CPD

Developing a CPD programme

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a key requirement of CII membership and provides vital support to members to keep their skills and knowledge up-to-date and, in turn, remain competent to perform their job.

As a local institute your key objective is to offer a local CPD programme to support your members to complete the required minimum of 35 hours of CPD each year (of which at least 21 hours must be structured CPD).

Find out more about the CIIs CPD Scheme

The number of hours you are required to provide locally depends on the size of your institute. The following numbers are recommended as good practice:

≤500 members - min of 5 events or 7 hours
501 - 1000 members - min of 7 events or 10 hours
1001 - 1500 members - min of 10 events or 14 hours
1501 - 2000 members - min of 12 events or 16 hours
2001 - 3000 members - min of 14 events or 20 hours
≥3001 members - min of 16 events or 24 hours

Your council will have experience of organising local CPD events however you should have in place a council member to oversee your local programme- this will be your education secretary / CPD officer.

The programme you put together must benefit your entire membership, with a balance of technical, market knowledge and business skills. These can take the form of seminars, workshops, training courses, conferences and educational visits.

It’s also good practice to incorporate study or revision sessions into your programme. This could possibly be done in collaboration with neighbouring institutes, to make it more cost effective and to ensure good turnout is achieved.

As a council you will schedule a programme for the forthcoming year - using your contacts and the CPD database on this extranet site to fill your programme.

Set your budget, mapping out how much can you should spend on CPD activity. You will need to identify a mix of free and paid-for events that meet your event target whilst taking into account any additional costs ie; venue and catering costs for face to face activities.

If you are hosting face to face events the venue you choose should achieve a balance of price, service, desirability and convenience. It must meet the required access, equality and diversity and health and safety standards.

Sponsorship can play a vital role in local institute activity, allowing flexibility towards costing to members and to the quality and versatility of the event.

Promote your events once they are booked, make sure they are added to your website and diarise dates to start promotion via e-flyer (no later than four weeks before the event). Your education secretary / CPD officer should liaise with your website or communications officer. Ensure all these communications are targeted.

Use the online booking facility on your website: It can save both time and hassle. Your Regional Membership Manager can talk you through this tool, please note your website or communications officer will have already received relevant training. The website guide and hot to videos can be accessed via the website content management system which sits on the TOOLS section of this site.

Regional CPD events may be an option to consider. A joint event can provide greater resources to attract high profile presenters whilst helping to share the workload and explore key topics in more detail. Talk to your regional colleagues to explore the possibilities.

It is always good practice to fully brief your speaker prior to the event and ensure that they sign up to the CII approved speaker guide which can be downloaded below.

An events checklist should be completed by two people from your institute to confirm that every consideration has been given to planning your event to prevent any unintentional indirect discrimination.

This checklist should be kept on file for future reference should the need arise. If you indicate that remedial action is required, you should endeavour to take any such action and note this on page two of the form below, even if the decision is that there is no remedial action that can be taken. Download the form below - please note forms for both face to face and online events have been created.

For large scale events we would advise that a risk assessment is also carried out, venues should have this in place but if not please find a form to download below.

Post-event feedback

Post-event feedback is now an essential part of your CPD offering as it enables you to consider how your members view your CPD offering to ensure that you can develop your programme and meet your members' needs.

You can identify trends both positive and negative which will help you to shape your programme and ensure members continue to engage with your institute for their CPD needs.

The most efficient way of conducting feedback is to use the facility on the online booking system, which you can set to be issued to event attendees automatically.

A summary of responses is then collated and provided by the system. The system also creates and issues attendance certificates via the online booking system.

For more information please speak with your communications / website officer.

Event accreditation

What is CPD Accreditation?

Accreditation is a recognised industry quality kite mark for CPD events, ensuring they are delivered to the highest possible standards and offer tangible benefits to help members meet their continuing professional development needs. Institutes who hold CII CPD Accreditation are able to use the CII CPD logos on their event marketing.

Why is CPD Accreditation important?

Accreditation is important as it:

Ensures clarity around, and the quality of, the content of your events
Enables members to make informed decisions about the training they undertake
Provides evidence of your institute’s ability to deliver high quality training to your members
Enhances your institute’s reputation
Ensures your events can be branded and marketed as CII CPD compliant

What is required for a CPD event to meet accreditation standards?

To meet accreditation standards, all CPD events must have:

A reputable speaker with relevant experience and/or credentials
Relevant subject matter
A minimum of three learning objectives
Learning objectives clearly displayed at the beginning and end of presentations
Learning objectives on all marketing materials
An event listing on your institute website
A post-event survey sent to all participants and a record kept of all responses (you can do this through the ‘Survey’ tool on each event page of your websites CMS)

What is reaccreditation, and why is it important?

To ensure accreditation standards are being met across the network, the Regional Membership Team (RMT) audits the Local Institute CPD programmes each year after 31 May. This is important as it:

Ensures members are receiving the highest quality training from their institute
Identifies areas of best practice which can be shared across the network
Highlights any areas requiring improvement

What does the annual CPD Accreditation audit involve?

Each year five local institutes will be selected each year for a detailed audit of six months’ worth of their CPD event programme. The chosen institutes will need to provide the following evidence for all CPD events within a six-month period in the previous presidential year:

Speaker PowerPoint slides (including at least 3 learning objectives at the start and end)
Collated feedback for CPD events
Marketing materials (including at least 3 learning objectives)

Once the evidence for each institute has been reviewed a report will be compiled, and a meeting held between each institute and the regional membership team to discuss the findings.

All other Local Institutes will need to submit the following evidence each year as part of the Annual Return:

Speaker slides from two events (including at least 3 learning objectives at the start and end)*
A declaration confirming the CPD programme meets the CII CPD standards

Your Regional Membership Manager will inform you of your institute's accreditation needs at the start of each year.

*If you do not use the survey tool on the CMS event page of your website, you will also need to upload the collated feedback forms for each of these events.

FAQ