Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development · RQF Level 5

CIPD Level 5 Diploma In Applied Human Resources

You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.

  • LevelRQF Level 5
  • Total credits90
  • Guided learning450 hours
  • Units in this qualification21

Awarded by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development · on the Ofqual register

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What you’ll learn

What each unit actually teaches you to do

The CIPD Level 5 Diploma develops applied knowledge in human resources. It is intended for HR professionals seeking to enhance their expertise. Learners will study reward management, change management, and research approaches within HR.

These are the units Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.

Contributing to Coaching and Mentoring in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll learn to assess the impact of coaching and mentoring activities, recommend improvements, and support the implementation of coaching and mentoring programmes within organisations. The unit emphasises evaluation and practical support for development initiatives.

What you'll be able to do

  • Assess the impact of existing coaching and mentoring activity within an organisation, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
  • Make well-reasoned recommendations for the further development of coaching and mentoring programmes, based on the assessment of impact and organisational needs.
  • Support the practical implementation of coaching and/or mentoring programmes within an organisation, ensuring alignment with organisational objectives and best practice.
Contributing to Employee Engagement in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll learn to assess employee engagement levels, evaluate current organisational approaches, and recommend strategies to improve engagement. The unit emphasises the use of diagnostic tools and consideration of organisational culture in planning interventions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Assess levels of employee engagement within an organisation, using appropriate diagnostic tools and techniques.
  • Evaluate current organisational approaches to employee engagement, identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
  • Recommend and plan strategies to raise levels of employee engagement within an organisation, taking into account organisational culture, values, and strategic objectives.
Contributing to Human Resource Development in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll be able to devise, agree, and implement learning and development plans to meet identified human resource development needs. The unit also covers evaluation of HRD activities' impact on organisational performance using appropriate methods.

What you'll be able to do

  • Devise and agree a learning and development plan to meet an identified human resource development (HRD) need within an organisation, taking into account individual and organisational objectives.
  • Implement a learning and development initiative to address an identified learning need, using appropriate delivery methods and resources.
  • Evaluate the impact of HRD activities on organisational performance, using appropriate metrics and evaluation techniques.
Contributing to Improving Organisational PerformanceReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
It teaches you to contribute to organisational performance improvement by providing information on performance management activities, supporting line managers in delivery, and assessing the impact of these activities on overall organisational outcomes.

What you'll be able to do

  • Provide information on performance management activities within an organisation.
  • Support line managers to deliver performance management activities within an organisation.
  • Assess the impact of performance management activities on organisational performance and make recommendations for enhancement.
Contributing to Resourcing and Talent Planning in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
It teaches you to review and evaluate an organisation's talent planning approach, recommend improvements, and contribute to people resourcing activities. It focuses on alignment with business goals and best practices in talent management.

What you'll be able to do

  • Review and evaluate an organisation’s current approach to talent planning, considering its effectiveness and alignment with business goals.
  • Recommend specific and actionable ways to improve an organisation’s approach to talent planning, based on best practices and organisational needs.
  • Contribute effectively to people resourcing activities, such as recruitment, selection, and onboarding, within the organisation.
Contributing to Reward Management in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll develop the ability to review and evaluate an organisation's reward management approach, recommend improvements, and support the delivery of rewards and benefits processes. The unit emphasises analysis of effectiveness and alignment with organisational objectives.

What you'll be able to do

  • Review and evaluate an organisation’s approach to reward management.
  • Recommend ways to develop the organisation’s approach to reward management.
  • Support the delivery of rewards and benefits processes.
Contributing to the Management of ChangeReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit equips learners with the skills to plan, implement, and assess change processes within organisations. It covers the development of change plans considering culture, resources, and stakeholder needs, as well as risk mitigation and effective communication strategies.

What you'll be able to do

  • Plan for the implementation of change processes within an organisation, considering all relevant factors.
  • Implement a change plan effectively, managing resources and stakeholders appropriately.
  • Assess the impact of change processes within an organisation, evaluating both positive and negative consequences.
Contributing to the Management of Employee Relations in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit equips learners with the skills to assess employment relations within sectors, evaluate organisational approaches, and support line managers in managing employment relations. It includes analysis of sector characteristics, legislation, and organisational policies.

