by: Sarah Murtaza
WHAT IS CPD?
CPD AND MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
TYPES OF CPD
TRACKING YOUR PROGRESS
BENEFITS OF CPD
CPD POINTS
WHO NEEDS CPD
CPD CYCLE
CURRENT AFFAIRS AND CPD
WHAT IS CPD?
Continuing Professional Development or CPD is basically the name of the process in which professionals indulge themselves to polish their skills and abilities that are related to their work and profession.
Since learning and growing are vast terms, there are many methods and ways in which professionals can be trained throughout their life time.
These trainings can include webinars, seminars, online training courses, E-learning, workshops, conferences and much more. The main aim of them is however, the same, to educate people about their work and help them enhance their skills.
CPD can do wonders for a person entering professional life and that is regardless of their age, profession and education. What this means is that no matter what you do and where you work, through CPD training courses it is possible for you to become the best version of yourself in your job. And since learning capacities for everyone vary, professionals can work at their own pace and manage their time for their CPD training.
The good part is that with CPD there is always room for improvement in unexplored areas and since the world is growing every year and new technologies are being introduced, there is no doubt in the fact that many people are not educated and trained about the advancements. This is where CPD comes in.
CPD AND MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES
In this competitive era, companies and professionals prefer to stand out amongst all the people who qualify for a particular job and therefore, CPD provides them with those extra skills and training that puts them in the limelight.
Many multinational companies today have started providing CPD to their workers and top management for them to understand the work algorithms better and provide the company with surpluses.
This list of companies offering CPD include, LG, Mitsubishi and many more. Trainovate is also one of these companies and has been offering its professional CPD accredited online training courses and e-learning programs to its employees and clients to ensure they meet their goals and enhance their career.
It is also noteworthy that highly reputable schools such as Cambridge, offer CPD accredited courses to its students worldwide.
CPD training is very specific however, it varies from sector to sector and while someone might need a prolonged training session, other people may like their training to be done in a couple days.
TYPES OF CPD
There are several types of CPDs. First is the
STRUCTURED CPD / ACTIVE LEARNING which includes the physical learning sections meaning that here, people usually attend meetings, seminars, E-learning, online courses and stuff like that. People are expected to participate in these events and the outcome is supposed to be an interactive learning session.
REFLECTIVE CPD LEARNING where participants are not supposed to perform actively and they usually go through articles and sources themselves and study through them to learn their objective.
INFORMAL CPD / SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING where there isn’t usually any assistance from scholars and professionals and everything depends on the person itself. So here participants usually go through everything they can find useful to gain as much knowledge as they can, including books, articles, industry journals, trade magazines, online training courses, E-learning etc.
TRACKING YOUR PROGRESS
If you’re taking your Continuing Professional Development training, the best way to keep progressing is to MAKE A ROUTINE and learn according to your capacity. And while you’re constantly learning and growing, somethings might slip your mind so KEEP GOOD NOTES to retain all of your knowledge in one place.
A great way to track your progress is by MAKING RELATED RECORD SHEETS and putting in everything that you did and supposed to do. It is highly important that a participant realizes the importance of CPD training and e-learning to grow their skills and ability and to think critically and smartly while working.
It is not just to benefit the company, but to benefit the individual too. And this fact is exactly why professionals all around the globe know the importance of CPD training courses and they respect its presence just as much.
BENEFITS OF CPD
Continuing Professional Development training and e-learning come with a variety of benefits and there is no doubt in the fact that it benefits both the parties involved, the individuals and the companies. But how?
Well that’s pretty simple, since CPD is advanced training and learning in accordance to modern trends, it helps professionals in growing their skills because most of our experienced labor is usually over forties and they might find it hard to cope with the growing media and technology.
Having online training sessions that explain them these trends in detail and help them work through new technologies only reduces the company’s burden of hiring more people to take care of the advancements.
CPD therefore, allows professionals to actually multitask and learn what the Gen Z knows. Talking about companies benefitting from these trainings, well isn’t that obvious, it’s a win win situation for everyone as companies would have more skilled employees that they can trust with complex tasks that involve new strategies and technologies.
Since the company’s brand would be having better strategies to offer to the clients it would in turn result in the company’s overall growth.
CPD POINTS
Since CPD is for professional training and learning as well as online training and e-learning, it is usually addressed to in the form of:
• hours
• points
• units
• credits
This is usually a way to keep the learners engaged. The Accredited CPD Providers usually set points or hours or credits for every seminar, workshop, meeting or any form of learning session.
So as many of these conferences as the person attends, they are credited accordingly and are ranked. It is a great way to make sure that everyone is involved and is paying their attention in learning the latest Continuing Professional Development training of their sector.
WHO NEEDS CPD
Now the main concern here is that who needs CPD? Usually it is the professional working in various sectors and companies like trade and large scale industries where there is a huge room for growth and improvement.
The employees here are accepted to attend annual set hours of CPD which is later added to their point or credits.
This is to ensure that employees of that particular company are up-to date with their professional requirements and that they know everything about the changing trends and advancements needed for their company’s growth.
A simple example of this system can be given from teaching. If you have been to high schools and colleges, you very well know that teachers attend a set of meetings and conferences every year where new teaching methods are discussed and the changes in syllabuses are observed.
This is to ensure effective teaching. Similarly, CPD allows every brand and company to grow through a set of events and training sessions provided to the employees.
CPD CYCLE
CPD usually comes in a cycle and it is important to research every stage and know the answers to them.
1.Identify
2. Plan
3. Act
4. Reflect
5. Apply
6. Share
7. Impact
What these stages mean is that you need to:
Identify yourself and what you need from CPD, meaning your profession and your outcome. Then you have to plan out your learning experience and need to know about your progress.
And what is planning without acting upon it right? So you plan your training and then act according to your plan to actually come with a solid outcome.
Next is reflect, which means that whatever you’re learning on daily basis should reflect on your professional life and your work because that’s how you’ll know you’re gaining something.
Then we have apply which emphasizes on the fact that you need to find work or profession related opportunities to apply your knowledge because you might not necessarily find events where you can showcase your knowledge.
Next up is sharing which means that whatever you learn, you need to teach it to your coworkers to grow as a team.
And finally we have impact which will reflect whatever you learned so far.
At this stage you are completely aware of the new teachings and have a fresh mind and perspective, this is the stage where you can actually show your potential by putting in your knowledge and effort to standout.
CURRENT AFFAIRS AND CPD
Let’s look at it this way, during this economic recession, many things changed globally; the way companies and businesses function, education, even large firms.
But eventually, companies that were facing huge downfalls had to come up with damage repair strategies and therefore many firms started working online and selling their products by virtual means.
These changing circumstances ended up teaching people a lot about the power of internet and companies started teaching their employees how to work online.
Trainovate is happy to offer high quality CPD online training courses and e-learning covering a wide variety of professional areas. Please click here and check our range of CPD online training programs. We have what we believe is the best for you!