CIPD qualifications webinar: Take your career to the next level
Listen to our webinar to hear how our new qualifications could give you the skills and knowledge you need to excel in the people profession.
Listen to our webinar to hear how our new qualifications could give you the skills and knowledge you need to excel in the people profession.
In this webinar, Simon Graham, CIPD Head of Qualifications, takes you through the CIPD's five new qualifications. He’ll show you why they’re recognised by employers as the global standard of excellence – and help you choose the qualification for you.
No matter where you are in your career, a CIPD qualification enhances your impact – and connects you to the professional future you’ve always dreamed of. This is your chance to get a taster of what studying will be like, and to discover the resources on offer. Simon and colleagues will also take you through the support available to you – as well as our top tips on asking your organisation to cover the cost.
so i'm going to be monitoring the chat box i'm going to be allowing people in i'm going to go on because of the uh the beeps apologies for that and uh simon
over to you thanks a lot tim good morning or potentially good afternoon and maybe
even good evening to everyone who's joined us today as tim said we're recording today's webinar so we'll send out a link to the
recording and also we'll um send you the slides so no need to scribble down any notes in the best style of the training
course um cipd we've talked about the fast changing world of work over the years
uh but now more than ever there's a global zeitgeist for not that none of us can afford to miss
in our responsible business report one prominent ceo is quoted as saying
this throughout this crisis hr has been completely front and center come at the
hour come of the hr team there are times in the business cycle where you think hr teams are just doing process but right
now that's not the case and it's not just classic hr the learning development team so i'm sure some of you are in have had to switch to
purely online delivery practically overnight and are still doing it now companies are seeing a strong need in
the skills and communication in digital business in developing and actually implementing this agile organization that's been
talked about for a while and even after well over a year they're still coming out for advice on
how to actually implement remote work and remote work policies then more recently there's been this great resignation um
very uh good story story very big story in the uk what this means for recruitment
retention this idea that skills are the new currency compared to a reliance on sector experience is a key indicator of
success we've got the growing use of ai in businesses and what this actually means
in terms of putting people and analytics and stuff like that on the map in hr uh we've got workable and legal vaccine
policies the ongoing focus on health and well-being of the workforce and employee resilience there's an awful lot to keep
us busy and just as finance directors morphed
into chief financial officers cfos um during and after the 2008 financial
crisis and have greatly increased their scope since chief hr officers
now have that same opportunity to become central c-suite players something that the um
the practice the profession has been banging on about for a while such massive changes escalating the importance of hr's role within
organizations and workers to turn to their managers and their people leaders in particular for guidance on how to
navigate this new normal or the next normal or just the coming few months
setting the people profession up for a sustainable future is at the heart at the heart of business has had a real boost we've got to remain future focused
supporting the profession to thrive wherever the future may hold
as tim said i'm simon graham i'm head of qualifications at cipd i've been at cipd for just over two
years now so i joined just before lockdown and now work with a whole load of people i've never actually
seen in the flesh these are today's topics we'll have a look at these qualifications then we'll
show you how to narrow down the choices what they are and how to study and rather than us just telling you stuff
and what it should be like we've got two people who are far better equipped to tell you what it's really been like for them susie and may who are both studying
right now well not right now i mean this webinar but they are kind of actively studying susie's studying the foundation
certificate and people practice and maeve is studying the associate diploma in people management so we'll get to that in a little while
our mission at cipd is to champion better work in working lives and one of the key ways we'll achieve this is by
equipping people professions to thrive in this changing world of work but what does this actually mean well if
we pull out two elements professionals what does being a professional mean well it normally means people with specialist
knowledge i mean when we talk about professionals we generally think of lawyers and
doctors and accountants before that they've got specialist knowledge that you know the normal person on the street doesn't have and they prove this through
credentials normally qualifications and ongoing licenses to practice
keeping themselves up to date they're quite often in regulated professions so there's a real kind of you either r or
you want a doctor i mean there's no pretending you're a doctor and they also strive to set common values around how they treat their their
customer base their clients their patients their uh the people that they work with and and serve
and this whole change i mean we mentioned um and i'm sure it's been mentioned before the whole
furlough homeschooling which uh thankfully is a father of two um daughters of 11 and 12 has pretty much
come to an end there's this idea do we work from home do work in the office do we work from anywhere can we work in a coffee shop do
