Employee development plans help your team members grow their skills and advance their careers. As a manager, you can create learning paths that match both your employees’ career goals and your company’s needs, building a stronger workforce that is ready for the future.
What’s Coming Up
- What Is an Employee Development Plan?
- How to Create an Employee Development Plan
- Roles and Responsibilities
- Aligning Individual Development with Business Goals
- Measuring the Impact on Business Performance
- Conducting an Effective Skill Gap Analysis
- Using Personality Assessments in Development Planning
- Building a Culture of Growth
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Further Reading
What Is an Employee Development Plan?
An employee development plan is a detailed roadmap that helps an employee build skills and knowledge. Unlike a professional development plan, which an employee might create on their own, an employee development plan is typically developed collaboratively by an employee, their manager, and their team members. An employee development plan – also known as an employee growth plan – can help an employee develop skills that match their company’s business goals.
As a manager, you can support and guide your employees’ development plans so that they align with and contribute to the company’s broader talent management strategy. Development plans are often linked to performance reviews and may also prepare employees for future leadership roles.
When growth opportunities align with both your team’s goals and your company’s needs, they set the stage for long-term success.
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How to Create an Employee Development Plan
If you want your team members to start using employee development plans, it’s best to have a system in place that ensures that there is a standard that everyone adheres to. But you also want to leave room for personal touches.
That might sound complex, but it doesn’t have to be. Follow these simple steps to build an employee development plan that works:
- Start with a conversation: Meet with each employee to discuss their career goals and interests. Listen more than you speak.
- Assess current skills: Work together to identify what each individual is good at and where they need to improve. Use performance reviews, self-assessments, and your own observations as a manager.
- Set clear goals: Define two or three goals that would benefit both the employee and your organization. Make sure that these are SMART goals.
- Choose learning activities: Select training programs, projects, mentoring opportunities, or other activities that match the employee’s learning style and development needs.
- Create a timeline: Set reasonable deadlines for completing activities and achieving milestones.
- Write it down: Document the plan in a simple template. This document should include goals, activities, necessary resources, timelines, and how you’ll measure success.
- Schedule regular check-ins: Plan to review progress every few months, not just during annual reviews.
- Be flexible: Be ready to adjust the plan as business needs change or as the employee progresses.
A good employee development plan should serve as a work document that guides growth throughout the year.
Self-Directed vs. Employer-Directed Elements
The most effective employee development plans include both self-directed and employer-directed elements.
Employees should choose how they want to learn, based on what interests them and how they learn best. But they should also receive clear guidance from the company, ensuring that their learning goals connect to business needs and follow proven methods that have been approved by their organization.
Self-directed elements can include:
- Personal goals
- Learning timelines
- How skills will be developed
- Peer learning activities
- What projects will be completed
Employer-directed elements can include:
- Trainings
- Core skill development
- Leadership programs
- Mentorship matching
- Performance-based improvements
Finding the right mix depends on your company culture, the type of work, and the skill gap being addressed. For example, a teacher’s development plan might combine employer-directed elements like participating in certification courses and curriculum training with self-directed elements like choosing educational books to read or selecting which teaching conferences to attend.
Roles and Responsibilities
For an employee development plan to work, everyone must understand their role and responsibilities within the plan. The key players are the human resources (HR) team, the learning and development (L&D) team, the management team, and the employee that the plan is for. Let’s look at the main responsibilities of each of these players.
HR and L&D teams are responsible for:
- Creating the overall development plan framework
- Providing resources and training options
- Tracking company-wide trends
- Connecting employee development to larger talent strategies
The management team is responsible for:
- Working with the team to create a development plan for each employee
- Giving ongoing feedback and coaching
- Removing barriers to growth
- Holding conversations about accountability
- Connecting individual growth to team goals
Employees themselves are responsible for:
- Taking ownership of their growth
- Helping identify areas for improvement
- Completing the agreed-upon activities
- Using new skills in their work
- Sharing feedback on what’s working and what’s not
In smaller companies without dedicated HR or L&D teams, the relevant responsibilities can be shared among managers, team leaders, or even external consultants – the important thing is that someone takes ownership of each area.
Aligning Individual Development with Business Goals
Ideally, an employee development plan should directly support the organization’s goals. When there’s a clear connection between these elements, the time and resources that are spent on training are more likely to deliver real value. To build this connection, start by identifying your key business goals and the skills that your employees need to achieve them.
Connecting Employee Growth to Strategic Objectives
Business goals can vary – from expanding into new markets to driving digital transformation to improving the customer experience. Achieving these types of goals often requires building or strengthening specific skills, such as cross-cultural communication, technical adaptability, empathy, or problem-solving skills.
For example, if your company’s primary goal is to lead in innovation, the focus may shift from productivity to creativity. You can support this by offering design thinking workshops, including brainstorming sessions in business planning, or by creating dedicated time and space for employees to explore new ideas and experiment.
Successful organizations connect every learning opportunity to at least one strategic goal. This creates a clear “why” for every development activity – keeping employees engaged and helping them understand the purpose behind their training.
Measuring the Impact on Business Performance
To show the value of your employee development plans, you need to establish clear metrics that are tied to business results. These metrics will likely fall into the following categories:
- Productivity metrics: These include increased output, improved efficiency, and fewer errors.
- Innovation metrics: These include new idea proposals, improved processes, and problems being solved.
- Customer impact: These include improved satisfaction scores, increased customer loyalty, faster issue resolution, and more positive feedback.
- Talent metrics: These include readiness for promotion, higher skill levels, and better engagement scores.
