Continuing Professional Development
Governance Professionals Never Stop Learning
Undertaking professional development allows you to keep your knowledge and business skills up to date, develop your personal skills, support professional growth, and may further your career. All members of CGIC are encouraged to partake in ongoing professional development.
Chartered members have annual mandatory professional development requirements as governed by our Continuing Professional Development policy to ensure ongoing professional development and growth. Mandatory professional development is a commitment to the public to ensure Chartered members abide by the highest standards in the profession.
About Continuing Professional Development
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the maintenance, enhancement, and continuous improvement of knowledge, skills, and abilities. The focus of CPD is firmly on results – the benefits that professional development can bring you in the real world.
Effective January 1, 2012, all Associates and Fellows of the Institute, except those who have retired, are required to undertake a minimum of twenty (20) hours of professional development annually in order to remain members in good standing. This activity must consist of at least five (5) hours of structured activities; the balance may be unstructured activities. Chartered members are asked to make an annual declaration that they have met the minimum number of CPD hours required as part of the renewal process.
The Purpose Economy: Reshaping the metrics of business success
On November 22, 2023, The Globe and Mail hosted a webcast featuring prominent business leaders discussing the integration of corporate purpose into business operations. The event highlighted the growing trend among Canadian businesses to focus on sustainability, social impact, and community growth. Speakers from various companies at different stages of implementing corporate purpose plans shared their experiences and insights. The panel included Coro Strandberg, Maureen Young, Liz McBeth, Christelle Francois, David Redfern, and was moderated by Irene Galea. They discussed challenges and strategies for businesses looking to prioritize corporate purpose in their operations.
Recent Online CPD Sessions
Corporate vs. Not-For-Profit Boards: More Alike than You Think
The corporate boards you serve on or support in your professional role may seem worlds apart from the not-for-profit boards that shape your community. But are they really that different? In this webinar, Linda Wood Edwards explores the key similarities and differences in how these boards operate and govern—challenging assumptions and uncovering insights that can enhance your effectiveness in both arenas.
A copy of the presentation is available upon request.
Importance of a Cyber Resilience Strategy
With the advancements of Artificial Intelligence (AI) the speed and pace of cyber-attacks are growing exponentially. Cyber criminals are using automation and AI to increase the speed and sophistication of their attacks. Cyber resilience allows organizations to maintain critical functions and operations during a cyber-attack, minimize downtime, protect sensitive data, preserve brand reputation. During this session, Hardeep Mehrotara provides information on how to develop an effective cyber resilience strategy.
A copy of the presentation is available for download.
Key Resources:
Who Does What During A Crisis?
The best time to prepare for a crisis is before you have one. Why not start today? During the session, Jane Halford helps participants start their own crisis plans by understanding key roles, staying connected during the crisis, communications strategy, and external crisis resources. The session also explores how to see an issue escalating to minimize or avoid a potential crisis.
A copy of the presentation is available for download.
Other Resources:
The Effective Chair
In this session, Janis Riven examines the three specific duties and responsibilities of an effective Board Chair: the Conductor, the Negotiator, and the Leader. This webinar explores the Chair’s key duties, from guiding board discussions to handling difficult situations, offering practical insights to strengthen your leadership in governance.
A copy of the presentation is available for download.
Sustainability For Not-For-Profit Organization Boards: Is It What You Think?
This webinar examines why Sustainability adoption through an Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) lens is becoming a strategic imperative for not-for-profit organization (NPO) boards. Canada is quickly moving forward with mandatory reporting requirements for publicly traded corporations. Will required reporting follow for NPOs? Should NPO boards get on board with sustainability? Leave this webinar with more clarity on where your next strategic planning and governance conversations will be directed towards organizational sustainability.
Bridge Corporate Strategy Execution Gaps
How to Bridge Corporate Strategy Execution Gaps Through Agile Project Management Governance Practices. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business environment, organizations face numerous challenges in effectively executing their corporate strategies.
You’ve Made a Strategic Plan, Now What?
Most organizations fail to realize their strategic goals. This webinar describes strategy from four perspectives – planning/process, formulation, implementation, and monitoring. After a brief overview of planning and formulation, the focus is on governors’ considerations for strategy implementation and monitoring. The topic concludes with recommendations for governors responsible for strategic oversight and an opportunity for questions and answers.
Beyond the Rhetoric: Leading with Intentional Inclusion in Today’s Healthcare Workplace
Despite the increasing rhetoric in the Inclusive Workplace, minorities still face barriers to progressing beyond entry levels in the healthcare workplace. These barriers need to be eliminated, and intentional paths need to be created to ensure that everyone including minorities can reach their full potential in the healthcare workplace. Enhancing an inclusive healthcare workforce that moves minorities beyond the entry levels will unlock healthcare delivery that provides care that is not only of high quality but also culturally inclusive.
Ethical Dilemmas in Times of Turbulence
In times of turbulence ethical dilemmas are heightened. While the immediate impulse may be to prioritize safety and stability, the question arises: at what cost? Measures such as surveillance for public safety can conflict with privacy rights, and limited resources can force agonizing decisions about who receives care. Leaders may face the dilemma of transparency versus the potential for public panic. Additionally, individuals must navigate personal ethics around compliance, resistance, or civil disobedience. Navigating ethical dilemmas in such times calls for a delicate balance between communal interests and individual liberties, often requiring nuanced and context-sensitive solutions.
Conflicts of Interest in the Boardroom
This is the webinar for you if you have ever felt uncomfortable with how conflicts of interest were handled by a board. An interactive discussion on both the legal considerations and board dynamics of effectively managing conflicts of interest in the boardroom. All board members bring their professional backgrounds and experiences, as well as their current involvements and connections (both personal & professional), to their board role. In fact, these valued attributes often form part of the very reason they were recruited to serve. As a result, a conflict of interest may easily arise for any director during their tenure on the board. This should not be viewed negatively. Rather, it is an opportunity for the board to discuss COI in an open and transparent manner so that mitigating actions can be taken to protect the integrity of the board’s decision-making.
Disaster in the Boardroom: Six Dysfunctions Everyone Should Understand
When companies experience major scandals and downfalls, it often reveals that their boards have failed in their fiduciary duties. Despite the frequency of corporate scandals around the world, little to no changes are made to the systems of corporate governance. During this webinar, Randall S. Peterson, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School, explores the common attributes of scandals, such as lack of independence from management, missing key voices, cultural amplification, diffusion of responsibility, rule-bound cultures, and groupthink as covered in his latest book with Gerry Brown, chairman of private equity house Novaquest Capital.
Ever-evolving ESG: Oil and Gas and Beyond!
ESG considerations in corporate governance and the finance/investment industries have gained significant traction. It’s no longer an emerging issue or a trend, but is here to say and will become an even greater focus in the future. There is now a growing consensus among executives and investment professionals that ESG programs create shareholder value, both long-term and short-term. This session provides an in-depth overview of ESG issues for corporate governance professionals and provide insights about tackling ESG issues in corporate governance programs.
Visit the CGIC Youtube Page for more online CPD recordings.
Looking for structured CPD activities?
What Do I Need to Track?
It is good practice to maintain records of your personal CPD efforts. You will only need to demonstrate your activities if you are selected at random audit, where we will work with you to determine if the policy criteria has been met:
- What type of CPD the activity falls into (structured or unstructured)
- The name of the course or event, if applicable
- What the activity involved
- The date/s you completed the activity
- How many hours you spent on the activity
- Your feedback/thoughts on the activity – what you learned and how this has helped you/will help you
Consider downloading this CPD Tracking spreadsheet to keep track of the CPD you complete throughout the year.