ICAS compelling ways to ensure professional development fits employersí goals

Compulsion in anything always carries the risk of overruling individual circumstances and need.

Yet, in personnel development, the overwhelming trend is towards a much more sophisticated, multi-facetted approach by employers, shifting the emphasis from training to lifelong learning and the responsibility and choice on to individual employees for how best to do it.

So when The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) started constructing proposals to make Continuing Professional Development (CPD) compulsory for all its CA members, flexibility and the capacity to integrate with employersí existing training schemes and business goals were built into the foundations.

The initiative was part of the commitment in the Instituteís Fast Forward 2010 strategy, published in 2003, to demonstrate the current competence and value of its CAs, whether working in public practice or - as is the case for almost 60 per cent of them ñ in commerce, industry and the public sector. It therefore anticipated confirmation last May from the International Federation of Accountants that all its constituent bodies including ICAS must introduce mandatory CPD for their members by January 2006.

CAs working in regulated areas were already required to participate in a compulsory monitored scheme based on a set number of hours of CPD a year, while for the rest CPD was an obligatory ethical requirement. ICAS could have simply extended that existing compulsory scheme to everyone else. Instead it seized the opportunity to look at the whole concept of CPD afresh.

IFACís move was nevertheless useful because it prompted a surge in research and discussion on best practice in this area and how existing schemes could evolve, which ICAS could tap into while already doing a significant amount of work of its own.

Talks with human resources directors and managers revealed that many companies and other organisations outside public practice already look to their professionally qualified employeesí CPD as a way to structure learning that is more likely to have a direct impact on achieving business objectives. Some, for instance, integrate it into their succession planning. Research also confirmed not only that learning works best when the individual takes responsibility for it but also that work-related, on-the-job training has become recognised as the most effective form of learning.

This supported ICASís own thinking, especially in relation to development in non-technical expertise as members almost invariably move on to managing people and organisations as a whole and dealing with clients and customers. Any CPD scheme would have to have relevance and focus for all members, who each should be the best judges of what improvements in expertise they need to remain effective and keep earning them respect in their chosen careers. It also needed not just to be based on compliance but to be as closely linked as possible to individual employersí goals.

Hence the emphasis of ICASís proposed Fast Forward CPD scheme will be on encouraging and supporting members to decide for themselves what skills development they need, and how to get it ñ which includes making the most of whatever opportunities are available already through their employers.

It will therefore replace the set, hours-based requirements with a highly flexible three-step process. First step would comprise self-analysis of the skills and knowledge that need to be developed or updated to perform the current role, and also for future career opportunities. These would then be documented in a plan or record by the individual who would then identify training or other activities that would meet those needs. Finally, the individual records when these activities have been completed and his or her reflections on the learning outcomes or other impact they have had.

This output-based approach shifts the emphasis from how many hours are put in, to measuring the development and maintenance of skills and knowledge the individual has achieved as a result of CPD activities, which employers would also naturally prefer.

Any mandatory scheme and measurement process inevitably entails some form of monitoring. Each ICAS member would be required to complete an annual certificate confirming to ICAS that his or her CPD requirements for the year have been met. In addition to this self-certification, ICAS would ask a number of members each year to submit their CPD plans or records for review.

These plans or records could be in the guidance format provided by ICAS or another professional body to which they belong, their own, or that used by their employers. That is just one small aspect of how Fast Forward CPD is aimed to be readily integrated into existing training and development schemes offered by many employers, and also quality assurance programmes such as Investors in People.

Indeed, employers will be offered the option of obtaining accreditation for their own development programmes with ICAS so that members participating in them will automatically be considered to have met the ICAS schemeís requirements. It is also worth pointing out that accredited employers could as a result be that much more attractive particularly to younger CAs looking to the next phase in their career development.

The monitoring of the personal planning and self-certification process is the only compliance-type element of the scheme. ICASís role will be much more weighted to providing support and guidance to members in planning and making their choices. Not least, it will publish a comprehensive list of activities that they ñ and perhaps also their employers - may consider for their CPD plan, while its CA Business Courses arm will continue to provide its extensive range of courses and conferences with increased access to other ways of learning such as on-line training also under development.

For those in regulated areas of business in professional practice or other fields such as those covered by the Financial Services Act, ICAS will develop core competency frameworks and other support to guide them in exercising the greater flexibility of choice they too will have in CPD activities. That way, for example, someone who has already had practical experience of handling a situation or case under new legislation can assess whether this on-the-job learning fully maintains his or her core competency in this respect or additional learning is still required.

Recognising work-based learning and experience as valid ways to develop and maintain expertise is part of ICASís whole intention to create a CPD scheme that fully reflects the realities of modern business life and links into employersí own business goalsñ while at the same time continuing to underpin the confidence of employers and the public as a whole in CAsí professional expertise and standing, by confirming that their skills always remain relevant and up-to-date.