factsheet give current evidence. On the book side, Armstrong and Taylor’s Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (16th ed., 2023, Kogan Page) covers HR roles and the people function, and Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank and Ulrich’s HR from the Outside In (2012, McGraw-Hill) is the classic on HR competencies and value creation. Baczor and Zheltoukhova’s CIPD report HR Professionalism: What Do We Stand For? (2017) remains a strong deeper source on professional identity.
Q2–Q4 (ACs 1.2–1.4) — no references required
These are judgement and reflection questions, but background reading lifts the quality of your reasoning. For Q2, the Profession Map’s core values and behaviours pages frame what values-led practice looks like. For Q3, CIPD’s Employee voice and communication factsheet covers why voice and confident communication matter, and Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (2017 edition) is a legitimate source of practical communication techniques. For Q4, the CIPD Code of Conduct and Ethics and the ethical practice factsheet should inform your reasoning, while Acas’s discipline and grievance guidance grounds the procedural side. Angier’s edited collection Ethics: The Key Thinkers (2nd ed., 2023, Bloomsbury) is there if you want the philosophical underpinning, and Green’s CIPD piece on the role of emotion in professional decision-making adds a useful dimension to how you’d handle the conversation.
Q5 (AC 2.1) — fair and inclusive working practices — reference required
You need two theories plus evidence of the benefits. On the theory side, the strongest candidates are Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation (1943, Psychological Review) and Meyer and Allen’s three-component model of organisational commitment (1991, Human Resource Management Review) — both can be cited via Armstrong and Taylor (2023) if you’re working from the handbook rather than the original papers. Noon, Blyton and Morrell’s The Realities of Work (4th ed., 2013, Palgrave Macmillan) covers fairness and dignity at work directly. On the evidence side, CIPD’s 2026 EDI factsheet, the Employee engagement and motivation factsheet, the Health and wellbeing at work survey and Green et al.’s CIPD report Diversity and Inclusion at Work: Facing Up to the Business Case (2018) all supply the human-and-business-benefits argument a board paper needs. Frost and Alidina’s Building an Inclusive Organization (2019, Kogan Page) bridges theory and practice well.
Q6–Q11 (ACs 2.2–3.4) — no references required
Background reading that strengthens these answers: CIPD’s Employee benefits factsheet and the EDI factsheet for Q6’s design-and-evaluation strategies; the Profession Map’s Associate-level working inclusively standards as the mandatory framework for Q7; CIPD’s Technology, AI and the future of work factsheet, the People analytics factsheet and the People Profession 2030 trends report for Q8; the Profession Map as a self-assessment framework for Q9; and CIPD’s CPD guidance and My CPD Records tool for Q10 and Q11. Cottrell’s Critical Thinking Skills (4th ed., 2023, Bloomsbury) sharpens the reflective writing the whole of Task 2 demands.
Wider reading for the unit
The CIPD-recommended learning resources for 5CO03 also include Taylor and Woodhams (eds.) Studying Human Resource Management (3rd ed., 2022, CIPD Kogan Page); Taylor and Perkins’ Work and Employment in a Changing Business Environment (2021, CIPD Kogan Page); Beevers, Hayden and Rea’s Learning and Development Practice in the Workplace (4th ed., 2019); Cookson’s HR for Hybrid Working (2022, ch. 12); Planellas and Muni’s Strategic Decisions: The 30 Most Useful Models (2020, Cambridge University Press); and Hayden’s CIPD factsheet on evolving L&D practice. For staying current, the two key journals are People Management and HR Magazine, and CIPD’s Ethics at Work webinar series complements the employer’s guide.
Final checklist before you submit
Confirm your total word count sits between 2,925 and 3,575 words; check that Q1 and Q5 contain in-text citations and that a full reference list appears at the end; make sure Q9 names your feedback source and shows how their input was used; attach your two-activity CPD record or My CPD Records report for Q11; and complete the declaration of authentication with a genuine handwritten, scanned or e-signature — a typed name is not accepted.
If you’d like structured support with your 5CO03 preparation — tutoring, feedback on your drafts, or help understanding the assessment criteria — get in touch. All our support complies with CIPD’s academic integrity requirements: we help you produce your own work, we don’t produce it for you.