we just actually know where in the world we are there's the recruitment challenges i mentioned inclusion diversity there's a lot of change going
on in the world so why become a qualified people
professional rather than trot out loads of facts and figures i've pulled out two which really
resonated with me now 73 percent of people who recently
qualified for the cipd stated that they proved they had progressed their career within three months of obtaining their
qualification so nearly three quarters of people progress their career within three months obtaining their qualification
and let's be frank about it we do see that career progression is a really strong driver from people gaining
qualifications or wanting to create qualifications and the flip side of that is 81 of those
recently qualified people are in a role where cipd qualifications are preferred or essential
so although we're not in a regulated profession like doctors like lawyers
qualifications are seen as increasingly important in the role of the people professional and it's putting that
profession on par with other professions that we're looking for so what are these qualifications let's
have a look we've made far-reaching changes across
the qualification portfolio so if you've been interested in doing one for a couple of years the sort of things we've
changed are we used to have 17 qualifications we've reduced this down to five
we used to have things of different sizes at different levels across different practices across hr across lmd
but we've really narrowed this down which means a qualification is a far easier choice to
make importantly to say that the new qualifications align with cipd
membership levels and the impact levels of the profession map those who don't know about the profession map it's
basically the people profession competency framework and everything we
do the qualifications and cipd membership are all based on that and that map which was developed by i think
about 19 000 plus people in conjunction so it really is a
large body of work and the final one which some people
really like but actually there's a small group of people kind of like exams just to be clear the new qualifications have
no exams there is none of this idea that you know you will be locked in a dusty room
uh with someone peering at you while you write for two or three hours which let's face it no one writes for two or three
hours these days i get tired if i write two post-it notes um but there are no exams all of the assessment of these
qualifications is done via coursework so there are some deadlines in your
study center that you sign up with will have deadlines to meet but the actual you know there isn't this idea
that you have to turn up even virtually and do something um the test of memory and technique which is a lot of exams
are so the qualifications themselves here are the five
we've talked about the framework this is them at the foundation level is the certificate in people practice
moving on and up from the foundation qualification is the associate level qualification offering it's two at this
level diploma in people management with diploma in organizational learning and development
and at advanced level there are also two qualifications following the theme there's a diploma in strategic people management and a
diploma in strategic planning and development so let's start at the beginning with most people's entry point and the
qualification design just for them the certificate and people practice
this is what it looks like that's not really what it looks like it means kind of description of it i don't know what
qualification would actually look like if you saw it out in the wild um with the foundation certificate and
people practice this is really a qualification designed to kick-start your career with confidence it's an
entry-level qualification that's been designed for people professionals working in or looking to find their first role in the profession it'll
provide you with a solid grounding in all aspects of the people practice the knowledge skills and introduce you
to the behaviors to deliver tasks that benefit your organization at an operational level this is very much a
qualification designed to to develop those doing skills and the confidence to support positive
change for your colleagues and organization on the bottom left you can see some of the typical job titles that people have
or aspire to when they're doing this qualification it's not an exhaustive list i mean there are many many many
many job titles out there in terms of structure there are four
units within this qualification you can see them listed there business culture and changing context principle of
analytics core behaviors professionals and essentials of people practice
there's some geeky qualification stuff as well it's what's called a level three qualification now level three is a
there's a number that gets used in uh england wales and northern ireland
but what it means is it's educationally equivalent to an a level
or the sort of qualification you would do as a 17 18 year old so it's that kind
of level in terms of difficulty so as i said what we're looking for here is we're looking for practical
useful stuff but we're not looking for you know esoteric theories and things like that
in terms of that glh thing again that's another geeky thing 120 hours guided guided learning hours 120 learning hours
that kind of means that's how much um time you'll have to spend learning you
can pretty much double that to about 240 240 hours to say well actually how much
time will i spend having to learn the primary stuff so stuff i don't know at the moment
refresh myself prep for assessments do the assessments do all the reading around all of that
sort of thing so 240 hours is rough you know it's kind of an average amount of effort that needs to be put into this i
mean it sounds like a lot i mean it sounds like 10 solid days but of course go to sleep and stuff but most people take around 8 to 12 months
to complete this because a lot an awful lot of people have got lives and are working as well
