Continuous Professional Development

What Does Continuous Professional Development?

Fostering a supportive learning culture in the workplace is key to a happy, healthy work environment. This is why continuing professional development (CPD) is so important. Companies that cultivate a company-wide learning culture promote growth, reflection, commitment and dedication.

What is Continuous Professional Development?

Continuing professional development (CPD) is the way professionals maintain and develop their skills, knowledge, experience and understanding. CPD requires employees to consciously and proactively undertake, track, document and reflect on activities that make them better at their jobs.

CPD examples should be practical and relevant to employees’ current or future work. One of the best ways to ensure that ongoing professional development occurs is to create a plan or create a structure so that learning does not occur randomly or not at all.

An example: A marketing specialist learns to bake the perfect choux pastry in his free time. That’s admirable, but it’s not training. But if a vegetable chef who wants to become a pastry chef does this, it’s a great CPD activity.

What is the Continuous Professional Development Cycle?

The CPD cycle is more about what employees do during the CPD reflection process than when they do it. The six main phases of the continuous professional development cycle are described below:

• Planning – Identifying where progress can be made
• Action – participation in activities that ensure development
• Review – Taking a step back and seeing what has been learned
• Application – integration of the lessons into daily work
• Transparency – sharing what you’ve learned to help others
• Reflection – An inventory of the impact achieved

It’s easy to think of a training cycle as a specific period of time – say a year. But that’s really not the right way to approach it. Even if it feels completely natural.

This is because most professional bodies that require continuing education hours, including those that regulate nurses, accountants or other of the approximately 400 professional bodies in the UK representing 13 million professionals, require qualified individuals to complete each Complete a specific number of hours in the review and assessment cycle.

What is the importance of continuous professional development?

Continuing professional development is important for individuals because it keeps their thinking fresh, their skills relevant and their motivation high. The benefits of CPD for individuals include:

• Opportunities for further training
• The opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to their own development and professionalism
• They stay current (and avoid becoming obsolete) – so they can provide better service and contribute further, especially with skills they may not have used in a while
• To improve their skills and abilities
• Help you adapt to changes and stay up to date with current trends
• To learn new skills or acquire new knowledge
• To sharpen their profile
• Avoiding skills gaps
• Preparing for the jobs of the future
• Expanding the level of knowledge within their profession
• Preventing boredom with your chosen profession (thanks to new knowledge and ideas)

CPD is also important for organizations and employers because an open attitude to learning and development is key to attracting and retaining talent and should be part of a good talent management strategy. It is also a good sign of a healthy company culture.

Ultimately, it shows that you as a company are good at embracing change and responding to changes in your industry. This not only contributes to better employee retention, but also promotes productivity because motivated employees are more efficient.

Are there different types of continuous professional development?

Typically, CPD can be structured, reflective or unstructured. These three types, also known as active learning, passive learning or self-directed training, have different focuses:

• Structured or active learning typically involves formal learning or training – such as courses, workshops, certified events, seminars or conferences.
• Reflective or passive learning occurs when participants absorb information in a less formal way. For example, they can read news articles, listen to podcasts, or read books that promote further education in their careers.
• Unstructured learning or self-directed CPD happens when employees do all the other things to prepare for their learning – like reading journals, books or articles.

CPD can take the form of formal learning, practice-based learning (job training or on-the-job learning), professional activity (beyond the normal role), self-directed learning (activities carried out without prompting) and various other forms.

To inspire your employees, here is a list of different possible examples of professional development:

• Participation in workshops or conferences
• Participation in webinars, seminars or presentations
• Professional networking
• General networking (e.g. on social media) if it is work-related
• On-the-job training
• Getting a promotion
• Observation
• Secondment to another department or to another location
• E-learning or online courses
• Formal academic study
• Giving presentations
• Participation in a technical committee or committee
• Reading books, articles, white papers or specialist magazines
• Conduct general or specific research (beyond your professional requirements)
• Coaching or training others
• Be a mentor or be mentored by a mentor
• Writing or authoring books, articles, or even social media posts.

How do you help your employees create a CPD plan?

A CPD plan makes it easier to document learning and helps employees remember what they have done when the CPD cycle is over! A CPD plan can be a list of the number of hours and how they will be spent. It could start with a specific career goal, desired qualification, or area of improvement. For example, employees may be required to pursue training as part of a performance improvement plan, or it may be brought up during an employee appraisal.

Employees who need to commit to a certain number of hours of continuing education per year – especially if they must do so in order to maintain membership in their professional association – would do well to plan their continuing education in advance.

But all employees doing CPD should have a goal and a plan to ensure they actually do the CPD, rather than just making it a nice-to-have. After all, a goal without a plan is just a wish.

When creating a training plan, start with SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound) and then build activities around those goals – including what to do and when.

To create a plan, you should first ask yourself these questions:

• Where are you? (Assessment)
• Where do you want to stand? (future goals)
• What do you need to get there? (Resources – e.g. time, money, investments)
• When will you do it? (e.g. morning, evening, monthly, weekly)
• When will you think about your work? (e.g. weekly, quarterly, annually)
• How will you know you’ve made it? (expected results)

Then put a plan in place that allows employees to answer those questions. Make sure it includes goals and deadlines, and most importantly, schedule time in employees’ schedules to ensure they actually follow through on the planned actions!