CPD

Following the announcement in April that we achieved CPD Platinum status for the 9th year in the row, we look at what CPD means and why it is so important to us as an agency.

What is CPD?

CPD stands for Continuous Professional Development. That can be referring to an individual’s professional development, or the learning and development plan for the whole agency. 

What does CPD Platinum mean and how do you achieve it 

CPD platinum is achieved when you have held CPD Gold for 5 years, which means your learning and development culture within the agency is industry leading and regarded as at the highest standard. The reward for maintaining this high level of commitment to people’s development is moving from Gold to Platinum.  

Total Media is proud to announce that we have held CPD Gold since the IPA first launched the accreditation in 2008, and we are 1 of only 2 agencies to have held Gold this long, including being the only buying and planning agency to have achieved this.

Why is CPD Accreditation important to Total Media?

The CPD Accreditation is a great way of showcasing the time and dedication we put into the learning and development of our people. You can only achieve Platinum if you have sufficient training in place for every role, every level and every individual employee, so it ensures we are providing the highest standard of development possible. 

This includes providing training from all departments, as well as upskilling the company in all areas from excel to presentation skills to coding, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn something new. 

We also think it’s important that every member of the agency, at every level is involved in the process which is why our training programme comes from the top down. As People & Culture Manager, I work very closely with Celine Saturnino, Chief Operating Officer, to create the training plan, as well as The Board providing inductions and working sessions and Will Hanmer-Lloyd, Head of Behave and Strategy, leading training on our behavioural proposition.

This is just one of the ways we use the internal talent that we have to do a lot of inhouse upskilling, as well as bringing in external experts to provide additional learning. 

How we adapted learning and development during Covid 

During Covid we had to adapt our training plan to be delivered virtually, moving everything over to remote learning. However, this presented new challenges of having to rely on technology more than ever before and ensuring training was accessible to everyone, whilst remaining engaging and useful. 

We also wanted to ensure that every employee during this difficult time still had access to learning resources so that their development was not impacted. Therefore, we created an online learning portal so that those on Furlough could still achieve their development goals. 

However, once a training plan was in place we found that remote learning actually worked well for us as an agency because some of the difficulties of office logistics were removed. For example, we did not have the issue of booking meeting rooms and having to reschedule training if these rooms were needed last minute, and found it was easier facilitating impromptu upskilling sessions as all you had to do was send a link. This is something that we have continued to use even now we are in a hybrid world.

Looking ahead: How we are going to maintain our platinum CPD status  

During this transition time, Post-Covid, we have currently adopted a hybrid training model with all training being accessible in person and online. However, we do not want to have this hybrid model forever. The main goal will be to consolidate training so that it either happens all virtually or all in person so that we can ensure it’s inclusive, with every employee getting the same experience and the same tangible learning out of each session.

We have also created a core training plan made up of 7 Pillars:

  1. Digital Upskilling 
  2. Management Training 
  3. Ways of Working
  4. Core Career Skills
  5. Behave Training
  6. Diversity & Inclusion
  7. Well-being

These 7 pillars are at the heart of everything we do, and form the basis of our learning and development strategy. This ensures we have clear targets that individuals, leaders and the agency can hit to ensure we are continuously evolving, and I’m excited to see how we progress in years to come.

Do you want to work at an agency that puts your learning and development first? Checkout some of the roles we are currently hiring for.

Kitty Munro - People & Culture Manager

Author: Kitty Munro - People & Culture Manager

Kitty is our People & Culture Manager and leads across areas ranging from DEI, to Learning & Development and Employee Relations. Outside of work, she’s a keen Mojito drinker and average baker.