What is Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Continuing professional development (CPD) is defined as learning experiences which help you develop and improve your professional practice. This can include building on your strengths, as well as developing yourself where you have capability gaps. That’s why it’s so important for you, and why we’re committed to providing you with as many opportunities, tools and resources to embed CPD into the flow of your work and life.

How does CPD benefit me?

CPD is about developing your professional practice. So it may help keep your skills and knowledge up to date; prepare you for greater responsibilities; boost your confidence; help you become more creative in tackling new challenges; enable you to make better decisions, or help you take your career further.

What is the CIPD's approach to CPD?

All learning that helps you to change and improve your practice is CPD, whether that’s learning something from a conversation with a colleague, doing a new piece of work, working in a new team, taking a course, reading something on LinkedIn, or simply reflecting on the last few months of your work.

The key to making and truly embedding that change is reflecting on your learning, which is why we’ve developed a tool on the Learning hub to help you do that. My CPD Reflections provides an online space to review and reflect on your learning. It provides a structured approach to help you embed learning and improve your professional practice.

It’s also an easy way to keep a record of your CPD.

How should I approach my CPD?

You can use the CPD cycle to take a structured approach by identifying and planning your learning. However, remember that much of your learning will happen in the flow of work, through conversations with people, the work you do, what you read online, and working with colleagues – to name a few examples.

A combination of identifying your learning gaps and planning to meet them – along with recognising your everyday learning – is an effective approach to take. And remember to reflect on what you have learned in order to improve your professional practice.

How should I record my CPD?

I'm on a career break, do I have to do CPD?

Yes, it's especially important that you're able to manage your CPD whilst on a career break. Doing so will ensure you're able to return to work with the ability to articulate the value of your experience and how you've maintained your knowledge and skills throughout.

Our CPD policy and requirements allows you plenty of flexibility to select the forms of professional development activity most suited to your current circumstance. Read our 'How to manage a career break' for more information.

Listen to how people professionals approach their CPD

Transcript

CPD isn't just going on a course. It's a mindset, it's an integral part of your career. If you can see a skills gap and address it and learn from that. The boost that you get from that, it could be really rewarding. And, when you look back and you look at your achievements and know that has come from your own initiative - there's nothing better, than that.

CBDs very much self-directed learning. I worked in the Banking sector where it was very structured and you knew where you had to get to and how you were going to get there. In the public sector, that wasn't the case, so I had to be responsible for my and I had to take the opportunity. They weren't just going to give it to me. It's a commitment by me to improve my capabilities to look where I've got a skills gap, fill that gap and build on my knowledge.

if anybody's thinking about doing CPD now, is a brilliant time to do it. We're in a fast changing environment and that means that you need to be flexible and be able to adapt and organizations are becoming more aware of that. And that doesn't need to cost you anything. Their TED Talks podcasts, CIPD in a nutshell and updated free webinars of white papers - take those opportunities, because the rewards are far away, any effort.

Transcript

Learning helps because it inspires me, for one. Learning makes me want to learn more and learn different subjects and not just always do the same thing in the same way that I’ve always done. It does enable me to do things that I would never have done 5 years ago.

Initially, I went to Law school and became an employment lawyer. Moving into HR, it’s opened up a whole world for me. It’s changing so quickly – new opportunities to learn are coming up the whole time.

If you study HR and you do a formal qualification, I think you can fall into a mindset that there’s only one way of doing things. One of the things I do make time for is webinars and L&D themed Google Plus chats that I’ve joined in with. So, even though I have been on a really tight budget, I’m learning all sorts of things I would have never across when I was a lawyer.

Who knows what the future holds, but it certainly is going to involve a huge amount of learning and continuous development on my part.

Useful links to tools and resources

CIPD Learning hub Knowledge hub The Profession Map CIPD Community discussion forums Learning resources for CIPD members

Additional information

CPD Cycle Stages

Explore the CPD cycle for HR and learning and development professionals.

Self-Assessment tool

Build your capability through tailored recommendations, aligned to the Profession Map.

CPD policy and requirements

Meet the CIPD’s high standards for HR professionals by demonstrating your commitment to continuing professional development, as set out in our CPD policy.

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About CPD

Listen to how people professionals approach their CPD

Useful links to tools and resources

Additional information