The background to this is as follows: In October 2013, The Engineering Council announced an aspiration that by January 2017 all Professional Engineering Institutions will have introduced a Policy of random reviewing of Professionally Active Registrants’ CPD Returns. The IET’s Board of Trustees have now agreed that we should meet this aspiration, extending it as a benefit to all IET Members.
As an IET Member you have already committed to keeping your knowledge and skills up-to-date through planned Professional development as part of our Rules of Conduct. The only change, therefore, is that from January 2017, you may be chosen to have your previous year’s records reviewed.
To help you prepare for this, we introduced last year a voluntary scheme whereby we would mirror the 2017 process and select certain members’ CPD records for review. We believe this first review was very successful. People were invited to submit their CPD returns and in total 125 did so.
Last Year’s Findings
The CPD returns were reviewed by members of our team of Volunteer CPD Advisors. Returns were allocated, as far as was possible, to Advisors from a similar area of work so they would find easier to comment intelligently on content. Reviews were based on the following criteria:
- The link between the CPD Planning Report (if submitted) and CPD Activities undertaken
- The number of hours CPD undertaken (guidance suggested 30 hours for Professionally Active Members and 10 hours for others
- The mixture of Soft and Technical skills included in the Activities
- The mixture of TWAVES included in the activities (Training, Work experience, Academic study, Volunteering, Events and Seminars, Self-study)
- The mixture of activities undertaken with regards to UK-SPEC competences
- The quality of Reflective statements and whether they suggested that the CPD activities had been relevant to the member’s role.
The results were positive across almost all of the criteria. There was some shortfall in the number of people producing Planning Reports, but we expected this, as in the circumstances, they would have to have been completed retrospectively. In future, however, we would expect CPD planning to become an integral part of the process. Anecdotal evidence suggested that Reflection could be an area of weakness, but as it turned out, only 25% of returns showed Reflective Statements which were absent or not up the required level.
On the very positive side:
- 92% of members met or exceeded the required number of CPD hours
- Only 5% of members had not undertaken the required mix of soft and technical skills
- A mere 3% of members had not completed a mix of TWAVES activities
- We had no complaints from Members about Advisors’ comments on their returns, although there were a handful of comments and clarifications, as may be expected
Next Steps
We are very pleased with the results and are now gearing-up for the 2015 Review of 2014 CPD returns. At the time of writing, 1372 of you have opted-in to the CPD Monitoring process and more are coming on board every week. If you are thinking of signing-up, the process works like this:
- E-mail your name and membership number to CPD@theiet.org stating that you wish to join the CPD Monitoring scheme
- If you are chosen to have your CPD Return reviewed, we will let you know when we would like to receive it. This will usually be toward the end of Quarter One each year, although this year we are waiting for the completion of major improvements to our Career Manager CPD recording system.
- We understand that you may already have your own method of recording your CPD, or that you work for a company or organization with an in-house appraisal system. We don’t wish to create extra work for you, but there are several reasons why the IET recommends that you make use of Career Manager:
- If all IET members use Career Manager, we have a level playing-field on which to consider performance. This will allow us to provide consistent feedback to all members on the amount and type of CPD undertaken across the Institution. It also helps us to operate the scheme efficiently.
- Over the course of a long career, you may work for a number of different organisations. Using Career Manager allows you to take your records with you rather than leave them behind, possibly on a variety of disparate electronic and paper systems
- Career Manager is designed with you in mind and includes UK-SPEC and (for those that need it) Professional Registration.
- If you are using a different system of recording, your CPD record, should we request it, would need to include the following:
- Total number of CPD hours undertaken in the previous year
- Nature of the CPD, e.g. Training, Work Experience, Academic, Volunteering, Events, Self-Study broken down into respective sub-totals by category
- Brief Reflection on the activities
Concerns?
We understand that the prospect of CPD monitoring may be daunting for some members. If you work for a small or medium-sized company, there may not be the time or the financial resources to allow you to attend the events or training courses. However, you can still accrue CPD hours through self-study, including reading E&T magazine and viewing items on IET.TV. Learning new techniques in your role also counts as CPD, as does coaching and mentoring other staff and trainees.
Those who are retired and no longer professionally active need only undertake 10 hours of CPD per year; a figure easily achievable by means such as those detailed above. If that is not possible due to ill health or any other reason, the member just needs to include the reasons in their annual CPD declaration in Career Manager, or, if chosen for Review, in an email response to us at cpd@theiet.org
We have no wish to drive away valued Members whose personal situation does not allow them to complete the recommended CPD hours; should maintaining your CPD activities and records be beyond your means in your current circumstances, the IET will be looking to work with you rather than sanction you.