Alison Cutland
Senior Business Development Manager
Cranfield Online
Continuing professional development – or CPD as it is perhaps more widely known – is when people in work commit to regularly updating and refreshing their knowledge and skills in order to enhance their career prospects and be aware of new industry developments.
CPD may be entirely employee-led, supported and facilitated by the employer giving access to training courses or development funds, or actively encouraged in the workplace by way of providing a knowledge academy or other structured, targeted development paths.
Continuing professional development: the benefits
In today’s marketplaces, where the skills required are changing rapidly due to new technological innovations and shifting ways of working, investing in continuing professional development is becoming pivotal for individual employees and their employers alike.
The World Economic Forum has estimated that more than a billion people globally will need to learn new skills to remain in work beyond 2030. Aside from those whose jobs become automated, or disappear with the increasing capability and popularity of AI, as industries and markets develop and change, the skills businesses need to survive and remain profitable will differ from those they may have been able to rely on in the past.
In this context, updating and augmenting their skills on a regular basis is a way of ensuring employees remain effective within their role. Staying apprised of the latest innovations within their industry may also prepare them to re-enter the job market if desired or required in future.
Employers are also seeing the benefits of employing people that are committed to lifelong learning and development. Upskilling and reskilling existing employees is increasingly being seen as a cost-effective and convenient way to plug the growing skills gap and build a future-fit workforce.
The problem with continuing professional development
Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, engaging in learning and development alongside a busy job and home life can be difficult.
Demanding roles, inflexible employers, caring responsibilities and other physical, mental and emotional barriers can prevent people from accessing the learning and development they might want or need. Not everyone has the time, energy, availability or capability to commit to following a learning pathway or studying for a qualification that may take months or even years, and for which they may have to contribute financially.
Some of the biggest barriers to learning and development that are frequently cited by people as reasons not to engage in CPD are:
- A lack of time – too busy with work and other commitments;
- Inability to commit to long-term programmes which may require staying with the same employer for two or three years;
- Cannot afford it, and employer won’t pay;
- Unable to attend in-person courses due to physical difficulties in travelling, the lack of transport options, or the impact of caring commitments;
- Fear of ‘not being academic enough’.
Facilitating continuing professional development with stackable micro-credentials
At Cranfield University, we believe that, if people want to learn, they should be able to learn in a way that suits them. As a specialist post-graduate learning provider, we are always looking for new ways to bring high quality education and training in relevant, future-focused subjects to people that want and need it, helping them to develop their capabilities and progress their careers.
Our online stackable courses are bite-sized modules of self-paced learning that can be accessed by learners and flexed as needed to provide new or additional knowledge, to develop fresh capabilities, or to quickly upskill in different areas.
The accessible nature of the learning and different short-form content types provided enable learners to dip in and out as and when they have time, even if they only have five or ten minutes while they are sat on a train or in between meetings. Meanwhile, the online, on-demand model enables learning to be completed from home or another location of choosing, with a commitment to a handful of ‘live online’ sessions only required at the highest levels of subject matter expertise.
The low-commitment, pay-as-you-go model makes it easier for learners to fund their own development, with the option to ‘stack’ courses together over three to five years to achieve a bespoke MSc in Business and Management. Entry requirements are minimal, with learners only needing to be aged 18 or over, and classroom-level English a prerequisite only for postgraduate award level study.
If continuing professional development is your goal, you can find out more about our online stackable programmes by exploring our course portfolio.