What you'll be able to do

  • Assess the nature of employment relations within an identified sector.
  • Evaluate an organisation’s approach to the management of employment relations.
  • Support line managers in the management of employment relations.
Developing Professional Practice in Human ResourcesReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit develops learners' understanding of human resources (HR) career development programmes, the variety of HR roles, and the behavioural expectations of HR professionals. You'll gain skills in self-management, workload organisation, and collabourative working within HR contexts.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the components of a specific human resources (HR) career development programme, including its structure and objectives.
  • Understand the range of HR roles within an organisation and the associated responsibilities.
  • Understand the behavioural requirements of HR professionals, including communication, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills.
  • Manage self and workload effectively to meet performance requirements and deadlines.
  • Work collaboratively with others as a member of a team or working group, contributing to shared goals.
  • Apply Continuing Professional Development (CPD) techniques to devise a personal development plan.
  • Implement the personal development plan, tracking progress and making adjustments as needed.
  • Review the effectiveness of the personal development plan and identify areas for further development.
Understanding Contemporary Human Resource DevelopmentReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll explore different approaches to human resource development (HRD) and their role within organisations. The unit covers training, coaching, mentoring, and e-learning, emphasising their principles and contribution to employee performance and organisational success.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand different approaches to human resource development (HRD), including training, coaching, mentoring, and e-learning.
  • Understand the role and contribution of HRD to the organisation, including its impact on employee performance, productivity, and engagement.
  • Understand key contemporary developments in HRD practice, such as talent management, succession planning, and diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Understanding Coaching and Mentoring in the OrganisationReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll explore the concepts of coaching and mentoring, different implementation methods within organisations, and the potential benefits for individuals and organisational development. The unit covers key skills and qualities required for effective coaching and mentoring.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the concepts of coaching and mentoring.
  • Understand different ways coaching and mentoring can be implemented in organisations.
  • Understand the potential benefits of coaching and mentoring in organisations.
Understanding Employee EngagementReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll develop an understanding of employee engagement, its key components, and its contribution to positive organisational outcomes. The unit also covers methods for accessing and interpreting employee engagement data to inform organisational strategies.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the concept of employee engagement.
  • Understand the key components of employee engagement.
  • Understand the potential contribution of employee engagement to positive organisational outcomes.
  • Access and interpret employee engagement data.
Understanding Employment LawReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit provides learners with comprehensive knowledge of employment law, including its purpose, enforcement, and application in recruitment, change management, pay, working time, and employee treatment. It emphasises lawful management practices and performance issues.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the purpose of employment regulation and the way it is enforced.
  • Manage recruitment and selection activities lawfully.
  • Manage change and reorganisation lawfully.
  • Manage issues relating to pay and working time lawfully.
  • Ensure staff are treated lawfully at work.
  • Manage performance and disciplinary matters lawfully.
Understanding Resourcing and Talent PlanningReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit provides learners with knowledge of resourcing and talent planning activities, including identifying future talent needs, attracting and retaining talent, and applying good practice in organisational resourcing with attention to diversity and inclusion.

What you'll be able to do

  • Undertake core talent planning activities within an organisation.
  • Attract and retain talent within an organisation.
  • Understand good practice in relation to organisational resourcing activities.
Understanding Reward ManagementReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll explore the business context of reward management, including strategic, financial, legal, and ethical perspectives. The unit covers key reward principles and practices, and how to access and apply reward intelligence to inform policy decisions.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the business context of reward and the key perspectives that inform reward decision-making.
  • Understand key reward principles and practices.
  • Access and use reward intelligence to inform reward management policy.
Understanding the Business Context of Human ResourcesReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit covers the impact of organisational and external factors on the human resources function. You'll understand how organisational structure, culture, technology, economic and legal factors influence HR strategies and practices.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand and explain the key organisational factors which impact on the human resources (HR) function, such as structure, culture, and technology.
  • Understand and explain the external factors which impact on the organisation’s business and their HR function, including economic, legal, and social trends.
  • Understand and explain how organisational and HR strategies and practices are shaped and developed, considering internal and external influences.
Understanding the Contemporary Human Resources FunctionReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll gain an understanding of the contemporary human resources function, including its role, objectives, and strategic contribution. The unit covers different HR service delivery models, the role of ethics, and methods for evaluating HR's organisational impact.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the role and key objectives of the human resources (HR) function in contemporary organisations.
  • Understand different models of delivering HR services within an organisation.
  • Understand the role of ethics in HR management and development.
  • Understand how HR’s contribution to the organisation can be evaluated.
Understanding the Link between Individual and Organisational PerformanceReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit provides learners with an understanding of the link between individual and organisational performance through high-performance working (HPW). It covers the role of performance management processes and line managers in enhancing productivity, quality, and employee satisfaction.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the concept of high-performance working (HPW) and how it can benefit individuals and the organisation, including increased productivity, improved quality, and enhanced employee satisfaction.
  • Understand the contribution of the performance management process to high levels of performance, including setting clear objectives, providing regular feedback, and conducting performance appraisals.
  • Understand the role of line managers in performance management processes, including coaching, mentoring, and providing support to employees to achieve their performance goals.
Understanding the Management of Employment RelationsReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
This unit provides learners with a comprehensive understanding of employment relations, including theoretical approaches, roles of key parties, models of employee representation, and conflict resolution methods. It includes analysis of historical and contemporary contexts.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand theoretical approaches to employment relations, including their historical context and contemporary relevance.
  • Understand the roles of key parties involved in employment relations, such as employers, employees, trade unions, and government agencies.
  • Understand different models of employee representation, including collective bargaining, works councils, and employee forums.
  • Understand different forms of conflict behaviour and dispute resolution, including negotiation, mediation, and arbitration.
Understanding the Management of ChangeReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
You'll gain knowledge of key principles, theories, and models of change management within organisations. The unit highlights the importance of communication and relationship management, and covers planning, implementing, and monitoring change processes.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand key principles, theories and models relating to change in organisations.
  • Understand the importance of communication and relationship management within change processes.
  • Plan change processes within an organisation.
  • Implement change processes within an organisation.
  • Monitor change processes within an organisation.
Using a Research Approach in Human ResourcesReal unit · Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
It teaches you to apply research methods to human resources issues, including understanding the research process, conducting data reviews, analysing findings, and preparing clear, business-focused reports with meaningful conclusions and recommendations.

