What is CPD?

Continued Professional Development

The focus of CPD is firmly on results and the benefits that professional development can bring you in the real world. Perhaps the most important message is that one size doesn’t fit all. Wherever you are in your career now and whatever you want to achieve, your CPD should be exactly that: yours.

Why is it important?

According to the Chartered institute of professional development “Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a combination of approaches, ideas and techniques that will help you manage your own learning and growth.” Encouraging and offering CPD can also improve the opportunities to expand the business and increase revenue.

For the individual
For the business

For the individual

Building new skills
Addressing skills gaps
Validating existing skills to expected standards
Improving confidence
Build your professional network
Allows career development and progression

For the business

Giving your employees the opportunity to grow and develop can bring massive business benefits. These include:

Improved productivity of high-quality work
A lower rate of staff turnover and higher levels of morale (as employees feel more loyal to employers who are invested in their development)

Challenges

I don’t know where to start planning my own CPD. What can NFRC do to help?

Try using these stages of the CPD cycle to discover, plan and achieve the CPD you want to achieve.

Identify: Understand where you've come from, where you are and where you want to be.
Plan: Plan how you can get to where you want to be, with clear outcomes and milestone to track progress.
Act: Act upon your plan, and be open to learning experiences.
Reflect: Make the most of your day-to-day learning by routinely reflecting upon experience. Take 10 minutes on your way home from work to think about what you’ve learnt that day.
Apply: Ask to use what you have learnt in the workplace to put your learning into practise.
Record: Recording your CPD will help you to keep track of your progress and see how far you’ve come. You can choose to do this through using the My skills section of the CSCS app. My Skills – part of the new My CSCS app! | Official CSCS Website

Share: Share your learning with others to generate greater insight and benefit from the support of your peers.

Impact: Measure the overall impact your learning has had on the work you do. Ask others for their feedback too.

What CPD can I do?

CPD is yours to decide, however, within roofing, there are a number or recognised opportunities.

Opportunities to consider

Reason for CPD	What is it?	What you can do
Addressing skills gaps	Skills gaps are when some people don’t have the right skills for the jobs available. For example, some figures show that in the UK, around 40% of UK workers don’t have the right qualifications for their current jobs. This means that some people are underqualified, and some are overqualified.	Once you have identified your skills gap(s), speak with your employer about internal and external opportunities for CPD that can address these gaps and make you more productive and a higher-value employee.
Validating existing skills to expected standards (accreditation)	Accreditation gives you clear proof of your credentials, confidence in your own skills and knowledge, the ability to easily manage your training and helps you to stand out from your competitors.	RoofCERT National Roofing Accreditation provides individual roofers with visible proof of their essential roofing skills.
Career development and progression	Depending on the type of career development you want, researching job qualification requirements will give you a sense of what you need to achieve. Then you can source the CPD for what the progression job requires.	Looking on careers based websites on what job requirements are can be helpful. GoConstruct is a good starting point. Also looking at advertised jobs will give you a good indication on what employers are looking for.

What is CPD?

Continued Professional Development

Reason for CPD

What is it?

What you can do