based on feedback from employers um when we developed these qualifications what we asked for was they said could the entry level
qualification which this is it cover both the classic hr and l d
um disciplines because they really want to emphasize um that people early on their careers
potentially haven't decided which route to go down and also there's a you know i'm sure a lot of you know this is the
strong intertwining relationship between those two you know developing capability um measuring capability and also they
wanted a very um strong emphasis on the business context
of the people profession so that's why one of the core units in there is business culture and changing context
so that's the foundation significant people practice let's move on to
the next level so there's two qualifications in here as i said
when designing these qualifications we've worked really hard to eliminate duplication so if you're progressing
through from the foundations to people practice to these two there's not you know you're not
repeating learning you know you know trotting out the same stuff um as well you don't have to do these in order so
you don't have to hold the foundation certificate people practice or something equivalent you can directly enter any of
these qualifications it's not like you know you have to do a before you can do b there's no formal entry criteria
let's have a look i said two qualifications at this level in terms of level
this is a um what we call it associate level um in geeky qualifications terms
it's level five to put that into a context that most normal human beings understand that's kind of
midpoint in an undergraduate degree so kind of the second year of an undergraduate degree is the equivalent
of what's called level five so we're talking degree level between bachelor's degree level for this one so it's a bit
more difficult behaviors in this um start to come to
the fall they're very much aligned to that profession map around ethical and professional behaviors and the structure
allows you at this point to specialize in either the classic human resources or learning development
structures a little bit different in here so we've got three core units those cool units are common across both qualifications
we've got three specialist units and that's where the differentiation comes between the people management and the l d
and then there's a list of optional units that are available and you just get to choose one of those so basically
it's a seven unit qualification which the first one was four unit qualification
which one's right for me well there's probably a bit of a clue in the titles um but there's a bit more information on
here i won't go through all of this it'll be in the slide deck you can have a read you can see the sort of job titles down the bottom you know hr
business partner versus l d business partner so pretty obvious split between are you in the hr stream or the l d
stream at this point in terms of time we're seeing this one take between
i mean this is a guide but between 12 and 18 months depending on how where people choose to
study so it takes a little bit longer you can imagine seven units compared to four so
it's going to take a bit longer this is a load of detail again it'll be
in the pack so don't worry but you'll see the core knowledge and behavior there are
common across two qualifications and then there's the specialist knowledge the middle column
kind of middle column which is to differentiate it between the people management the l d and then optional
units are based on um which qualification you're doing you'll see there's some overlap there's a well-being of work for example diversity
inclusion big topics um they're optional units in both qualifications
that's just highlighting the core knowledge and behaviors being the same so next one along
is for experienced people practitioners so the idea is you've already proven
yourself now it's really time to take the lead and check the future of the profession and the future of your
function within your organization so there's two qualifications here again split between the people management the
l d on successful completion of either of these qualifications and actually as you
might guess the associate diploma you'll be eligible to be an associate member of the cipd
the differences with the advanced level qualifications you'll also be eligible to apply for chartered membership there
are some criteria around that that i won't go into it's all on our website but actually the advanced level qualification gets you pretty close to
being a chartered member as well in terms of structure
kind of similar idea to the associate ones you've got one more core unit in there
you've got three specialist units again that's the differentiator between the people management the lmd and an extra option so this is an eight
unit qualification again in geeky terms it's level seven again to put that into context for most
people that means master's degree it's a postgraduate degree level so this is getting quite up there in terms of how
difficult it is in terms of guided learning hours it's
quite a lot more so it's 240 guided learning hours which means about 480 500
hours worth of effort to put into it so it's a big jump up from foundation big
jump up from associate don't be fooled by this just being kind of one more unit these are quite chunky
units as you might expect this is a qualification at this level again some example job titles here
and just in terms of time frames we're seeing this taking between 16 and
24 months at the moment for people to complete depending on how and and way you choose
to study but you know a year and a half to two years-ish that's kind of the typical time frame
and in terms of uh detail you can again this will be in the pack that we send out so you can see the common uh core
there then the specialist knowledge is where the differentiation comes and again you'll see some overlap in terms
of um the optional units so well-being at work being a common one that's not the
same well-being at work unit by the way you can't just nick it from the previous qualification use it here it's that's at
