CPD (Continuing Professional Development)
Your portfolio is a useful tool for looking back at your past work history, your skills, knowledge and your achievements. However, the portfolio is also a tool for planning for the future. The CPD plan provides a framework for clearly defining where you want to go and what you need to do to get there. Your CPD may be linked to your current work position, a secondment position or a promotional position you're aiming for. It may be related to a personal development goal, or you may have multiple CPDs for a combination of these purposes.
The first step is to ensure that you have a clear objective and then begin to think about what you might do to achieve it. This might seem straightforward enough, but many action plans fail because the objective is insufficiently clear at the outset.
A typical CPD planning process comprises:
- setting a goal
- identifying what you have done to date towards achieving this goal and steps you still need to take
- setting review dates for the different steps and achievement of the final outcome
- indicating how you will evaluate successful completion.
To learn more about developing your CPD, visit the 'Portfolio Development' learning opportunity in the Personal Skills area of the Learning Zone.