Ever attempted a road trip without a GPS or a map?
Then, maybe you’ve experienced that uncomfortable feeling of dread. The one where you know where you want to go, but at some point, you have no clue where you are or which roads to take to get there.
The same concept applies to creating employee professional development plans.
For HR leaders, L&D pros, managers, and employees, it’s easy to lose sight of important goals, targets, and milestones. But with clear direction and the right tools, these objectives can be reached with confidence and certainty, improving employee satisfaction, retention, and productivity.
In this guide, you’ll learn about the different types of employee growth plans and how to choose the right one for your employees and organizational needs. With our step-by-step guide, you’ll discover the benefits of employee-led development plans and how to create a plan that drives immediate benefits and long-term growth.
We’ll cover
What is an employee development plan?
Employees want to grow and develop and do purposeful work that adds value to their lives. They also want to feel included in decision-making.
Likewise, organizations want to stay competitive. They want to improve employees’ existing competencies and skills and develop newer ones to support broader company goals and meet the enormous, ever-growing global skill gap. They also want to attract new talent and boost employee loyalty.
That’s why employee development is a win-win. It engages employees and amplifies their efficacy, helping them meet career goals while the business reaches its own goals.
But it’s no simple feat.
A look forward
While traditional performance management processes are focused on past achievements, looking backward to evaluate an employee’s contributions, employee development plans look forward. This perspective shift gives both employees and employers multiple benefits.
Because employee development plans are integrated with performance goals, focusing on the input (future behavior) rather than the output (last year’s performance) reveals where employees have the most room for growth specific to their role.
The two-way, formal process goes beyond merely offering mandatory training courses. It’s the impetus for honest discussions between employees and managers, offering real insights into what is going well and whether there are any gaps in skills, performance, and training.
Wonderlic Develop, our self-led employee development tool, focuses on role-based performance by assessing employees’ cognitive ability, personality, and motivation. It reveals how these impact employees now and how they can develop any lagging attributes for the future. This assessment empowers employees to identify their strengths and challenges and guides them to enhance their on-the-job performance with clear, actionable feedback to improve their:
- Capabilities: The soft skills and core competencies that are critical for a role.
- Behaviors: The interpersonal and work-related dynamics and actions needed for success.
- Interests: The innate subjects, topics, and activities employees are drawn to and motivated by.
Because Wonderlic Develop features are tailored to each individual, they also consider the role and the stage of the worker’s tenure. For instance, an entry-level staff member’s employee growth plan may include cognitive skills like problem-solving and decision-making and focus on their learning potential, whereas someone in the C-Suite may have actions to enhance leadership skills that help them inspire action and drive transformation.
Types of employee development plans
One size does not fit all. Professional development plans should be unique to the individual and consider the organization’s goals. Managers who take a standardized approach to employee development show they’re out of touch with employee needs and how work gets done.
For instance, one employee may want to plan to apply for a future leadership role. On the other hand, an entry-level employee may need to consider enhancing their project management skills to move up the pay scale.
Bearing that in mind, here are some of the different types of employee development plans to consider.
Self-led employee development plan
Unlike traditional employee development, which is driven by a manager, a self-led employee growth plan is directed and reviewed by the individual.
This type of plan improves employees’ self-reflection skills and gives them the autonomy to work on their skills and performance. It encourages individuals to reflect on their own strengths and areas for development. This generates buy-in, meaning employees are more likely to take responsibility for their actions and drive progress to improve their skills. It also removes the time-consuming constraints on managers to create and implement plans, freeing up their time for meaningful work.
“Getting buy-in means actively involving employees in the process. I’ve found it helpful to align development goals with their personal aspirations, not just company needs. Tools like feedback platforms and personalized assessments can help track progress without overwhelming staff.” – — Laurie Williams, Founder of Man and Van UK
With Wonderlic Develop, employees can monitor their own progress. Effort-based insights help employees recognize where to focus development time for greater employee performance improvements. Meanwhile, managers can easily see how their team members best communicate, fostering better communication and reducing conflict, while encouraging their employees in their development path.
Goal-based employee development plan
This development plan aligns an employee’s personal career goals with the organization’s needs. It may involve enhancing communication skills to improve customer relationships or completing an external training course to meet regulatory requirements.
A goal-based plan might look like this:
- Goal: Gain technical expertise in operating new machinery.
- Personal objective: Improve confidence and get hands-on experience in how to shut down equipment safely by learning from experienced operators.
- Organizational objective: Enhance team productivity and reduce accidents by having 25% more technically proficient employees.
- Plan: Shadow an experienced operator for four weeks and attend a health and safety course. Observe skills in practice and arrange a follow-up meeting.
Performance-based employee development plan
These employee development plans identify specific areas a person needs to improve, sets new targets, and lays out the steps to achieve those employee development goals. This type of plan can be used to reward employees with pay increases or to recognize and celebrate achievements.
These plans can be positive plans, like sales spiffs, which reward reps for selling a certain amount of a product or service, or they could be corrective, such as PIPs (performance improvement plans), where a low-performing employee must show concrete performance improvements or risk termination.
Development tools like Wonderlic provide the data to discuss coaching tips, strategies, or wage increases. Evaluating factors like ability, personality, and motivation give employers the evidence and data needed to make fair and informed decisions.
Career development plan
Helping employees develop their careers is gaining traction, rising from number nine on LinkedIn’s Learning and Development (L&D) priority list to number four. In addition, providing learning opportunities has become organizations’ number one retention strategy.
