Continuing Professional Development (CPD) helps employees to continually refresh, expand and enhance their skills and abilities gained through workplace experience, qualifications and formal training programmes.
CPD is important as it helps to ensure that further learning is progressed in a structured, practical and relevant way for example, enabling an employer and employee to agree on the specific skills and knowledge the employee needs to acquire over the coming year and put a plan in place to support them in getting there, enabling the business to feel confident that there is recognisable improvement within the proficiency and skill sets of team members.
In an ever-increasing globalised and competitive society, the importance of Continuing Professional Development cannot be overstated. As the world’s industries are forever evolving, this creates exciting new opportunities but also naturally comes with challenges.
CPD enables an individual to regularly apply focus and attention to important areas of their own development and provides the framework for a professional to take appropriate action to reduce any shortfalls in knowledge.
Equally, CPD is also a way of developing a competitive edge – a way for employees to differentiate themselves and help the business to differentiate itself from the competition.
The NAFD’s new CPD framework is designed to complement the skills and knowledge acquired from formal education programmes such as the former Diploma in Funeral Directing, now the L4 NAFD Higher Funeral Directing Programme, and the Funeral Arranging and Administration Certificate.
It is flexible enough to provide both the alumni of NAFD education programmes with ongoing learning opportunities, as well as experienced funeral professionals with updates on professional practice and standards, enhancing their skills. Delivered through the brand new NAFD Learning Hub, our CPD content focuses on the evolving role of the funeral director in modern day society, including offering education opportunities in different faith funerals, cultures and social customs as well as in technical skills.
It also offers additional training and development opportunities in ‘soft skill’ non-funeral related subjects such as communication, emotional intelligence, problem solving, decision making, conflict management and leadership and management.
As the NAFD CPD framework evolves, individuals will be able to record CPD activity from established NAFD events such as Education sessions at Conference and Autumn General Meeting and the NAFD Summer School, as well as regional events organised through Local Associations and Area Federations. This is in addition to the knowledge gained through formal education programmes and independent learning.
Karen Van-Richardson, Director of Education and Development said: “Our aim is to make education and training more accessible by offering bite sized chunks of learning in a format that enables the learner to study at their own pace, in their own time – and to develop the skills and mindset for constant self-improvement. As Albert Einstein once said, it is not about ‘the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.’
“It will also comply with potential future regulatory requirements in funeral education, such as those mentioned by the Competition and Markets Authority in their report following the funerals market investigation. In short, we know that, in the future there is likely to be some level of compulsory continuous learning required for funeral professionals: so we’re getting ahead of the game by building a culture of continuous learning and improvement within the NAFD and its member firms – by ensuring we provide up-to-date educational content on the most relevant topics in the sector to our members.”
Sign your business up to the NAFD Learning Hub pilot!
NAFD members can try out the Learning Hub across the second half of 2022. There are only a few places still available – so secure a place for you and your staff today! Visit the website to find out more, it’s still under development but you can see what we’re working towards and check out the full course catalogue. Once you’re ready, express an interest in the pilot by emailing [email protected].
Check out the website, which is still under development but it provide a glimpse into what the Learning Hub can offer: www.nafdlearninghub.co.uk