Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is an important process to advance your career.  It can enhance your CV and open doors to a wider market.

So what is CPD?  Continuous Professional Development is described by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) as:

CPD is a natural extension of your work. It brings greater awareness of what you do, why you do it and how you do it. Whether your work is paid or voluntary, the success of CPD ultimately depends on an ongoing willingness to learn and apply lessons inherent in the experience you gain and in the various jobs you do.

CPD is the conscious updating of your professional skills and knowledge and the improvement of personal competence throughout your working life.  As it is conscious it is more than attending formal training or education.  Learning can and does occur anywhere and in the most unlikely of places.

So how should we record what we have learnt or identify how we want to develop?  First of all CPD has to begin with a period of self reflection.  This is easier than it sounds.  For starters you have to ask yourself ‘where do I want to be in …' and give yourself a timescale.  This can be six months; a year, five years, whatever you feel is possible for you.  Then assess where you are at the moment.  If you have applied for a job or a higher level job and were not successful you can ask for feedback to identify what you need to develop in order to get the job or a similar one when another comes up.

Identify your strengths and the areas that you are not so strong.  Then workout what you will need and how you will develop those skills or knowledge.  This information can be entered into a Personal Development Plan or PDP so that a record can be kept and you can identify where you are within your plan.

What you learn – the knowledge and skills you acquire – can be recorded in many ways.  They can be recorded in a Learning Log, a Dairy, on an audio device such as CD, Voice recorder, Record as MP3 and store on your iPod or MP3 Player.  You can also record a video diary of your learning.  There is no right or wrong way to record your learning, use whatever you are comfortable and familiar with.  If you are a member of a professional organisation such the CIPD or the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) you will be required to record your CPD in a particular way so that it can be submitted to upgrade your membership status.

Many professional organisations have in there membership charter a commitment by members to practice CPD and maintain records of their CPD to show that they are maintaining their knowledge and keeping up to date.  In the field of Human Resources this is vital as the changes to Employment Law are frequent and sometimes subtle but, carry huge influence in the role that you perform.  In Learning and Development the changes in practices and trends are equally important to stay ahead of the field.

Being a Manager and a member of the CMI requires you to be up to date with leadership trends and aspects of HR and Learning and Development.

So how can you develop your skills and knowledge without formal learning?  Learning occurs everywhere and you can learn from reading books and articles, listening to news reports, watching documentaries and socialising.  The point is that learning can occur anywhere and the skill is to remember what you learnt and where and record it in the medium that you have chosen.

When practising CPD your Learning Log and Personal Development Plan are related and one feeds the other.  What you learn may lead to a development opportunity and when you have developed a skill or gained knowledge you will have learnt something.

However you record your learning and your development they are your documents or tools.  No one can tell you what you have learnt that is up to you.  How you use the new skills or knowledge is also up to you.  You may gain new skills and knowledge by chance and be unaware how you will use them.  Record these as well as you never know when you will need to use them.