The key is to assess each employee’s skills before development starts, then track their progress as they apply their new abilities. If the results trend upward, you know that the development plan is working! If not, a further deep dive is needed to understand what is going on so that you can adjust it accordingly.
Conducting an Effective Skill Gap Analysis
A thorough skill gap analysis forms the basis of any meaningful employee development plan. This assessment identifies the difference between your team’s current skills and the skills that they need.
A Data-Driven Approach to Team Capabilities
Your skill gap analysis can use multiple data sources:
- Performance reviews
- Self-assessments
- Manager feedback
- Customer comments
- Project results
- Skill tests
- Industry benchmarks
- Future skill forecasts
Many forward-thinking companies have moved from yearly skills assessments to quarterly check-ins. This approach provides real-time insights into development needs before they become performance issues.
From a Skill Gap to a Development Plan
Once you identify gaps, you can turn them into targeted development activities. For example, if you and one of your team members agree that they need to strengthen their project management skills, their development plan might include attending a two-day workshop, shadowing a senior project manager for two weeks, or managing a small project with mentoring support.
Afterward, you’ll regroup to review their progress. Success could mean that they earn a Project Management Professional Certificate, receive positive feedback from their mentor, or successfully deliver a project on time and within budget.
Or, if the skill gap is in public speaking, the plan might involve the employee joining the company’s Toastmasters club or presenting at three team meetings. Progress could look like them delivering a confident department presentation and receiving an audience rating of 4 out of 5 or higher.
Real employee growth happens when the right training method matches both the skill being developed and the way that the individual learns best.
Using Personality Assessments in Development Planning
Personality insights can help make employee development plans more personal to your employees. After all, each person processes information, makes decisions, and interacts with others in their own ways.
Everyone is unique, but there are some overlapping tendencies – and these can be grouped into personality types for ease. Knowing how different personality types learn, handle conflict, and get energized can help you create development plans that everyone enjoys. And when an employee likes their employee development plan, it is more likely that they will execute it successfully.
With that in mind, you can adjust the learning activities in an employee development plan based on the personality type of the employee. The following personality insights can be helpful as you make those adjustments:
- Analyst (Intuitive, Thinking) personalities tend to be analytical. They often prefer self-directed skill-building that allows them to exercise their critical-thinking skills. Their employee development plans should include evidence-based reasons for development activities, clear success metrics, independent study options, and a logical skill progression.
- Diplomat (Intuitive, Feeling) personalities typically enjoy collaborative learning and coaching. In their development plans, make sure to include a clear connection between development and helping others, collaborative learning opportunities, and supportive feedback.
- Sentinel (Observant, Judging) personalities usually appreciate step-by-step development plans, so theirs should include clearly defined timelines, well-organized learning paths, and regular check-ins.
- Explorer (Observant, Prospecting) personalities generally respond positively to varied learning experiences. They typically do well with development plans that provide a variety of learning options, room for exploration, hands-on practice, and adjustable time frames.
Effective employee development programs are built around the understanding that different people need different paths to reach the same destination. You shouldn’t force everyone through the same training or the same learning path. Take into account the strengths and preferences of your team members to help them and the company succeed.
Training Managers to Personalize Development
Personality insights can also help managers adjust their own development strategies. Key training areas for managers include:
- Understanding personality differences in learning preferences
- Adapting coaching styles based on employee traits
- Personalizing feedback for maximum impact
- Recognizing achievements in meaningful ways
- Managing resistance to development opportunities based on personality patterns
As a manager, you can add a section in your own development plan that is focused on appropriate development goals for managers and includes learning about personality theory.
Want to understand your team better? See how your team’s personality makeup shapes your work in adaptive (or maladaptive) ways with our Team Assessments.
Building a Culture of Growth
Employee development plans are much more than paperwork or an annual checkbox. When done right, they can become powerful tools that boost individual careers and your entire organization.
Creating employee development plans shows your team members that you value their growth and see a future for them in your company. This builds loyalty, increases engagement, and helps you keep your best talent.
Remember these key takeaways as you build employee development programs:
- Match development plans to both business needs and employee aspirations.
- Create a consistent system while allowing for personalization.
- Tailor each individual’s learning approach based on personality insights.
- Set specific, measurable goals with clear development activities.
- Check progress regularly and celebrate growth.
- Adjust plans as the company’s needs change.
The time and effort that you invest in employee development can pay off big, both in the short term and the long term – leading to a more skilled workforce, a stronger leadership pipeline, and your company building a reputation for investing in its people.
Understanding team dynamics adds another powerful dimension to your employee development plans. You can create development strategies that improve both individual and team growth. Our Team Dynamics Quiz gives insights that can help you design better plans that are based on your team’s strengths.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an employee development plan?
An employee development plan is a clear plan that includes learning activities and career goals to improve skills and support the company’s business goals. Some organizations refer to it as a career development plan.
How does an employee development plan differ from a professional development plan?
Both plans focus on skill improvement. However, an employee development plan is typically created by both the company and the employee. The plan is aligned with the company’s business goals and is part of the formal talent system. A professional development plan is self-directed, focusing on the employee’s personal career aspirations.
What should be included in an employee development plan template?
If you are providing your employees with a development plan template, be sure to include the following elements:
- An assessment of current skills
- Career goals
- Specific development activities
- Necessary resources
- Timelines
- Success metrics
- Regular review checkpoints
How do you measure the success of employee development programs?
Success metrics for employee development plans include:
- Skill improvements
- The application of new abilities
- Readiness for career advancement
- Positive impacts on business results like productivity and innovation