Professional Development
What is Professional Development (PD)?
Professional development is the process of developing and then maintaining competence; a set of recognised skills needed to reliably perform the occupation of your choice. It’s what you do when you learn and covers every aspect of learning throughout your career. It’s what keeps you fresh and at the leading edge of your profession.
Structuring your professional development will help you achieve your professional goals faster and more effectively whatever career stage you have reached.
Why does the ACS require PD from its members?
The ACS strongly encourages all members to undertake planned and structured PD in order to remain up to date with industry trends, research technological developments throughout their working lives. This is incorporated into our Rules of Professional Conduct and Professional Practice and forms a condition of maintaining Certified Professional (CP) status.
Our Policy
In recognition of the widely differing roles, sectors and circumstances of our members, it is our policy not to be prescriptive in what we ask members to do. We believe that our members and, where appropriate, their employers are best placed to decide what PD is appropriate to maintain the knowledge and skills required for their current role, and for development into future roles. PD is therefore should be seen as obligatory, and should become a self-managed lifelong and continual process.
We recommend adopting a structured approach and planning your development to ensure you demonstrate your continuing commitment to your profession, and to develop the good practice of regularly reviewing your needs and selecting relevant learning activities to help you fulfil them. As part of this, an appropriate recording system will help you to track your activities and review progress.
The ACS expects its members to be able to demonstrate, if requested, their commitment to PD. Written evidence will be required at recertification of Certified Professionals. At other times members may be surveyed to establish whether the ACS policies and support services for professional development are useful and effective.
What does the ACS consider PD?
Any activity that contributes to your learning, to developing skills or to forming a professional attitude can be considered PD. You may keep your knowledge up-to-date by reading and researching, keep current with the latest ideas by networking, develop new skills through secondments, going on training courses or even taking on a new activity outside of work, such as volunteering.
Many people use competence frameworks to help them benchmark the skills required for their role and consequently plan activities to fill any skills gaps that they identify. Your job description is another tool for pinpointing your needs, and you may find that mentoring or coaching is useful to help challenge your understanding and set goals.
Will I need to submit a record of my PD?
We do not regularly request evidence of PD from our members. However, you should be able to demonstrate your commitment to professional development and continuing competence, and written evidence will be required if you apply for CP recertification, or when upgrading to Fellow.
We do undertake a regular sample survey of members to track attitudes and behaviours relating to PD. You may be approached to participate in this.
How much PD do I need to do?
To retain CP status, the ACS requires all certificants to recertify every year by accumulating thirty (30) professional development (PD) hours through continuing education, instruction, on-the-job experience, research and publishing, or leadership activities.
For some this will simply mean keeping abreast of current technology in their sector, whilst for the career ambitious there will be much more to do. Our requirement is that you maintain the knowledge and skills to work ‘professionally’ throughout your life. Being professional means ensuring you always have the necessary knowledge to make informed and sound judgements, that you do not undertake tasks for which you are not competent or qualified, and that you always conduct your activities in line with current legal and environmental requirements and recognised good practice.
The ACS does not expect you to undertake any particular activity, but would advise you to use all the opportunities and support available to you to find the most appropriate activities for your personal requirements.
