PLANNING YOUR CPD

When setting out to achieve something important for your career or personal development, having a well thought through plan increases your chances of success. This is particularly true for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and achieving your long-term career objectives. A realistic, logical plan helps you achieve your goals efficiently while accommodating unexpected changes in circumstances or adjustments to your long-term objectives.

Your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is unique to you and is dependent on your personal career aspirations and development needs at any given stage of your career - up to and including retirement. Members often carry out CPD to maintain and enhance their competence in their current roles, or to prepare for new roles that may be technical or managerial in nature.

Many employers conduct annual performance reviews and discuss career planning with their employees. These systems have many synergies with the CPD process. However, while your personal CPD plan is focused on your individual career aspirations and development needs, the CPD your employer promotes may be aligned with organisational goals or skill sets they wish to cultivate within their workforce. You may, therefore, find it beneficial to combine these activities as far as possible as it can help you influence your career progression in a timely and efficient manner. While some areas of your personal CPD may remain private, sharing your plans with your employer can help you achieve your goals. Your chance of success will be higher if your employer is aware of and is able to support your plans.

Your employer may set specific objectives that meet their immediate needs; however, you as an individual are best placed to identify goals aligned with your aspirations. Combining your own and your employer’s objectives into a single plan will help to ensure you make progress on both fronts. Often, employers or colleagues will play a significant part in the development and execution of your CPD, but it is your responsibility to proactively identify your professional development needs and opportunities.

Developing an Initial Plan

Start by identifying what you wish to achieve during your career, both professionally and personally – these are your career objectives.

Once you have identified your career objectives, the next step is to ascertain and list the skills, knowledge, qualifications, and experience required to achieve them. If you undertake a self-assessment against these, you will recognise areas of strength you can build on, and weaker areas and gaps you need to address. In turn this information allows you to define your development goals.

The use of tools such as SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) and benchmarking against the UK-SPEC IEng & CEng competences and the IMechE fellow standard can provide useful insights. In addition, your employer’s expectations or the IMechE’s CPD tool can also be used to help you.

Having defined your development goals, group together what can be achieved in the short (6 – 12 months) and medium (2 – 3 years) term; identify and record what you will do to achieve these goals. Typically, the resultant development action plan will include a number of parallel activities. At this point ensure that some of the activities planned also support your long-term goals and aspirations.

The support of experienced colleagues and a mentor can help you to better define what is required to achieve your career objectives, while ensuring your self-assessment honest and your planning stays realistic. A peer review by a mentor or experienced colleague can provide valuable insights, especially when it comes to goal setting. This feedback is particularly useful for defining short-term objective and outlining the skills and milestones you aim to achieve over the next 3-4 years.

The SMART goal model can be used to help guide goal setting. SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

Keeping your CPD Plan Current

Keeping your CPD plan up to date is crucial. Achieving a short-term goal is not the only reason to revisit your plan – unexpected opportunities or changes in circumstances may also require adjustments. Changes in business conditions, new projects, or evolving priorities can all impact your plan. It is good practice to revisit your career objectives at least annually as these can change over time, as can what is required to achieve them. Any changes should be reflected in your development goals and your development action plan.

Recording and reflecting on your completed development activities may also inform your career objectives and change your goals and plans. This approach ensures your development activity is aligned to and supports achievement of your career objectives.