Find out about the process of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and how you can use this process to not only meet your licensing or professional obligations, but also how to use CPD to ensure smooth inspections and re-inspections, and to demonstrate your professionalism.
Properly recorded and certificated training and CPD records are powerful tools in helping you to win more lucrative business. From 2018, CPD has been a legal requirement under the Animal Activities Regulations, and is recommended for all professional falconers.
You should aim to complete 30 hours of certificated / recorded CPD each year.
The short course associated with this article is worth 8 hrs certificated CPD for IRBPP Members and Premium Members. Learn more about upgrading your account here.
What is CPD?
CPD is a process of planning and recording the skills, knowledge and experience you gain during your working life. Learning can be both formal and informal, and you can learn and develop from your experiences as well as from formal courses. CPD does not usually include the basic or initial training you may have received when you first started to work, rather it is a record of how you develop over time during your career.
We describe in detail below the steps in the CPD process and suggest ways in which you can begin to use CPD constructively. For the purpose of this article we assume that you have not previously used CPD, and that you are starting from ‘square one’.
Above all else, CPD is a record of what you have done and how this applies to the work you do. It is more than a simple training plan, it is an ongoing process of reflecting where you are now, planning new personal development activities and recording those activities in a simple form for future reference. Once an activity or experience has been recorded you should reflect on how this may change the way in which you carry out your work, how it might improve your customer service and relationship, and how it can benefit the future of your business or career.
CPD is a circular process
Step 1: Review your current position.
Where are you now? Where do you want to be? These are two simple questions but it can be difficult to clearly express the answers in a simple way that can be acted upon.
Let’s start with a simple analysis of your own strengths and weaknesses as you see them now.
1. Where am I now?
- Take a clean sheet of paper. Put your name and today’s date at the top.
- Write down your Job title, or a short description of what you do
- Write down the skills and knowledge you already have that help you do your job. (take your time, the list will be much longer than you think!)
- Don’t try to do this all in one go. Come back to the document again tomorrow or the next day – you will have thought of extra things to add in the interval.
1.1 My current achievements are:-
- On a clean sheet of paper write your name and the date
- Put the heading ‘My achievements’ at the top.
- Start to list what you have achieved.
- You list might include:
- Any formal qualifications or certificates you have already achieved.
- Any jobs or positions you have held
- Any promotions you have been given
- Any extra responsibilities you have taken on, or have been given by an employer or others
- Any contributions you have made to society through charity or similar work
- Any bonuses you have earned in recognition of work well done
- Any notable successes – for example new contracts won
- Any formal awards, accolades, trophies etc.
- Any sporting achievements or other non-work activities.
1.2. Where do I want to be?
This can be a difficult area for some people. You may be just starting out in your career and have clear goals in sight. You may be coming towards the end of your career and wanting to slow down or hand the business over to others. You may not yet have clear goals although this next step will help you to clarify things in your mind.
- Take a third sheet of paper
- Add your name, date and the title “Where do I want to be?”
- Think ahead to 10 years from now and write down one short sentence that describes where you see yourself in ten years time.
- Think ahead to just 5 years from now. Is your shorter term vision of yourself different. Write this down
- Think ahead to 1 year from now and write down your short term goal.
- Is there an immediate goal or problem you would like to address? If yes, write this down too.
Step 2. Setting development objectives:
You should by now have three sheets of paper that have helped you to
- Identify your current skills and knowledge
- Record any formal or informal achievements
- Identify some short, medium and long term goals
Now it’s time to start to decide on your own personal priorities for development.
Learning Objectives should be S.M.A.R.T.
This means that they should be :
Specific – that is the objective should target a specific area for improvement. For example, “Improve my IT skills so that I can use Twitter as a marketing tool”
Measurable – How will I know that I have reached my objective. For example: “ I will have a Twitter account in 4 weeks time and will have attracted two new customer enquiries within 6 weeks from now
Achievable – Keep your objectives realistic – don’t set objectives that cannot reasonably be reached taking into account all the other things you have to do.
Relevant – make sure that the objective is directly relevant to one of the goals you set down on sheet 3 above.
Time limited – make sure that the objective has a fixed end date by which time you will have reached this objective. Remember it is far easier to break big objectives down into several small easily achievable objectives than to try to tackle a single big objective in one go.
