Continuing Professional Development (CPD) What Is It? HR Guide
CPD – Training and Development
Continuing Professional Development ensures that you maintain and enhance your specialist knowledge. It allows you to keep up the skills you need to deliver a professional service for your customers and clients. By ensuring that you and your knowledge stay relevant and up to date, you will be more aware of the changing trends and directions in your profession.
Benefits of CPD:
Increased confidence in your abilities.
Evidencing your credibility.
Greater ability to reach career goals.
Ability to cope with industry change.
The stages involved in maintaining CPD can be described as the CPD Cycle, These Include:-
- Reflect – think about your current role and experience
- Identify – pinpoint what additional skills might help you
- Planning – decide where you aim to be and how to get there
- Action – put your plan into action
- Apply – translate theory into practise
- Evaluate – measure the impact your learning has had – and then back to
- Reflect – to start the cycle again
Personal Development Plan
Types of Training & Talent Development Tools
The focus of CPD is on positive outcomes and the benefits that professional development can bring you.
Having a Personal Development Plan for where you want to be in the future is important, and perhaps the most important message is that everyone is different. Wherever you are in your career now and whatever you want to achieve, your PDP should be just that: personal to you.
Constantly updating your skill set to fill the gaps in your competencies and knowledge is just one aspect of CPD.
There is a wide range of learning available with a variety of delivery methods. These include intensive classroom-based training, to online self-driven courses which you can take at your own pace.
Some may be specifically relevant to HR, such as the BPS Test User qualifications for Occupational Testing, some are more general such as leadership, assessor training or team-building workshops.
CPD Benefits The Entire Workforce
Completing CPD helps build confidence and credibility, contributing to a professional sense of direction. It allows you to showcase your achievements and equip yourself with the tools to cope positively with change.
Of course, this is not just for HR, encouraging CPD can be a win for the entire workforce:
- Increasing the collective knowledge of your team.
- Boosting employees’ job satisfaction.
- Making your company more appealing and therefore attracting the right kind of candidates.
- Aiding your retention strategy.
- Making succession planning easier.
Using Psychometric Tests & Assessments for Talent Development
For this, the first two elements of the CPD cycle – Reflect and Identify – are probably the most important. Understanding your current workforce and identifying the skills they will need going forward, will help you to focus on what training is really important. Conducting skills tests, to assess current ability, and personality questionnaires, to understand the individual’s approach and motivation for learning, will help you move forward to the next stage: Planning.
Working with individuals, you can set up a Personal Development Plan to plot where they are at the moment and where they want to be in the future. A PDP should also highlight key talent development areas which need to be addressed in order to achieve their goals. Some of these may be specific training, others may depend more on increasing their experience of particular roles or tasks within the workplace. Once the PDP is in place, it is then easier for both the individual and the Learning & Development team to work together to put the plan into Action.
CPD Review
Once under way, it is important for the PDP to be reviewed regularly to ensure that any learning has been applied in the individual’s work and the benefits and improvements acknowledged. Evaluating what has been achieved and what still needs to be done is important in gauging the effectiveness of the training or development and whether any elements of the PDP need to be adjusted.
Evidence of CPD - Keep a Record
To showcase an individual’s CPD achievements by keeping a record of the training completed. This should include the hours committed, certificates of attainment & qualifications. Many professions expect individuals to be able to evidence their CPD progression to ensure they are maintaining the level of knowledge required for their role.
Example of a Regulatory Requirements
British Psychological Society (BPS) Maintenance of Competence.
Consequently, individuals within the profession of Occupation Psychology with qualifications in Test Use are required by The BPS to adhere to their specific Maintenance of Competence requirements.
Members of the Register of Qualifications in Test Use (RQTU) need to demonstrate their continued competence in testing throughout their career.
Its purpose is to ensure that organisations and members of the public using the services of qualified test users can be confident of their competence. Therefore ensuring the professional standards of the services they receive.
Accredited by the CPS Standards Office
Quest Partnership work in partnership with CPD Standards Office, providing independent CPD accreditation to all of our training and learning activities.
In addition, for BPS RQTU members we have a Test User Refresher course to demonstrate your continued Maintenance of Competence in testing. Especially useful for occupational psychologists & HR professionals who have not had the opportunity to use psychometric assessments due to a career break or change of role.
Psychometric Testing and Assessments within HR and Talent Development
Psychology within business and organisations is an area of growing importance to HR professionals. As a result, we specialise in supporting HR within their role to benefit from the huge range of tests and assessments available to them.
We are Business Psychologists providing Psychometric tests and training in the field of Recruitment Selection, Staff Assessment and Talent Development.
Quest Partnership work in partnership with CPD Standards Office, providing independent CPD accreditation to all of our training and learning activities.
For further information on courses and assessments, contact Quest Partnership Ltd on 01285 861734. We can also provide consultancy support for individual coaching and feedback sessions, plus team workshops and assessment centres.