What you'll be able to do

  • Understand the meaning of research and the research process.
  • Conduct a data review and analyse the findings.
  • Draw meaningful conclusions and make recommendations.
  • Prepare clear, business-focused reports on an HR issue.

The honest bit

You’ve started things before

Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.

There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.

And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.

Your passport

Every credit is a stamp you keep

Level 5 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.

Contributing to Coaching and Mentoring in the OrganisationContributing to Employee Engagement in the OrganisationContributing to Human Resource Development in the OrganisationContributing to Improving Organisational PerformanceContributing to Resourcing and Talent Planning in the OrganisationContributing to Reward Management in the OrganisationContributing to the Management of ChangeContributing to the Management of Employee Relations in the Organisation

Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.

Who’d teach you this

The Evidence Evaluator

Assessor

Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.

Meet all twelve tutors

How you’ll actually learn this

One-to-one, on your own real work

A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.

One-to-one, on your real workNo lectures, no past-papers. Every unit is practised on the actual tasks your job throws at you, a tutor beside you, not a video in front of you.
Taught to the top, not the testMost courses stop at remembering. Your companion keeps climbing: analysing, judging, creating. That’s the part a machine can’t do for you.
Credits you keep, a map that continuesEvery unit is regulated and yours for good. The day you finish, Zavmo already knows the next role your new credits open.
Contributing to Coaching and Mentoring in the OrganisationLevel 5

Applied to your work in any of these jobs

Learners will develop skills to assess the impact of coaching and mentoring activities, recommend improvements, and support the implementation of coaching and mentoring programmes within organisations. The unit emphasises evaluation and practical support for development initiatives.

How the thinking builds
  1. Remember
  2. Understand
  3. Apply
  4. Analyse
  5. Evaluate
  6. Create
An illustration of a Zavmo lesson, built from this role’s own route. The unit, its objective and every criterion above are the awarding body’s own words, not an example.
Your PlanIllustration

Built for CIPD Level 5 Diploma In Applied Human Resources

21 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

  1. Contributing to Coaching and Mentoring in the Organisation
  2. Contributing to Employee Engagement in the Organisation
  3. Contributing to Human Resource Development in the Organisation
  4. Contributing to Improving Organisational Performance
  5. Contributing to Resourcing and Talent Planning in the Organisation
  6. Contributing to Reward Management in the Organisation

and 15 more in the full unit list below.

These are the real units of this credential, in its own order. Nothing here is marked done, because this plan has not been started by anyone yet. Yours would fill in as you go.

One to one, not one to many

No two people run this the same way

A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.

  1. Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
  2. What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
  3. The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
  4. How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
  5. Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.

See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.

Why it sticks

Most courses stop at remembering

There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.

  1. 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
  2. 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
  3. 4AnalyseThe Analyst
  4. 3ApplyThe Coach
  5. 2UnderstandThe Connector
  6. 1RememberThe Builder

Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you

Why this matters: AI can already remember and understand for you. What it can’t do is take your real problem and judge the right call. So the only learning worth paying for is the learning that takes you to the top. That’s exactly what a tutor doing it with you, on your real work, is for.

The value

Why the companion is worth £70 a month

You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.

That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.

Earned on your own work, taught to the top.

Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.

Build my plan, free

No card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.