this level and you also see options like managing people in international context which is
which is quite popular popular unit as well
study options so we want uh cipd qualifications to be
as accessible and flexible as possible um you can do within reason you can do the units in within the qualification in
any order um then you can choose a range of ways to study
main ways to study and you can guess which one's been most popular over the last couple years and continues to
remain most popular with about two-thirds people students choosing to study completely online now
so um there are options to study these qualifications completely online either
with live lessons delivered at set times or on-demand content although most people
most study centers that are offering online have a mix of live
sessions which are also recorded and some on-demand content you can do you know
your own time and pace the other option and again this is the more traditional option is that
face-to-face one typically delivered more at colleges um you can actually get to see real people
you get to read meal meet real people in person a lot of the face-to-face
options at the moment are quite limited although we've seen them then come back and obviously during lockdown they've
been switched to online but we're seeing the face-to-face options coming back and also there's the blended option so
we classify um how you can study into one of these three options which lets you find the
right study center for you blended bit of face to face bit of online stuff the mix is something that's always worth
checking how much of each there is especially when it involves travel and being there at the set time
so moving on to making the choice
it's not really to amaze at all i use that graphic just a few steps to consider
so we'll look at the three choices three steps to starting this qualification journey
what how and where but first of all a quick word on how
these things i keep mentioning called study symptoms now you might have done some qualifications before you might have
done them directly with um probably all done some qualifications at school before
but you'll have done them directly with the with the school now think of when you were at school think of the school as the study center
the qualifications are actually by ed excel or something like that some other body but as far as you're concerned you
went to school you did a qualification you've got a piece of paper or an email but probably both at the end of it
similar setup with cipd our qualifications are delivered through we call study centers those study centers
all go through a rigorous approval process they're all subject to ongoing monitoring and they're all subject to
what we call moderation which is actually where we check whether the marks they're giving you
are the marks that we'd give you as well so we're looking to make sure the standards are upheld
primary thing you're going to get from a study centre is obviously access to all the learning resources the teaching resources and they'll be the one
handling the dishing out and the initial marking of your assessments okay so they're
quite important in the journey
in terms of choosing a qualification you're probably looking at those five qualifications going do you know what i
know which one's for me another way to look at it is foundation is all around that kick-starting um your
career associate is going from kind of supporting people to driving people so that's where you're looking probably for
your first big promotion it's around that kind of point in your career and advanced is when you're looking to take that senior role or demonstrate a more
senior ability one of the main reasons we see that people don't
complete a qualification is that they choose too high level so when you're considering this really have a good read
through the syllabus quiz the study center get their advice you know they do this
hundreds and thousands of times a year um they'll help you they'll help guide you to the right one but it's probably
reasonably obvious when we had 17 qualifications it was a little bit trickier to pick the right one it's probably not too bad now
[Music] the other thing we've got is if you go
onto the ipd website you go to that learn development and connect area and choose cipd qualifications there's this
little um it's like a little interactive poll thing that you answer a few questions
and it kind of guides you to the right answer so it's like a little quiz and so you can use that as well i'll put a link
down there and that link will be in the slides when we send them out as well
study center choice this is the biggie this is the these are the people you're going to have your day-to-day contact
with these are the people who'll be helping you through this process on a regular basis
there's three main elements here well actually do they offer the qualification that you want
do they have a study method that suits how you want to study do you want to study completely online if you want to
study completely online do you want to do that with a lot of live sessions a lot of video type content or do you want
to do that more kind of you know e-learning style and also price
we don't list prices on our um center finder tool that helps you make this decision it's probably because they
change an awful lot um but we'll talk about price in a little while
in terms of helping you make this decision we've got another tool
it's called findercenter.cipd.org and it helps you just narrow down the choices of study center
so you can see the obvious one is filter it down by qualification then you can filter it down by study
type then even when you filter down by study type there's some more um filtering and
stuff you can do it's really like going through amazon and kind of you know finding the right results and then filtering it down to save their prime
delivery to you know what price is it that sort of thing if it's face-to-face you could choose
part-time or full-time um there are very very few full-time options these days it's pretty much all part-time
