The IAM Professional Courses
Standalone CPD courses of one to two hours at every membership grade — each teaching a method, working through real cases, and applying it to your own work.
Learn Something Properly
The IAM Professional Courses
Administrative work is usually learned by absorption — people become good at their own organisation's way of doing things without ever seeing the discipline whole. That produces capable people whose competence is hard to describe, hard to transfer, and hard to be paid properly for. The Professional Courses exist to make that competence explicit.
The Catalogue
a growing catalogue of Professional Courses, 5 grades
Fifty courses at each of the five membership grades, written by the Institute against its own Professional Standards.
The Format
One to two hours, standalone
No course is shorter than an hour and none longer than two — it fits a lunchtime or a team meeting slot. Every course is complete in itself: none depends on another, and you may take one course and stop.
The Method
Practical throughout
Each course teaches a method, works through real cases, and asks you to apply it to your own work before it ends — closing with an activity on your own work and a final test.
Anywhere
Any sector, any size
Written to be taken unchanged in a charity of nine people or a group of ninety thousand, in the public, private, third or education sectors.
CPD
Structured CPD, automatically
Every course carries a Structured CPD award, recorded automatically on your CPD record.
Two Modes
Online or in a room
Take a course alone at a screen, or have it delivered face to face to your team at your own premises.
Side by Side
Learn one thing properly in a single sitting
| The Practice Library | The Professional Courses | |
|---|---|---|
| Holds | 300 practice lessons | a growing catalogue of Professional Courses |
| At each grade | lessons | A growing catalogue |
| Length | Short — taken in a spare moment | One to two hours |
| What it does | Makes one point, and makes it stick | Teaches a method, works through cases, applies it to your own work |
| Ends with | A check that the point landed, and an action in your own work | An activity on your own work, and a final test |
| Take it when | You have a spare moment and want to stay sharp | You have an hour and want to learn something properly |
Most members use both. Together with the Masterclasses and the Programmes, they cover every scale of learning the profession needs — from a spare quarter-hour to a full Career Stage.
How the courses are organised
Three strands at every grade
Every course is 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 hours, complete in itself, and carries a Structured CPD award recorded automatically on your CPD record. The catalogue grows through the year: new resources are added and existing ones updated. Take Part A broadly, Part B narrowly, and Part C continuously.
| Strand | Courses per grade | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Part A · Professional Core | Teaches the method: the knowledge and technical practice every professional at your grade needs, whatever role you hold. Courses in each of the seven Competency Domains. Take broadly, against the gaps in your work. | |
| Part B · Role Practice | Applies the method to your role. Courses in each of four role families. Take those of the family that matches your job, unless your role spans two families or you are preparing to move. | |
| Part C · Professional Behaviours | Develops how the work is done: judgement, resilience, candour, collaboration, inclusion, reflection. Behaviours do not complete; take two or three a year and return to the strand at each grade. |
Two ways to take a course
Online at any time, or in-house with your team
Professional Courses Online
Self-paced, immediate
Taken alone on a screen in a single sitting of one to two hours, or in two shorter ones. You work through the course, complete the activities on your own work, and submit the applied task. Available at any time to members fitting development around operational work.
Professional Courses In-House
Facilitated, together
Delivered face to face at your employer’s premises by a facilitator, to a group of four to twenty, in a single session. Activities are done together and the discussion is much of the value. Arranged by your employer through the Institute.
The courses and your CPD
Meet your whole CPD requirement from these courses
Every course carries a Structured award, so the fifteen-hour Structured minimum is ten courses, not two, and progress is visible monthly rather than reconstructed in December. Ethics- and Sustainability-classified courses at every grade meet those minima too. CPD is voluntary at Affiliate.
Take your first course
Browse all a growing catalogue of Professional Courses and enrol through the IAM Portal, or request the full course guide for your grade or your whole team.