Valuing continuous learning
March marks the end of another year of continuous professional development with the CIPR which is required of all Accredited Practitioners. But the real value is in the learning itself.
I've been a member of the CIPR for over a decade, which sets a discipline for continuous learning which is essential for any practitioner, no matter how experienced. The communications industry moves quickly and we must be able to adapt to guide our clients effectively. Whether that's keeping pace with the constantly changing social media environment, understanding the benefits and challenges of AI tools or maintaining an awareness of how businesses respond to emerging issues, there is always something new to learn.
Highlights for me during the 2022/23 CPD cycle were:
- Comms Hero Week - a virtual conference covering a broad range of topics and incorporating lots of networking with fellow comms pros.
- Diversity in Action - another virtual conference offering a real insight into embedding diversity and inclusion into an organisation's culture.
- Carbon Literacy Training for marketeers - 10 hours of mandatory training with a view to achieving 'Carbon Literate' certification and setting in progress at least two significant actions to help reduce carbon emissions.
I've also found reading up on developments in AI tools such as Chat GPT to be really useful. There's a tendency to immediately see AI-generated content as a threat to the PR trade when it could, in fact, be a useful tool. How it is used will be critical. It's early days but it may have potential as a tool to help sharpen our work rather than a 'quick fix' solution to generating content, but transparency in how and where it's used is also key.
One thing is for sure, finding time for CPD is time well spent and I'm looking forward to making inroads into my 2023/24 cycle.