What counts as CPD?
CPD is any learning activity you undertake to support your professional development. Our Activity Points Chart provides guidance on activities and how many points each is worth.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the learning you undertake as a professional, helping you to maintain and advance your knowledge, skills and practice. CPD is an investment in your career growth, empowering you to enhance your proficiency and direct your progression.
IoIC's CPD Programme
The IoIC's CPD Programme provides a framework to help structure and focus learning and development. IoIC members can also manage their CPD via a dedicated online portal where they can record learning and track their progress.
Key aspects to the IoIC's approach to CPD:
- We recommend that you aim complete at least 40 CPD Points worth of learning per year.
- Creating a development plan can help align learning with professional objectives.
- Use the IoIC Profession Map to help identify development needs, assessing your skills against the map using the IC Diagnostic.
- Use the IoIC's CPD Cycle to help structure your approach to your learning and development.
- Reflecting on learning helps drive deeper understanding, continuous improvement and increases self-awareness.
- Recording your CPD helps you keep track of your progress and demonstrates your commitment to your development.
- IoIC Members who record 40 CPD Points or more in a year via their online portal will be awarded a Certificate and Badge of CPD Completion to demonstrate achievement.
Why undertake CPD?
The IoIC believes that continuing professional development (CPD) is fundamental to the development of individuals, teams and the IC profession as a whole.
Some key benefits of CPD include:
- Identifying and meeting professional development needs
- Embedding reflective thinking into working life and professional practice
- Understanding and driving best practice
- Demonstrating professional standards and strengthening professional credibility
- Planning future career goals and achieving career progression
- Boosting confidence and influence
- Showcasing achievements, skills and knowledge
- Supporting the development of the internal communication profession.
The IoIC CPD Cycle
The CPD Cycle
The IoIC's CPD Cycle provides a structured approach to continuing professional development with five simple steps:
1. Identify
The first step is to assess your current skills and knowledge, and identify any gaps you need to address.
IoIC Members have access to the IC Diagnostic - an easy-to-use online self-assessment tool which enables you to benchmark your current skills against the IoIC Profession Map, and helps you to identify your gaps/areas for improvement.
2. Plan
Having completed identified your area(s) for development, the next step is to create a professional development plan.
Your plan is the opportunity to clearly identify and plot your goals, consider the actions you will need to take, and set timeframes and success criteria for meeting your objectives.
When developing your plan you should consider:
- Where do I want to go?
- How will I know when I get there?
Tips for creating your plan:
- Make sure your plan is achievable but ambitious, with realistic timeframes and actions.
- Make sure your plan is relevant, with goals which will help you to progress to where you want to be.
- Where appropriate, discuss your plan with your manager as you may need their support and access to additional resources.
- Set success criteria which clearly define the results you want to achieve. These will help you to track and measure whether you've achieved your goals.
- Build in a reflective element. There are many models and theories which exist to help you reflect and learn from your experiences, such as Kolb's Learning Cycle.
You can download a template to help you create your plan here.
3. Record
To help keep on track of your development and progress, record all your CPD activities using My CPD.
4. Reflect
After completing learning activities, it's crucial to reflect on what has been learned and how it can be applied. This stage helps to evaluate the effectiveness of the activities and identify areas for further development.
When reflecting consider questions such as:
- how useful has the activity been?
- what are the practical takeways?
- how might your learning impact/change your practice?
- has it made you think differently?
- if the activity hasn't been useful, why not?
5. Apply
This final stage involves putting your new knowledge and skills into practice. This can involve applying learning to daily tasks, sharing knowledge with colleagues, or using new skills to improve performance.
IoIC Profession Map
Use the Profession Map and the IC Diagnostic to identify strengths and areas for improvement.
Resources and learning
The IoIC offers a wide range of resources and learning to help you build skills, knowledge and confidence.