study reason we've chosen location as an important one is you might go oh
highlands college they offer some full-time face-to-face tuition
always worth checking the location before you sign up to anything that involves turning up in person because you can see from where uh wimbledon is
which is where we're based to highlands college which is in jersey takes a few
hours to get there so that's why where's important you might think it's strange currently
if you choose to study online which you could be doing from the comfort of your own home completely
um we're still on our location to be an option now the reason we've done that is we've got online providers in the uk but
we've also got them in other areas of the world now if you're looking for an online live
type study you know where you are basically doing what we're doing now which is um
listening to people and again getting to ask them get to ask some questions and stuff time of day is quite an important thing
and if you're looking if you're based in singapore for example and you choose a
uk based center online live content you could find you're either getting up
very early or staying up very late at night so location then allows you to to check the
basic the time zone of the provider you're looking at
finally there's a couple of other things you can do on this tool one of the things is you'll see this icon for tailored programs and you can sort to
put those at the top tailored programs means this particular study center
will um will be able to take quite a bespoke route to putting together a study program for you so what they'll be able
to do is assess what you already know and fast track you through things you already know and concentrate on the
things you don't know so they'll do a bit of a gap analysis with you to help minimize the amount of study and
obviously the amount of time and i mentioned prices earlier a few
points and prices um these are put them in pounds and euros although i haven't changed only the euro rates changed
massively recently so they're typically what you're looking at in terms of price ranges
quite a few study centers especially the the big online guys run sales always keep an eye out for
those these prices and again quiz you study center before you sign up with them but
these prices should include everything so they'll include access to all the content all the
assessments all the tutor and study support access their online platform if
it's a face-to-face one obviously you know being in front of the tutor registration etc etc etc
it's always worth as well checking whether they include cipd membership because as
an active qualification studyer you're required to be a cipd member as
well so it's always worth asking whether they include that in their price if not it's not that expensive it's
about 90 pounds but i think that's more than enough from
me shall we have a little chat to um real people we're all real people but um
um doubt you need a sip of water after that thank you so much just a little bit
that was half an hour of straighter talking thank you so much right so um yes as simon said
we have got some guests today when i say guests i mean special guests because they are having live experiences of
studying the courses um so i'm going to do another quick um sound check check if that's all right
simon just with the ladies yeah sure so we've got i'm going to sorry son i'm taking over your bit now let's go we've
got susie morris as farmer said the beginning of the webinar she is studying for the foundation certificate in people
practice with and then we've got maze nixon who's studying the associate diploma in people
management with ics so slightly different qualifications different centers different people and
they're both here so i'm going to start with uh with maeve just to do a quick sound check give me a second guys
i'll make sure the tech works here we go
here sorry here we go okay right so testing mave can you hear
yeah good morning can you hear me okay perfect yeah and i'm going to do another another um sound check with susie and
i'll let simon carry on and uh here we go okay right here we go susie i'm just
gonna unmute you
oh susie i think i've got a different surname here is that right i think okay let me double check i've got the right suzy susie can you hear
hello testing susie can you hear
sorry guys give me one second i think we've got uh a
bit of a tech give me one second guys bear with me
so i think we've had a bit of a tech issue with susie i think susie's um
i'm not sure if she has been uh the tech issue has moved i'll tell you what let's move on um so simon i'll pass it back to
you and i think we're gonna hear from me but in the meantime i'm gonna go and mute and try and uh get susie back on thanks
guys the joys of life uh tv that's not like tv
okay mate all on you for a minute um i've just got a couple of questions really i mean it says on there which
qualification you're doing and who you're doing it with i'd just like to find out where you are in your kind of development your career
journey um and what drew you to doing this convocation in the first place yes so i am i had actually done now the
qualification when i did the level three it was actually called a foundation certificate in human resources so i had
done that and i basically self-funded that my like myself basically and after
doing that i was able to take on a little bit more kind of responsibilities in my role and my employer then spoke to
me about kind of progressing basically onto the level five um so i was really
lucky that my my employer basically you you'll pay for it to go on and do the level of life
yeah definitely um so i've actually i've now actually just finished the level
five so i'm just waiting for everything it's been externally moderated and i'm just waiting for the actual
qualification to come through and basically so i've now become kind of the
hr advisor in my organization so i had been just a project coordinator however
i've now been given those responsibilities glad i wasn't just
