The Importance of CPD: In Conversation with Amanda Rosewarne

Amanda Rosewarne is the Co-Founder and CEO of the CPD Standards Office. With over two decades dedicated to Continuing Professional Development (CPD), lifelong learning, training, and professional development – she was the perfect person to speak to about Chatterbox recently achieving CPD Accreditation.

In an informal Q&A between Amanda and our CRO Humair Naqvi, we explored the background behind the CPD accreditation, and its importance for both businesses and learners.

Our top takeaways from the conversation:

• The importance of lifelong learning and professional skill development is higher than ever – especially in the context of the evolving work landscape, accelerated by Covid-19.
  
  

• The value of external accreditation for professional training programs: CPD accreditation provides a third-party benchmark and verification, ensuring that both stakeholders and learners benefit from high-quality learning experiences.
  
  

• Hu emphasises the significance of quality content and effective delivery methods in professional training. The CPD Standards Office's expertise in these areas make it an ideal choice for accreditation.
  
  

• The global relevance of CPD accreditation: While the concept originated in the UK, professional bodies and regulators worldwide have adopted similar frameworks to promote continuous professional development.

The Discussion:

Q: Amanda, can you tell us what led you to founding the CPD Standards Office, and to go on this journey around accreditation?

Well, it's a long story, but I'll try and keep it short! So my background is in industrial and occupational psychology, and I've always been really passionate about lifelong learning and professional skill development – for everybody, regardless of their background and educational level.

Some time back, we undertook a research project with a whole range of professional institutes, regulators, employees, and individuals who are expected to do CPD. A key finding was that the quality of CPD courses that were available at the time (this is about a decade back now) weren't really suitable for CPD purposes. They weren't relevant, or they weren't produced in the right way. So what became really clear was that we needed to set up a new set of standards for CPD courses, or anybody trying to deliver any form of learning activity that was going to be used for professional development purposes. So since then, we've had an interesting, challenging, and successful journey with different CPD accreditations, dependent on face-to-face or online or event or speaker or coach, etc. That's the journey we've been on and where we've got to today.

Q: How does CPD fit into the broader landscape of professional training and development, especially in light of recent global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic?

Hu: This is a phrase which I'm sure Amanda's heard before, which is 'people don't just go to work to earn, they go to work to learn.' And I think under the bigger context of professional training and learning and development, the relevance in that concept is at an all time high. It was obviously accelerated during the unique experience that the whole planet went through with COVID where everybody had to not only just adjust the way they worked, but also adjust the way they learn.

You can see the whole acceleration on digital and the demands and desires for people to learn and further develop skills, plus the importance given now to skills and critical expertise, rather than just tactical competency. If we look at the marketplace, the importance of professional skill development and lifelong learning is even more prevalent now than it was pre-Covid as a result.

Q: Hu, why did Chatterbox want to be recognised by the CPD Standards Office?

We are delivering a professional language learning training programme. But how do you really determine its quality externally? To me, the only way to really do that is to go to these organisations and bodies who have true expertise. Who cannot only provide you with rigour and clarity to the quality of what you're delivering, both from a content perspective, but as importantly, the methods of delivery. Because in a professional setting, the form of delivery has to be extremely good and strong in order to ensure that the time on task for a person who's extremely busy is efficient and effective. So the best method, we believe, to get some form of external accreditation is through a framework of continued professional development. Hence why we then approached the CPD Standards Office to provide us with this review of our programmes.

And of course, we are a blended language learning programme which is unique globally – Chatterbox is extremely unique in what we do. We have these magical human beings who are provided with the tools to be able to teach their native language, who come from professional backgrounds but who have displaced situations in their life.

Q: Amanda, what does CPD accreditation really mean? Both from the stakeholder perspective and the learner perspective?

I think it relates really nicely to the point that you just made in terms of the fact that we go to work to learn, and we learn from work now as opposed to for work.

So the stakeholders, the providers of the learning provision (Chatterbox in this particular instance), receive a third-party verification that what they are doing makes sense. It has met a third-party benchmark in order to be delivered as formal professional development. We find that providers that go through our framework and assessment period really learn what they need to do in order to deliver an exceptional learner experience. They understand the standards to which they have to hold themselves, and what they can do to be a professional, consistent, and more importantly, successful and reliable training organisation.

So that's the stakeholder perspective, From the learners' side of things, first of all, they've got the reassurance. They can see that you've got a CPD accreditation, that you have been considered by a third party to have met a certain level. But for them personally, once they've undertaken the learning and and as you said, they've worked with these magical human beings that are part of Chatterbox’s training community, then they receive a formal professional development certificate, which they can use for further work, whether that be a promotion, whether that be applying for a role, whether that be just topping up their lifelong learning. But they receive something that has shown that they have completed a course that has met a set of standards and therefore they have undertaken CPD.

Q: Hu, can you tell us about the journey to obtain CPD accreditation for Chatterbox and what it means now you’ve achieved it?

The reasons behind getting the accreditation for us were two fold:

The first is that it builds confidence in the organisation and its people to know that the level of quality of what we’re delivering is at a standard that has hit a particular benchmark. And that benchmark has been set by an external organisation with a professional background in this space, to validate our training. It gives us a good stepping stone to improve even more, but knowing that our trajectory of approach to what we deliver is strong and compelling.

I think the second and more relevant point for our audience, is that while we are a social enterprise and profit-for-good organisation – that isn't the driver behind our ambition. The ambition is to deliver high-quality language and cultural training programs, and be seen as a true business value for organisations. Their choice of provider is fundamentally based around the impact and ROI, with the additional unique value of the fact that we will align with their ambitions from a CSR perspective, from a wanting to give back to society perspective, and the social value that most organisations now increasingly want to pursue. What I find is a lot of organisations can either do one or the other. But the CPD accreditation shows we can do both.

Q: Amanda, with CPD Standards Office being a UK entity – how does that translate into a global arena for our in the rest of the world?

Well I think it stems from the fact that the UK is the home of professional bodies and institutes. And many of our institutes that we have here today were founded back as part of the Industrial Revolution. What's happened since then is the concept of having a regulator or an institute that looks after a particular profession has basically spread worldwide.

In HR, the main professional body is the CIPD, and they not only have their own CPD policy, so HR professionals must undertake a certain amount of CPD per annum, but that's reflected worldwide. None of us now come to work and think ‘I've got the qualifications I need, I can just work and I don't need to learn anymore’.

CPD gives you the motivation, the confidence, and the ability to be able to keep progressing all of those little steps, which is something we globally accept now.

Watch the full conversation here:

Amanda and Hu’s conversation highlights the evolving importance of lifelong learning, the role of external accreditation in ensuring quality, and the broader global impact of CPD standards in professional development.

The benefit of working with CPD accredited providers is that stakeholders receive third-party verification of their programs, while learners gain reassurance, a professional development certificate, and improved career prospects.

As Hu explained, Chatterbox's pursuit of CPD accreditation reflects our commitment to delivering first and foremost high-quality training, with the additional benefit of being a social enterprise.

Learn how Chatterbox’s CPD accredited training can support your employees here.