Branch assistance with membership
As Sussex Branch Membership Adviser, Richard Hewitt, will be pleased to assist with membership problems.
Click here to email Richard
You can also attend meetings – especially if it is your first attendance with the Sussex Branch, and if you would like help to be introduced to others.
Membership status – gain advice as to how you can progress your membership status within the CIPD e.g. moving from a graduate member to chartered member; which would be the best route for you to become a graduate member etc.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – obtain information about CPD necessary for progressing your membership status and links with the Branch’s CPD Adviser.
The Branch maintains links with institutes, lecturers and students through Professional Advisers, External Moderators and Student Liaison Officers.
A yearly meeting is held between the Branch and colleges. Each college has a Branch representative, who can attend college lectures to speak about the CIPD and accompany students to branch meetings, especially important for a student's first meeting. Please feel free to contact your college Branch representative - see Branch Contacts
The Branch also has an Education and Development Officer, Anita Haworth who acts as the link between the colleges and the Branch.
CPD - Continuous professional development
CPD has two aspects. The first is about being professional and the second is about developing yourself to get the most out of life. Let’s look at these in turn.
Being Professional
We use professionals because we trust that they have the skills and knowledge to do tasks that we probably can’t do ourselves. We expect them to be up-to-date with current thinking and able to do the job skilfully. We would be upset if our accountant was working to out-of-date tax laws, or if our G.P. didn’t know how to give an injection.
As HR professionals, we are expected to be up-to-date and able to perform HR tasks.
You might say that as you are a specialist you cannot be expected to keep up-to-date with everything. You are right. Professionals are only expected to be up-to-date with their own specialisms.
Responsibility
We have a responsibility to our clients, customers, employers and staff to be professional. Who should decide what you should know or be able to do? The only people who can decide are you, the professionals. You know the situation and are on site.
To keep the credibility of the profession, the professional body also has responsibilities. It is up to the CIPD to keep members informed and to provide opportunities to develop skills.
We would very quickly lose faith in all doctors if we knew that they were permitted to continue as professionals when their practice was unsafe. The CIPD also has to ensure that members are acting professionally and maintaining their expertise.
As a professional body the CIPD also has some responsibility for developing practice.
As professionals who make up that body we share the responsibility. Part of our CPD is therefore to improve both our own and our colleagues practice. We carry out research, try new approaches, and we share our learning with our colleagues. We talk to people, write papers or speak at meetings or conferences.
Personal development
We have seen that CPD is a personal responsibility. It is also personally rewarding.
Apart from developing our careers and our organisations, CPD develops us as people.
Most of the skills we use as HR professionals are useful elsewhere. For instance, interviewing or assertiveness skills are useful in social settings as well as in the office.
It is difficult to draw a distinction between personal and professional development, and perhaps any distinction is artificial. No-one can predict how today’s learning will be used in the future. It may not be useful in your current job, but it could still be part of your career development.
The CPD process
The process of the CIPD’s CPD is very helpful to personal development. The concept of seeing everything as a learning experience is very useful in all aspects of life. The first stage of the process is to review your day or week to see what you did, what you enjoyed and what went well, (as well as what went wrong). You can then work out why some things worked and others didn’t, why you enjoyed some events and not others, or why some tasks took longer (or less time) than predicted.
Having worked out "why", you can apply the learning to other settings. Perhaps you can look at next week’s diary to see what opportunities there may be to practice. Perhaps you won’t be in a similar situation for some while. If so, you can make a note of the learning and plan when you can use it in the future.
When reviewing you may realise that there is something you really want to know more about or a skill you want to gain. You could plan to do this by going on a course, reading a book, talking to someone, sitting with someone who already does this, going to a meeting as an observer, etc.
Whatever you learn, however you learn it, it isn’t real until you use it. When you have, it is useful to review again to see what worked and what didn’t.
This continuous process of learning is what CPD is all about. It is personal. It is about individuals following the learning cycle for their own development. It is:
- deciding what you want to learn and why
- deciding how you are going to learn and planning the learning
- experiencing the learning - either planned or unplanned
- reviewing every experience to see what you can learn from it and planning its application.
Recording learning
The CIPD make no stipulation about how CPD should be recorded. You will see from the above how recording learning at the different stages is integral to the process. It is useful to record the review of your learning and your development plan.
The CIPD are satisfied if you have a record of each of the stages in the process. You may choose to use the CIPD’s forms, or their computer disc if you wish.
How much CPD
There are no rules about how much CPD people should do. As a professional it is up to you to decide what you need to do to maintain your professionalism. Almost everything you do can be used as a professional learning event. The CIPD would expect you to record at least thirty five hours a year.
Upgrading
At present the CIPD expect members who wish to upgrade to submit three years of CPD records. It expects one year’s retrospective record and a plan for the following year’s learning, as well as a declaration agreeing to submit another record and plan, each year, for the following two years. You can keep CPD records while you are a student and these can be used for upgrading.
Monitoring
The CIPD checks CPD records at random. A small percentage are checked each year.
To conclude
CPD is a way of life. It is a process which can develop you both professionally and personally. It can help you become more conscious of everything you do, and why you do it. You will become more aware of how you make decisions and how many choices you really have.
Click here to go to the CPD area of the main website
Further information
If you would like to know more about professional and personal development, contact our CPD Advisor, Richard Hewitt.
Click here to email Richard