The IoIC passionately believes that the future of the internal communication profession is driven by the individuals who commit to maintaining and improving their skills and knowledge through continuous professional development (CPD).
The IoIC's CPD Programme provides members with a framework to help structure and focus their development. The Programme also provides members with an easy-to-use online system where they can log, reflect and track their learning.
The IoIC CPD Cycle
The IoIC's CPD Cycle provides a structured approach to continuing professional development with five simple steps: Identify your development gaps/needs; Plan the learning you need to undertake; Record your learning; Reflect on your Learning; Apply and test your Learning.
This should be an ongoing process, ensuring you are continuously developing and evolving as a professional.
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.
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.
What counts as CPD?
CPD is any learning activity you undertake to support your professional development. This could be formal - such as training, conferences and qualifications - or informal, such as reading articles, listening to podcasts or workplace shadowing.
Activities must be outside of day-to-day work, for example attending meetings or delivering presentations at work would not count as CPD, neither would purely networking or social events.
We believe that reflective practice is fundamental to learning and development, therefore when logging your CPD you must include a reflective statement, considering what you have learnt and how this learning can be applied in practice.
Our CPD Activity Chart provides guidance on CPD activities and how many points each activity is worth.
IoIC CPD Opportunities
The IoIC offers a wide range of learning and development opportunities to support internal communicators build their skills, knowledge and confidence, and to help drive standards across the profession.
We know it isn't always easy to find the time, or the budget, for CPD, so as well as training, events and qualifications we also offer a variety of activities to fit around busy schedules and limited budgets including guidance, thought leadership and on demand content. We also provide opportunities for knowledge sharing such as mentoring, communities and networks.