making enough about career progression earlier it's good to hear it actually yeah yeah it's good
so the main motivation was was kind of i'd imagine for the first qualification that you did as you said self-funded
that was very much your your choice your motivation and then now it's the
is your employer kind of encouraging you to progress your career yeah well actually a friend of mine now
this was back in ireland i currently live in the uk and a friend of mine had also studied the level three and she
found it great for kind of transitioning from what she did in social care kind of getting more into
that office based work which was something i was a bit more interested in and i hadn't yet went to university and
i was kind of in a limbo as to what to study um and i thought yeah if i start with
the level three it's kind of you know dipping my toe into it and i found what i found very different
about the level three and the level five was the level three was so practical i think you mentioned that earlier on
it was really practical um which i was really happy with it was really hands-on you know i actually had to do kind of um
like an example kind of recruitment interview and everything and then when i actually transitioned into the level
five it was a lot more strategic and so that was quite motivating for me
because in my role as my role was transitioning so was the qualification to the kind of the needs and
requirements that i i wanted no it's good to hear i mean
it's all very well us saying that but unless we actually and we haven't prepped you for to say these things by the way but it's good to hear i mean we
definitely have feedback that the foundation level the level three qualifications a lot of people call it level three the reason we don't say
level three is its qualification levels are different all over the world one piece of level three is level five and that's something but
the the the entry level qualification we try to make very um hands-on as hands-on
as qualification can be so you know it's writing job adverts it's writing you know stuff that can go on
linkedin it's not just can you try out you know theories and maslow's hierarchy
needs for the 87th time which we have actually pretty much taken out of all the assessments now by the way
so what's the so you said that there's been a good good impact in your job and career but um there's a there's a good couple of
hundred people on here who are probably about to study so have you got any um any top tips for anyone thinking about
studying or what you know for them while they're studying yeah so for me i i was quite lucky
obviously doing it alongside my job i was able to study while i was at work for you know through
throughout the week so that was good but i think what's really important while you're studying is basically having a
routine so i would say to myself you know i'm gonna study uh for two hours in
the morning before i go to work in two hours in the evening when i come home and three days like during the week and
so i think it's really good to set up a routine so that you know you're getting your hours in now i did progress through
the qualification really quickly that way so that's quite that's probably a lot of studying so you you know you
don't have to do that much but because i i basically needed the qualification to take on some extra responsibilities i
wanted to get as much in as possible and the other thing i would say if you're thinking about studying um either
whichever level or if you're doing the foundation or the associate diploma i would say have a look at um job
adverts you know maybe on indeed or any of those kind of um basically where you can look up jobs
because you'll see how in demand the qualification is so before i did any of these roads uh or sorry did any of these
qualifications you know i wouldn't have been qualified to do the jobs that i wanted to do and i actually recently got offered
another job because i had the qualifications so it is so in demand and i didn't take but you will see on most of you know
cipd or equivalent experience but it's preferred a lot of the time that you have that qualification and so it is
definitely worth it and i'd also say um you know the sooner you start the sooner
you finish basically so it feels it feels amazing at the end when you when you've got your qualification you got
your certificate you can frame it or whatever you want to do with it yeah we said we still still send out um
paper ones nice nice thick bit of paper you also get a pdf as well um because we know these days a lot of people haven't
you know they're not in offices with scanners and things like that so it's quite handy to send pdf around so you
mentioned a couple of tips there um routine and organized i mean that's i was terrible at school i uh and at
university if there was six pieces of work to do and there were seven days left before the deadline that basically
meant i had a day off i wish i was like far more organized and you know actually got the hours in this i said there is
kind of an idea of guided learning hours and what we also call total qualification time that's built into
these and that just gives you an idea of how much effort you need to put in i mentioned things like 240 hours but it
sounds quite easy but if you want to progress i can see a few questions in here if you want to
progress quickly through this i think that that idea of being you know getting yourself into a good routine and yours
is great because you did it for three days you didn't do it for five or seven days three days i think if you really helped you power
through it yeah i think if you ended up doing it five or seven you'd probably burn out and you would get to a slight treat
where you're almost sick of it to an extent um but i as well you know i would i would take
you know if there was any holidays coming up like christmas or anything like that i would i would take a break then also i just think it's good that
you give yourself that time to reset and also i suppose take in and let's sink in what you've been studying basically
