CPD Training & Employers: What are the Benefits?

When it comes to CPD, employers can sometimes overlook the rewards that training can bring regarding management improvements in favour of the tangible benefits to the bottom line.

So, it might be around implementing new systems to reduce the time employees spend on tasks or sending staff on time management courses to maximise the working day.

But what about the benefits that an employee gets from learning and feeling better about themselves? Indeed that can only contribute to the advancement of your company on a day-to-day basis as well.

This article looks at the key benefits of providing a CPD training plan for your workforce.

Types of CPD training

But first, let’s look at what counts as CPD training for accountants. Luckily there’s a wide range of activities that employees can count towards their annual CPD credits.

Bear in mind that when it comes to auditing, the CPD points your employees earn must be relevant to their current role or future career aspirations in the company. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Work-based learning
• Secondments
• Coaching or mentoring, or being coached or mentored
• Online learning
• Training courses
• Delivering training
• Other academic or professional qualifications
• Research

What are the benefits of CPD training?

So, here are some benefits that both the company and employee would see from completing CPD training:

• Improved productivity and appreciation of professional standards.
• Developing skill sets that allow them to undertake a greater variety of work.
• The ability to contribute to achieving the company’s business plan.
• Being able to respond effectively to change.

Significantly improve productivity

Productivity usually increases when a company implements training courses.

Training across the workforce, from the accounts payable department to the executive level and in any discipline, improves:

• Competitiveness
• Morale
• Profitability
• Customer satisfaction
• Market share
• Company reputation and profile

It can also lead to reductions in staff turnover, which are costly from the perspective of retraining other staff and the associated recruitment costs.

How to be attractive to new recruits – offer CPD training!

Investing in CPD also makes a company more attractive to potential new recruits who seek to improve their skills and the opportunities associated with those new skills.

Without a training strategy for those top candidates that your company should be seeking will lead to doubt in the candidate’s mind that their career aspirations can be met with your company.

CPD training should always seek to improve the people in the organisation so that both they and the company will benefit from it.

There’s nothing wrong with meeting both the corporate goals of the company and the personal goals of the employee at the same time. In fact, that should be the driving force behind your training strategy.

CPD training can vary from company to company but should commonly include:

• Objectives
• Team building
• Team development
• Leadership development
• Coaching
• Technical updates

How to deliver CPD training

When you run a company, we know there are probably a hundred things you need to do that come before CPD training!

That’s why it’s sometimes a good idea to work with an experienced learning provider to provide your employees with relevant and quality courses that count towards their annual CPD credit on a rolling basis.

Partnering with a provider can help you to:

• Offer a wide range of CPD courses that are both relevant and interesting
• Deliver courses online to provide flexible, accessible and on-demand access
• Offer employees the option to record all their CPD units in one place, making the recording process simple
• Ensure all your staff are skilled up to a high standard
• Ensure all employees are compliant with their annual CPD training and maintain their professional body status

Just get in touch today if you would like to discuss our CPD options for your staff.

If in doubt – ask your customers!

One way to identify your company’s training needs is by asking the customer what you could do better as a company.

That’s a great motivator for employees when they know it is driven by customers and not just the views of your direct manager.

Only by doing this will we be able to assess the cost and benefits of a CPD training plan that staff feel is improving their skills and the company is getting benefits from.

Read more on Strategies to Get your Company to Foot the Bill for Your Continuing Education