Record your activities
You should now have several S.M.A.R.T. objectives. This is an excellent time to organise your activities and record your actions.
Recording refers to the process of tracking and documenting the skills, knowledge and experience that you gain both formally and informally as you work, beyond any initial training. It’s a record of what you experience, learn and then apply. The term is generally used to mean a physical folder or portfolio documenting your development as a professional. Some organisations use it to mean a training or development plan, which I would argue is not strictly accurate.
What is it for?
The CPD process helps you manage your own development on an ongoing basis. It’s function is to help you record, review and reflect on what you learn. It’s not a tick-box document recording the training you have completed. It’s broader than that.
Training and development – what’s the difference?
These terms are often used interchangeably, though there is a distinction. As a rule of thumb, training is formal and linear. It’s to do with learning how to do something specific, relating to skill and competence. Training can be as simple as using a PC application and as complex as learning how to be a pilot. Development is often informal and has a wider application, giving you the tools to do a range of things and relating to capability and competency. It involves progression from basic know-how to more advanced, mature or complex understanding. Alternatively it can be about widening your range of transferable skills like leadership, managing projects or organising information.
The key features of the CPD process
To justify the name, a CPD needs to:
- be a documented process
- be self-directed: driven by you, not your employer
- focus on learning from experience, reflective learning and review
- help you set development goals and objectives
- include both formal and informal learning.
What will it do for you?
CPD may be a requirement of membership of a professional body. It can help you to reflect, review and document your learning and to develop and update your professional knowledge and skills. It is also very useful to:
- provides an overview of your professional development to date
- reminds you of your achievements and how far you’ve progressed
- directs your career and helps you keep your eye on your goals
- uncovers gaps in your skills and capabilities
- Opens up further development needs
- provides examples and scenarios for a CV or interview
- demonstrates your professional standing to clients and employers
- helps you with your career development or a possible career change.
How do I start?
Keep a learning log and record your thoughts in whatever way suits you best. You may find it helpful to write things down in detail, for example, or to make notes on insights and learning points. The process of writing makes you think about your experiences at the time, and makes planning and reflection much easier. You can’t review your experiences without recording them, however good your memory is.
Answering the following questions may help you to get started:
Where am I now?
Review and reflect on any learning experiences over the previous year or over the past three months. Write your thoughts down about what you learned, what insights it gave you and what you might have done differently. Include both formal training events and informal learning, such as:
- learning from colleagues or shared learning from networking
- reading about new technologies, new methods of working, legislative changes
- shadowing or assisting an experienced colleague
- insights and learning points from coaching and mentoring
- reflections, insights and learning points from taking on a new responsibility
- organisational or role change
- temporary job swaps within the department/organisation
- deputising or covering for colleagues
- insights and lessons learned from mistakes
- lessons learned from critical incidents or events
Make a note of any outcomes of each learning experience and what difference it has made to you, your colleagues, your students (if relevant) or your employer.
Where do I want to be?
Write down your overall career goals – where you want to be in two, five and 10 years’ time. Then write down no more than three specific and achievable shorter term objectives, including the dates by which you want to achieve them.
What do I have to do to get there?
Looking at your overall career goals, make a note of what you need to do to achieve them. This could include further training, job or role progression or changes in direction.
For shorter term objectives, include the first step – what you can do today or tomorrow. For example, having a chat with your manager about a new responsibility or finding out about new technology from a colleague who has experience of it.
When should I review progress?
This step is essential! You’ll need to set a date in advance for review of the objectives you’ve set yourself. You can either do this from one review to the next or decide to review regularly – once every three, six or 12 months. Put it in your diary and do it! The cycle of continuing professional development has begun.
Certification of your CPD activities.
One of the main objectives of the IRBPP is to support professional falconers and others whose work brings them into contact with raptors and owls.
For IRBPP Members and Premium Members we provide a formal certification service for your CPD activities. This includes a personal online portfolio of your learning activities, guidance documents to help you meet all your legal requirements – including CPD – and other resources that can be used to build up your annual CPD total (about 30 hours per annum).
Check out the full range of IRBPP benefits here.
SPECIAL UPGRADE OFFER: Get a personal online CPD Record, automated certification of all activities completed within the IRBPP portal, and automatic updates of your CPD activities. Read more..