As part of your annual Performance Appraisal, there is a joint employee and management responsibility to complete a 3-year Career and Professional Development (C&PD) plan. The C&PD plan is mutually agreed between the CRPEG member and management and updated annually. Each CRPEG member should be proactive and draft their own 3-year C&PD plan, and review it with their manager during the performance review. The C&PD plan should be captured in your performance appraisal form (there is a specific section identified for this information on page 3 of the form).
What constitutes Career and Professional Development?
According to the C&PD guidelines for CRPEG employees (link below), here are some AECL Examples:
- developmental or special job assignments
- succession planning (for both mentor and mentored) – very important with ageing work force
- external assignments or attachments to other organizations
- self-directed learning
- Company support for higher education
- financial or time support for PhD
- sabbatical leave
- attendance at conferences, conventions and workshops
- payment of professional membership fees
- courses
- such as computational physics, health physics, repair and assessment of structures, probabilistic safety assessment, risk management
Any time or expense charges to the C&PD subtask (.8111) should be those activities identified in your C&PD plan. If it’s not in your plan, you should question whether it should be charged to the C&PD number.
What is not considered C&PD?
Training is usually classified as “necessary to do the job”. Training refers to activities where one receives the necessary subject matter and/or learns to perform the tasks required to do the job. Training is one means of achieving career and professional development, but whether it is career development or not must be agreed upon by the manager and employee.
AECL examples of training that probably would not be considered as Career and Professional Development:
- Basic MS Office Word, Power Point etc.
- Group 3 Radiation Protection
- Emergency Steward/Officer in Charge
- General and Safety Orientation
- Management-directed training
What’s the big deal anyway?
Under the provisions of the CRPEG agreement, C&PD is funded separately, to 5% of CRPEG payroll. The allocation of these specific funds are to ensure that professional employees continue to enhance their skills and knowledge for their own career advancement and job security. If we are charging regular training to the C&PD number, then that is taking away funds from the C&PD budget, which could potentially be taking away C&PD opportunities of our members.
What do I do if my Management directs me to charge my training time to the .8111 subtask?
You should inform your manager that this is in violation of the CRPEG contract. If Management persists, you should complete your timesheet as directed, however you should follow up with a CRPEG Steward, who will assist you in filing a grievance. If CRPEG receives enough similar complaints, then a group grievance will be filed.
More information on C&PD for CRPEG members is available on AECL’s Intranet under:
- CRPEG Career Professional Development Guidelines
- CRPEG Career Professional Development Presentation
- Performance Appraisal Form
Please see the bulletin sent out via company email entitled “CRPEG Bulletin (2014 May 13): Performance Appraisals and Career & Professional Development” for the links or ask your CRPEG executive or stewards for the links.
CRPEG Executive
Working Together For The Public Good
Note: Link to list of Executive embedded in CRPEG Executive.