A firm must use Continuing Professional Development, or CPD, to stay organised. Now, how can CPD help a firm stay organised when it is a process of employee skill development? The simplest response here can be that the practices within CPD can optimise organising through maturing employee skills and improving efficiency through adaptability. This blog will act as a basic step-by-step guide on how these actions can be taken to obtain the best results.
What is CPD?
Continuing Professional Development, commonly called CPD, is a robust learning tool for the application of professionals across all industries. It is defined as the commitment of an organisation to the lifelong learning of its workforce. It not only helps employees develop their skills but also helps them keep in touch with the ongoing industry changes.
As per a published study, among 155 studies conducted on the effectiveness of CPD, 64 studies or 41% of the studies have established that CPD through good organisational practices, a supportive learning environment, and expression of employee personal preferences have led to organisational growth.
Having understood the effectiveness of CPD in organisations, now, discussing the steps of it becomes important.
Step 1: Set Clear CPD Goals
The first step in CPD’s influence on firms staying organised is to set up clear goals. What are clear CPD goals?
Clear CPD goals are continuous professional development training objectives that a firm would achieve to ensure workforce upscaling.
How to Set Goals and Track Progress
First, before delving into the goals, it is important to simplify the goal-setting process. This simplification can be achieved by using a CPD software. This software will streamline the process of managing professional learning and tracking, and recording progress and achievement. Thus, once the goals are set, CPD tracking can be implemented to see if the goals are being met.
Why Set Up CPD Goals?
Setting up CPD goals will first require the firm to consider the objectives. This “why” can be responded to by evaluating the current competencies and identifying the areas in which skill improvement or new skills will be required.
Approximately 56% human resource managers of organisations all over the world consider training and development essential to business as of 2022. Therefore, CPD goals can be considered essential to develop a firm’s workforce.
However, the goals will be set up with the need for continuing professional development training in mind. This implies an employee-centric approach.
The SMART Approach to Goal-Setting
What is the best way to set up CPD goals? The SMART criteria can help identify potential goals and can help effectively set them.
The effectiveness of the SMART criteria has been established by an HBR study, which showed that 14% of individuals with established SMART goals have shown 10 times more success in meeting their objectives than those without.
SMART, as the name suggests, considers 5 requirements in setting up the goals.
- Specific– the objective must be clear and must cater to the firm’s needs.
- Measurable– the goal cannot be abstract, and can be tracked, with clear achievement checkpoints.
- Attainable– the goal cannot be unachievable. It has to be within the scope that can be met.
- Relevant– the goal should meet the firm’s overall aspirations.
- Time-bound– the point of the goal is that it can be achieved within a set timeframe. This aids tracking progress as well as measuring growth.
A CPD tracker or CPD tracking software can be crucial to the measurement of the viability of the set goals. The tracking software can also track periodic progress to ascertain whether or not it can be achieved within the expected timeframe.
Step 2: Choose the Right CPD Activities
Now that the goals have been set, the next step is to understand which areas to focus on to feasibly achieve these goals.
How to differentiate between right and wrong CPD activities? The right CPD activities will adhere to the needs of the workforce. An appropriate evaluation of CPD needs is the right CPD activity. If the CPD need is not correctly diagnosed, the wrong CPD activity can be undertaken. Which may include activities irrelevant to the workforce’s needs, or unstructured activities that do not achieve the ideal goals.
Here, a firm can benefit from setting up an integrated CPD management system. This can be an internally managed system by the organisation or a CPD management software can be employed to streamline the process.
Whichever is the chosen method, the system can help the firm perform an investigation into the appropriate CPD activities to choose to maximise the learning experience.
Ideally, the activities will consist of a mixture of different types of learning. Why multiple types of learning? Because different types of learning can diversify the skills of the workforce to obtain. Not only that, but being well-versed in multiple approaches can drive home the importance of flexibility.
A clear training management system is required for this to be effectively implemented. Only the consideration of on-the-job training is not sufficient. This is evident as per a 2020 report that identified that only 29% of organisations worldwide had a defined learning and development plan in place.
Step 3: Keep a Digital CPD Record
Now, as the CPD goals and activities have been planned, it is important that a record is maintained. This maintained record acts as evidence for the implementation of the CPD management system. However, this record can also act as evidence of the growth achieved by the workforce under the CPD system.
So, how to maintain this evidence? A digital record should be maintained. A digital record is more reliable than traditional systems as it offers the benefits of increased security, accessibility, and efficiency.
Therefore, maintaining a continuing professional development record can be essential to ensure an organised CPD structure, a secure ledger of the improved competencies of the workforce.
Step 4: Monitor Progress and Adjust as Needed
Only maintaining a record, however, cannot be sufficient to measure the effectiveness of the CPD plan established. Any CPD plan is incomplete without an effective measure to monitor progress.
Progress monitoring tools on professional development software can be effective in tracking performance. And, it has been observed globally that 80% of employees’ progress is being monitored by their employers.
How do these professional development tracking software help in evaluating employee progress in CPD learning? A CPD tracking software can help employers record, review and reflect on the learning processes undertaken in the firm.
This not only helps the progress measurement, but can also benefit flexibility. This is because employers can adjust their CPD goals if the progress path is observed as insufficient.
Step 5: Ensure Compliance and Certification
The final step in a CDP plan to help a firm get more organised is the assurance of regulatory compliance and certification.
Regulatory compliance requires organisations to collect data on the CPD activities. This data needs to be reported to the certification authority following:
- Testing and Management of Quality.
- Data Transparency and Accessibility.
- Regular Updates.
- Adherence to the legal ground rules.
The fifth step essentially confirms whether or not the first four steps have been effective as plans for workforce development. A recognised body offers a continuing professional development certificate to a firm only when the learning and training systems applied by the firm meet quality standards.
If the CPD goals and the progress measurement yield positive results for the firm, a CPD certification service will certify the firm’s progress development plan.
Thus, as the fifth step confirms the effectiveness of the first four steps, it essentially ensures that the firm has been organised through a comprehensive CPD plan.
Conclusion
A comprehensive and effective CPD plan can provide context for a firm to further develop its workforce and ensure that the firm is organised. Through establishing CPD goals, evaluating the appropriate tasks to undertake and monitoring and recording progress, an effective CPD plan can be certified.
Following these steps, a firm can essentially achieve its objectives for workforce development and achieve the organised status with certification.
