The Betrothal Knot – Engaging British University Academic Staff

A number of scholars within the HRD field have begun contributing to engagement literature in the last decade (Shuck & Albornoz, 2008; Chalofsky & Krishna, 2009; Fairlie, 2011) and interest is growing in employee development and management training as well as career development and engagement but no studies have examined how continuous professional development (CPD) and competence frameworks impact engagement. This paper constitutes a systematic literature review to address the Research Question: How does CPD foster employee engagement in professional staff Given the changes in the education sector in Britain and the current enthusiasm from the HE Academy (HEA) for academic staff to become Teacher Fellows (via the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF), it is a pertinent time to consider CPD and employee engagement of British academics. Competency Frameworks and CPD are part of human resource development and so it is hoped that this research will help HRD practitioners working in Universities to better advise on strategic policy and actions on CPD, UKPSF implementation and engagement. The research therefore proposes to explore British academics’ perception of the UKPSF accreditation process via CPD and its relationship to employee engagement to address the research question. The review culminates in a proposed conceptual model to take forward into a pilot research study. The proposed model demonstrates a high degree of overlap between the antecedents of competency frameworks and CPD for professionals with identified antecedents of engagement, many of which have been empirically tested (Wollard & Shuck, 2011) and also confirms team antecedents. This overlap shows the evidence of the relationship between CPD and employee engagement and is referred to as professional engagement. This conceptual model specifically links CPD to engagement for academic staff as a profession in Britain (King 2004; Barkhuizen & Rothmann, 2014). Key words: CPD, engagement antecedents, competency frameworks, professional staff, academic staff.

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