Clocking up your CPD
Getting 150 hours of CPD in the bag can seem a rather daunting task, so how did Fiona Gray manage it last year?
As someone with a lifelong love of learning, achieving my gold CPD badge for 150 hours of professional development after just six months was a proud moment. Though if I'm being honest, I have been known to save all my logging until the last day of the CPD year in the past (please don't do this if you can avoid it), so I hadn't realised I'd be able to reach that shiny milestone quite so quickly. With three months remaining in the CPD year I'd managed to log over 250 hours - and counting! And I can't tell you how relieved I was that I didn't have to spend 30 April frantically flicking back through my planner.
An equitable distribution
Looking at the skills areas, the activities I logged were nicely distributed. I've always been wary of coasting by in my comfort zone when it comes to CPD, so I try to maintain a balance between the activities I'm naturally drawn to because I enjoy them so much and the areas that I know deep down need a little (or maybe even a lot) more attention.
My weekly German classes on Skype keep my language skills ticking over nicely and enable me to communicate confidently with clients in my source language. The opportunity to build on my active vocabulary, hone my grammar skills and even practise my client-facing communications through role plays is invaluable to me and my work.
Meanwhile, my marketing adventures in Sarah Silva's Expedition Group more than tick the box for business skills. Each themed month is packed with genius content in written and video form and mini missions that help me grow my business consistently. Plus all the accountability, motivation and feedback I could ever wish for.
While I tend to focus heavily on this particular area through courses, webinars, audiobooks and podcasts, the good news is that most of this CPD doubles up as subject knowledge. As a marketing translator, I can apply what I learn about how to craft a killer tagline or write effectively for social media to my own business and my clients' businesses.
Buddies, milestones and network activities
I also dedicated a lot of time to setting up and running my own Business Buddy Mentoring scheme for creative German to English translation. Working with my five mentees closely on translation and proofreading tasks over the course of nine months finding suitable source texts, revising the translations submitted, providing written feedback, discussing strategies and solutions on video calls has helped me to refine many of my own skills and encouraged me to scrutinise many of my own processes.
Professional contribution is the other frontrunner in my CPD log, with a good chunk of my schedule devoted to my work for the ITI Board, Membership Committee and East Anglia Network. Not everyone realises that these voluntary roles can be logged as CPD, but meetings, preparation and planning all count. I'll never stop being amazed at how much I learn and grow as a person while giving back to the profession I'm so passionate about.
It always surprises me how quickly the hours add up! Scheduling regular and ongoing CPD activities, and respecting them as non-negotiable commitments is really working for me alongside ad hoc additions (think webinars, conferences and networking events). Even when I'm snowed under with translation projects, I know that I'll be working on most of the skills areas at some point that week or at least that month.
The ITI CPD log has always been a easy way for members to keep track of their CPD. But the introduction of the milestone badges have really encouraged me to log my CPD more regularly, prompting me to keep better track of my activities, review my progress more often and plan ahead more effectively. At this stage, I'm confident that I'll be able to look back at my CPD log for the year and know that I worked hard on my professional development and enjoyed every minute.
In addition to the regular 'CPD Achieved' logo (for 30 hours' CPD), CPD milestone badges are available for 50, 75, 100 and 150 hours of CPD achieved. They appear automatically on your CPD summary page for members to download.
This article first appeared in the March-April 2023 edition of ITI Bulletin.
