Institution news
“My CPD has helped a lot in my career,” he says. “Giving that structure to my professional development has helped me to forecast where my career is going and highlight how I can keep that progression.”
But Satini says helping others in their careers is another benefit of effective CPD, and that has even provided impetus for improving his own professional development, as well as counting towards his own CPD with the Institution.
“Last year I was running a small team and part of my role was to mentor and make sure the team hit their targets, and that was really a trigger for me to make sure I was doing CPD right,” he says. “I found it difficult to get the team members to manage their CPD, so it was important for me to demonstrate the benefits of my own CPD work.
“I was a bit surprised, because it can be hard to motivate people and engage them on the work floor, and CPD could be seen as just another task to add to their list of things to do, but by explaining to them the benefits of CPD and how it has helped me in my career I was able to get them motivated.
“I even asked some people from the Institution to come in and speak to them about professional development and they jumped at the opportunity to learn more,” he adds.
Record everything
Satini says one of the most important aspects of effective CPD is to document as much as you can about your progress at work, whether that is formal training courses or more informal day-to-day work such as helping to mentor a colleague, and keep it all in one place so it is easy to refer back to when you need it.
“It is important to record everything when doing your CPD. I put all my of my developmental documents, certificates and everything else from work in one place to create a one-stop-shop of everything I have learned.
“It is now a lot more useful than just a record of all my certificates and qualifications, because I can link everything together and keep a track of my progress at work. Keeping it all linked together makes it so easy to visualise everything and that makes it so much clearer to see where I want to go next in my career.”
This ultimately also helps with self-reflection, something that he says is important in giving him the motivation needed to take his career to the next level.
“Self-reflection and going back over my achievements is a great activity I go through, and it is something I like to do in the evenings at home when I have a bit of spare time. Being able to go back over what I have achieved gives me that little bit more motivation to crack on and strive for that next milestone in my career.
“It really helps me to see what I need to do next to continue my own progress, be it personal or practical, and it also allows me to help others by seeing who else is coming up to a particular course or training session so I can tell what to do or what not to do to get the most out of the experience.”
Find out more
About our dedicated development support for EngTechs including CPD Tools and our careers resource Workfriend.