yeah and you know breaks are fine um if you're if you think you're having a good you know a decent sized break it's always worth
talking to your study center and just letting them know and see if they can extend your enrollment or anything like that because most of them will say you
know especially as you do with ics which is a completely online um study option
you get a certain amount of time don't you yeah so with i have to say ics were also
great because i have um i have dyslexia and and so i was able to put an
extension on my court and i can't remember what the time limit was now exactly it was a certain amount of months and but i was able to put an
extension on on top of that because of my dyslexia and i didn't end up needing it because i actually finished the
qualification in just over six months um but
yeah i did i did really put my head down and kind of pull on with it but um having that like knowing if i had got to
the end and i had the extra three months i think was my extension it you know it gives you that comfort
yeah no so i mean six months it's really quick to do with um the
underplaned qualifications so congrats on that and passing everything of course did you pass everything first time just out of me you don't have to add me this
but just no i didn't actually the thing i'm most interested in is uh talent management
you know um that will kind of be my favorite well that an employment law um and talent management is the only one
i didn't pass first time i think i might have gotten a bit too confident and so i had to go back and do it twice
i mean that's an important point as well this this with the the way the assessments are designed
there it isn't a take the assessment and if you fail you get a whole new assessment so the
way that we've designed it the way it should be implemented and it's always good to check things with with as i say real people
is that you get a couple of goes yeah so effectively you get you get to you get to polish up and take the
feedback on board and have another go at the same assessment yeah which which i think is really helpful um because i know you can send a
certain amount of um points basically in a draft you can get some feedback on that you can't
obviously send in your full assessment as a draft uh but you can get some feedback so i suppose for that i took
kind of what i would consider um and always get feedback on that and
then actually submit the assessment and knowing that once you submit it the first time if you fail that's not it you
know you're not kicked off the course or anything you have another attempt at that and as far as i'm aware i think they've just brought in the option
there's three attempts now i think um but basically yeah like knowing that the first time isn't it it isn't the end of
the world if you if you fail it is it is quite a complicated thing i mean again that's that's more like
real life you know it's not about you if you do a piece of work and you you go to your your manager or your stakeholder
and go look i've done it if it's not exactly what they were looking for or it's missing a couple of bits they don't rip it up in front of
your face and chuck it in the bin and then go right do me something completely differently go can you add in some stats on this so
exactly and just going back to what you said about exams and you know really being a kind of a technique and a memory
thing you nobody sits down in their office to write a policy and doesn't
no i mean that's one of the reasons we really moved away from exams is i mean i've done this in other awarding
organizations and there is there is a strong element of technique and memory in exams even even
at a very high level even at advanced level an exam advanced level still involves this weird situation where you
have to pretend you don't have access to all of the knowledge that you'd have at your fingertips
constantly anyway even through a phone so yeah yeah it's one of the main reasons we moved away from they just
they just feel a bit old-fashioned yeah it's just not realistic yeah could i take you back about six
months and um think about when you were when you were just starting or probably considering
um doing this qualification the one you've just damn completed did you have any reservations at the start
yeah so i did um now i originally i'm only 22 when i had originally wanted to
go to university and but i ended up i didn't so this was kind of the highest level uh qualification as you say it's
basically like a kind of intermediate degree yeah so when i started studying it and my
partner had just finished his degree and you know he found it quite difficult but he had got through it so i was quite
nervous about taking on this level of education and i remember reading my first
assessment and just thinking oh my goodness i i don't know you can do this this just seems so difficult
um and i spoke to my tutor and i at ics learn and i explained to her you
know my reservations that i was so nervous i just didn't think i was going to be able to achieve this and she kind
of she kind of brought me back down to earth a little bit and was saying you know you started off by reading the
assessment have you actually read your coursework and i was like no she was like you need to you know the
information is in there you know that's what we're kind of here for we're here to give you the information and then you can build on it basically
and you know with her help she explained to me that you know she would help me kind of step by step through it um it
kind of brought me back down to earth a lot more and i was thinking yeah of course you know why couldn't i do this so many other people do
um so yeah i find that really kind of reassuring and no i'm holding it it worked you know i'm done
i'm there basically so yeah i did have i was nervous at the beginning but i would just say to anyone that you know might
be nervous if it's the highest level of education you've studied that you know why couldn't you do it if so
many other people every day do degrees and masters and everything of course you could
