My Personal CPD Record

Continuing professional development is a lifelong activity to ensure that you develop your professional competence, upgrade your skills and keep yourself appraised of developments.

For directors it includes corporate governance, developments in the corporate sphere – legal, regulatory and market – and your own functional skills. These are likely to include strategy and management, and could also include finance, legal, human relations etc.

At director level you are expected to have a broad range of skills and experience, and a high level of awareness of current affairs.

CPD covers a wide range of activities from reading a national paper and monitoring TV and radio news to attending formal courses. Your CPD objectives can include generally developing your skills, keeping up to date with developments and targeting specific new skills and competences.

CPD is a personal journey owned and managed by you. Most professional institutions have CPD requirements, expecting you to undertake up to 30 hours CPD every year. CPD schemes normally work on the basis of collecting points, related to the time devoted to the learning. For an activity to count towards CPD points it must be relevant to your career, contain significant intellectual or practical content and have a clear learning objective and outcome.

Many workshops and events for professionals advertise the relevant points that can be earned and might even provide a certificate of attendance/completion as evidence. Schemes are normally trust-based but you do need to keep a record.

This FREE 43 page A4 document has been developed for you to do this and, in addition, provides a structure for creating an effective personal development plan and following it throughout a twelve month period.