Don’t Be a Fool and Forget About CPD

Tuesday 1 April 2025

By Denise Black, Director of the Centre for Learning.

No one comes through 40-odd years of working life without a little learning along the way. Whether it’s upskilling or reskilling or generally investing in employee growth, the business case for continuous professional development (CPD) is fairly well understood: investing in people builds personal progress, strengthens retention rates, creates a workplace culture defined by leadership and learning and most importantly, bolsters the bottom line.

Such a long-term view is essential for businesses operating in today’s hyper-competitive market, yet the acceleration and mass adoption of artificial intelligence has laced CPD with a fresh sense of urgency. The skills gap, stubborn in its longevity, is now intensifying. To the point that research from the World Economic Forum found that 1 billion people across the globe will need to be reskilled by 2030. That is 12 percent of the world’s population, all requiring some degree of training in less than five years.

For the UK and Ireland, it is a tale of contrasting fortunes. Last year, 83% of Irish employers reported difficulty finding candidates with the right skills, the highest amount in 20 years according to data compiled in the annual ManpowerGroup Talent Shortage report. Meanwhile, the outlook was slightly more optimistic for the UK, with the same survey reporting 76% of employers struggling to locate the right candidate, a modest fall on the previous 80%, which itself marked an indication that the UK skills gap has narrowed for the first time in a decade.

Upskilling an AI-ready workforce is becoming all the more urgent for leaders with one eye on tomorrow. Businesses keen to go faster and further will be looking to leverage AI to do more with less.

The ability to adapt will be key, to augment the artificial into a workplace synergy of AI tools and emotional intelligence. Where analytical tasks are automated, this will free up us mortals to focus on innovation and the interpersonal skills imperative. Those timeless and fundamentally human traits of grit, curiosity and resilience. Traits that survived the printing press and any such invention that changed the world forever.

Crucial to our mission at Centre of Learning is a more rounded approach to CPD, where participants develop not just their technical acumen, but also personal, social, and professional skills. An opportunity to reskill and upskill that we’ve brought to more than 4,000 women since 2019, including our incredible mentee programme that has successfully delivered over 10,000 hours of mentoring.

CPD remains at Centre of Learning’s core because learning is our most reliable tool in a world that refuses to stand still. Learning has the innate ability to fuel growth and with it continued success for business both now and into the future. Only a fool would ignore its powerful potential.

Tuesday 1 April 2025