no that's good it's good to hear i mean it's always daunting isn't it when you're doing something you've never done at a level that you've never done before
um but we do know there's an awful lot of guidance out there there's there's also an awful lot of groups um
that you know there's discussion groups within i know within the ics learn platform for example there's discussion
groups but also there's whatsapp groups and facebook groups and stuff that have all been sort of sprung up these days
around people studying and there's an awful lot of people who've been there done that or in the same situation i mean at any
given time there's 25 000 of people studying with the ibd qualifications so there's going to be someone out there
who's worrying or concerned or has got the same issue as you and you can hook up with them and
work through it together yeah exactly i didn't um there was a great community within ics learn uh when
people were doing kind of assessments you know saying you know how did you feel with this question and blah blah now i didn't um
i didn't integrate myself into that as much as i could have done i think that's because i worked with a hr advisor
sternly to my company and he had done the level five recently and we used to speak a lot about it so i think he was
quite supportive towards me but there is that option you know there is a lot of kind of conversations inbuilt into ics
learns kind of technology basically yeah that's great just before we move on um have you got
any other any final tips for all these lovely people um
well i a big tip for me i know i said it kind of spooked me a little bit at the beginning but
i always found reading what the assessment was um at the very beginning
was really helpful so it meant you do get your learning outcomes at the start of every unit and but i found reading
the assessment and knowing at the end of this unit at the end of my studies i need to be able to you know answer these
questions i find that really really helpful um
it might work for everybody but that was what i found worked for me brian thank you very much mate it's
great to hear from you great to you um thanks mate yeah it's been going on and what was good there is actually as
we were going sorry to cut straight in and a lot of the questions that were being aren't asked you were answering as you were speaking so that was good so
really the q and a section's probably gonna be a bit smaller than it would have been so that's good thanks everybody for the interactions and we've
tried to get back and also thank you to sarah and who's actually helping out sarah davis out in the middle east she's
helping out with the questions as well thank you so much apologies for susie we had a tech issue
and susie seems to have fallen off and we can't get susie back on um sorry let's blame that one on microsoft teams
i'm not sure what's happened um but again we took a lot of value from maeve again maeve thank you so much for today
we appreciate it no worries thank you very much guys i really enjoyed it really good examples
and uh yeah perfect perfect let's try one more time for susie if not simon can we move to the qa section yeah sure i'll
just say that i say q a say q a oh you still got okay fine i'm gonna go on mute
i'm gonna have a tech try with susie and i'll let you carry on okay so here are some um some questions just to ask
potential study centers so if you're looking at the associate or the advanced level qualifications not all of them offer all
those optional units in fact most people offer like one or two optional units so there's a specific optional unit you
want to do if you desperately want to do that managing people in the international context find out whether they're offering that
optional unit um good question is how will you help me if i get stuck i may alluded to some of
the the offerings that ics um gave her do you include cipd membership i
mentioned that earlier if it's an online provider does the price that they quote include that i know i'm sure most of you will
know that being an additional tax i know we've got some people from outside the uk but that could be an extra 20 if it's
a purely online offering there probably will be that involved so just make sure installments payment always good
done about you i haven't got two and a half grand just sitting there waiting to do a qualification so we do know that an
awful lot of providers allow you to pay over 12 months or longer so you can split it up into a monthly payment
probably interest free as well um so that's quite handy resets and resubmissions the answer to
that should always be yes if you hear no let us know because it should be an all-encompassing price
uh as i said tailored tailoring the course to my experience you can look for that option on our centerfinder tool
helen.gas is the platform for and do you recall sessions and lectures it's all very well to say you know
there's a there's a live session with with tutor x at two o'clock this afternoon if you can't make it for any
reason do they record them always worth checking i'm sure there's loads of other questions but there are some key ones that we know
people like to ask finally your next step choose one of the qualifications should
be a relatively easy decision and based on the levels and the disciplines find a study centre talk to the study
center ask them the questions find out about pricing find out about payment that sort of thing
you can talk to us as well uh we've got a customer service department who can talk through there's loads of stuff on our website but for now i'd just like to
say thank you for your attention and um we will flip over now to see if we've got any questions as i said we are
we have recorded today's webinar and version of this recording will be issued to you uh shortly and of course we'll
send you these slides so thanks very much so far and let's flip over to questions yep got it thanks again simon just a
slight tiny little correction now that's usually what we
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