Using your current roles and responsibilities, understanding your strengths and weaknesses and thinking about your aspirations you will be able to ask yourself three questions:

• Where am I now
• Where do I want to be
• What knowledge and skills do I need to get there

This will help you to determine your CPD learning objectives and activities.

You can concentrate on the maintaining and improving existing competencies or, developing things that will help you acquire useful new abilities.

'Impact' is assessed according to four criteria:

Anticipated and Actual Impact

• High - Significant and measurable positive difference to knowledge, competence, performance, and/or career goals.
• Medium - Contributes, possibly together with other activities, to changes in knowledge performance competence and career
• Low - Slight discernable effect on knowledge, competence, performance or career.

Priority

• High - Urgent need to develop
• Medium - Requirement to be completed in the medium term
• Low - Longer term need

Competency Gains

Competence level before and after any development activities is to be recorded as:

• Level 1 - No competency/Not applicable. Outside current field of experience and knowledge
• Level 2 - Awareness. Familiarity but not applied in any real sense
• Level 3 - Practitioner. Displayed in the day to day course of job activities
• Level 4 - Expert. Above average expertise for a general role, or reflects a specialisation
• Level 5 - Innovator. Reserved for those with leading edge knowledge who can genuinely move forward professional practice

Reflection

CIPS uses a reflective framework to assess the impact of your CPD. There are five phases of reflection.:

• Reaction
• What was the purpose?
• Did the activity meet expectations?
• Learning
• What new insights, information and skills have been gained and how might they affect practice?
• On balance, how useful was it?
• Use of Learning
• How are the new insights and skills actually being used?
• What was the minimum standard outcome I expected and has this been achieved?
• Has anything changed about my role or circumstances that have affected my ability to meet the outcome?
• Impact of Learning
• What has changed as a result of the learning?
• Next Steps
• How will further learning be identified?

There are three types of reports:

• Individuals have the facility to produce an electronic report for use within the organisation
• Submission reports are completed CPD logs which are submitted to CIPS at cpd@cips.org and will contain all completed CPD activities.
• CIPS has the ability to produce organisational reports where appropriate agreement has been obtained with the organisation and the participants.

CIPS will acknowledge completed CPD's.

"Ryan Collins"

A 26-year-old Graduate, in his first job managing a highly competent Logistics Planning team of 10 in a 300 strong subsidiary of an oil company. He is responsible for monitoring stock levels and fuel transport throughout Europe. The team is due to relocate abroad in 18 months and he must manage the transition and maintain efficiencies.

Company development processes are robust, resources and training opportunities are available. Ryan is being sponsored to gain MCIPS and has completed a number of the CIPS qualifications as well as having been through a company graduate management trainee programme. He has registered for the CIPS CPD scheme as he thinks it will add value professionally beyond company development reviews.

Planning and Choosing:

Current situation: Very ambitious, and keen to develop his employability. Potentially an endless list of objectives, he has prioritised them into the top 4 at first.

Development Needs: Wants to finish CIPS and gain more strategic work-related P&S and Management experience for his CV.

P&S Excellence: To maximise the opportunities thrown up by the re-location.

CPD Objectives:

• To complete CIPS Graduate Diploma in 1 year.
• To gain advanced Project Management skills ensuring the transition is as smooth and efficient as possible - 6 months

Business Essentials:

To build credibility and exposure with global managers and improve his change and team management skills throughout the tricky transition period.

• To learn how to research, produce and present a board paper about transferring the operation - 3 months
• The learning and recommendations that come out of this can then be applied for the handover 3-15 months

Choosing:

• Distance learning would suit his needs due to the frequent travel to Eastern Europe in the next year.
• Study options: Advanced project management elective a priority.
• Go on a advanced project management course
• Put his learning into practice on a day-to-day basis and actively look at learning opportunities this throws up - planned or unplanned.
• Weekly coaching with his manager by phone, email or face to face over and above his quarterly reviews.
• Persuade his manager to delegate presentation of the paper to him.
• Read books on Knowledge management, plus some Internet research
• Network with the Knowledge Management and IT sections, and look on the company intranet.
• Involve his team in what he is doing as they have lots of experience from which he can learn.
• An in-company influencing course would be very useful before the presentation.

Reviewing and Judging:

Ryan reflects all objectives and activities monthly.

The elected courses and discussions with others provided invaluable hints and tips and some opportunities to practice skills, but on balance did not raise his competency levels.

More useful were the coaching sessions and the day-to-day opportunities to apply his new techniques and knowledge.

The paper was produced a month early, and the senior managers were impressed with his recommendations. This led to an adaptation of existing systems and documentation processes. His recommendations on staff retention, communications and knowledge sharing meant he gained extra funds to invest in the team that should reap long-term benefits.

He didn't have time to go on the influencing skills course before his presentation, on balance he felt he didn't need it and cancelled.

High impact learning activities for him were the research paper, the presentation, being coached and the new experiences managing transition issues. He felt his competencies shifted in influencing after 3 months, because he was doing so much more of it and in Advanced Project Management and Team Management after 6-9 months, when his efforts were coming to fruition.

"Alison Brookes"

Has worked in facilities management in the public sector since 1978, when she started as an administration assistant. Working part time she moved into purchasing in 1994, and has very recently been promoted to buyer with a budget of £10m per year. She has self-funded CIPS by distance learning, because she wants to 'know more'. She completed the CIPS qualification in 2005 surprising herself at the excellent results gained throughout. The department she works is under strict budget restraints and currently has no budget for an internal training programme. She reports to a section purchasing manager, who was appointed last year from an external company. Her new manager is very different and takes interest in her progress. She has registered for CPD as she is not sure where to go now after getting the qualification.

Planning and Choosing:

Current situation: Very loyal to the company, seems to be getting more and more from work as the years go by and very keen to do a good job in her new role.

Development Needs: Has worked so hard on CIPS for the last 5 years, feels that a break from study is overdue. Is worried her lack of confidence may hold her back in her new role. She has decided that she really only wants to concentrate on 2 areas at present.

P&S Excellence: - Objective

• To negotiate contracts with suppliers on her own. She has the knowledge but is inexperienced. Her boss attends all the meetings. - 9 months.

Business Essentials: - Objectives

• To improve her self- confidence, especially in interpersonal skills -ongoing over 2 years.

Choosing:

• Go on a CIPS negotiating skills course
• Ask her manager if she can do some of the preparation work for the meetings for him
• Sit in on meetings and watch.
• Read a self- help book on self-esteem

Reviewing and Judging:

Alison reviews objectives and activities 3 monthly.

The course wasn't approved because of lack of budget for the year. However, her boss was delighted she had asked for more responsibility and this went from strength to strength.

They planned a systematic approach to 'handing over' negotiation meetings: first getting her to prepare notes, then sitting in, and finally running the meetings while he attended. After 5 months she is chairing the first meeting with a new supplier on her own

In the course of this, her manger gave her other feedback about other strengths and weaknesses. She is very organised, but could benefit from some wider knowledge of other organisations and presentation skills could help her company profile.

From this she developed other items for the CPD plan, on which she is keen to work. They have agreed the funds for her to attend a presentation course this year, it is very practical and will be good to meet people from different sectors and industries.

Her mentoring by her manger has paid off enormously both for her confidence and her negotiating skills, she regards this as high impact, and has shifted competence in both these areas. On reflection, if she hadn't joined the CPD scheme, she would still be where she was and other development needs not identified.