A career development plan for employees — often including short- and long-term goals — focuses on helping them excel in their chosen career paths. By breaking down larger career goals into manageable and learnable chunks, employees can focus on achievable milestones, even within busy schedules. It allows individuals to set their own goals and supports them in being accountable for their progress.
This type of plan guides employees through challenges, such as a lack of time, empowering them to come up with a solution that works so they can keep growing professionally, boosting employee satisfcation and retention.
Mentorship development plan
Mentorshipshave certain goals or requirements that employees need to meet. Regular performance checks help ensure that mentees are meeting the required competencies, maintaining the integrity of the mentorshipprogram while motivating them to continue developing their skills.
A mentorship development plan offers a solid framework for evaluating the mentee’s progress. It helps the employeeunderstand the impact this is having on their job role and the sector they work in. These plans may include peer learning and sharing stories and experiences with like-minded apprentices in their learning community. This can improve understanding and build a support network that boosts personal development for work.
Leadership development plan
A leadership development plan can offer a strategic framework for cultivating internal top talent to build a pipeline of future leaders.
This type of structured plan enhances an individual’s leadership skills, competencies, and communication abilities. This type of plan typically includes specific goals, like improving delegation skills and activities to strengthen these core compentencies. It can also include information on how others view them, enhancing their self-awareness and self-reflection skills.
7 steps to create an effective employee development plan
Before you develop a plan that might not meet your company’s or your employees’ goals, let’s review the essential steps to creating a successful plan, step by step.
1. Review organizational needs and business goals
The first step in creating an employee growth plan is to identify the plan’s specific objectives and goals.
Get clear direction and purpose. First, work out where you are now and where you want to go. To do this, reflect on your organizational goals and look at ways employees can support and contribute to its success. Are there any gaps in leadership skills? Do your employees have the skills to manage an upcoming transformation program? Wonderlic Team Dynamics can help you understand your team’s unique strengths so you can assign tasks and projects to maximize efficiency.
2. Make sure your people understand the aims and objectives of an employee development plan
Without a clear understanding of the purpose of a plan, participating in new development initiatives can halt employee progress and add confusion or stress to an already busy workload. Team members may miss out on growth opportunities if they don’t understand how a development plan can help them get the skills and experiences needed for advancement.
Put simply, assuming your employees fully understand their role and the function of an employee development plan can start you off on the wrong foot.
Software like Wonderlic Develop encourages self-awareness. Role-based, personalized results backed by robust scientific data empower employees to understand better how their professional development plans enhance their skills. This means they get real insights into their strengths and areas for improvement. They don’t have to make assumptions or take a stab in the dark when understanding their gaps in skills.
3. Empower employees to take ownership of their development
McKinsey research shows that 70% of employees say their work defines their sense of purpose. When that work feels meaningful, employees perform better, are more invested, and are about half as likely to look for a job elsewhere.
“Getting people on board isn’t easy. Employees need to see how developing a skill benefits them directly. No one gets excited about vague promises of “professional growth.” They want to know, “How does this help me now?” If they feel ownership of their growth path, it clicks.”
— Anna Petosa, People Operations Executive and HR expert at Swag Drop
A word of warning: It’s about them, not you. Although a key part is linking employees’ strengths and areas for development to strategic objectives, avoid the trap of talking about yourself and focus the conversation on them. Otherwise, employees will feel undervalued.
Keep your people engaged. Wonderlic Develop centers the conversation on their experiences, aspirations, and feedback to encourage open discussions and boost their commitment to the development process.
4. Train the people doing the employee development review
A meaningful employee growth plan will only be effective if the person carrying out the review has the right skills.
Why?
Managers work closely with their employees, which affects motivation and job satisfaction. In fact, research from Gallup shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team employee engagement. Good managers motivative and galvanize. Bad managers micromanage and demoralize.
But managers are stretched thin. Over a third of them report alarming levels of burnout and stress. However, leader and manager training and development is often further down the pecking order, leading to a workplace culture where learning is seen as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have
According to one report, half of all employees who reported having ineffective bosses plan to quit within the next year. To reduce churn, it’s vital to ensure that managers have the right skills to encourage healthy team dynamics and build a positive culture.
With Wonderlic Develop, you can simplify the entire employee development process for employees and managers. Develop is the only development solution on the market with job-specific results that don’t require special training or certifications to understand.
Action planning features help employees and managers set achievable goals, track progress, and prioritize development areas with time-tracked milestones. They also save managers time by providing clear, actionable insights into what each employee needs to improve, basing decisions on facts, not hunches.
5. Set clear development goals
Link employee goals with business objectives and set clear, personalized goals to enhance an employee’s on-the-job performance. For instance, if a goal is to improve communication skills so you can offer a better customer experience, staff development strategies such as role-playing activities where individuals practice negotiation or client conflicts will be beneficial.
But here’s the thing: Be realistic. Setting goals linked to business objectives that are too ambitious and unrealistic can do more harm than good.
“The biggest hurdle we often face is maintaining consistency in the implementation of these plans. Delegation without clear communication and failure to continuously follow up can lead to their breakdown. To overcome these challenges, one practice I avoid is setting unrealistic goals. They can be disheartening for the employees and counterproductive.”
— Anna Williams, HR Director at Pretty Moment
With Wonderlic, realistic employee assessments spotlight which behaviors, interests, and capabilities most impact role performance, including their natural strengths and potential gaps. This functionality is built into Wonderlic, saving you the time and headache of finding the right strategy for the greatest impact.
6. Create the plan
Thankfully, the days when professional development plans were written with a pen and paper are long gone. Today, software solutions simplify and automate the entire process, making it easier for both managers and employees to create, monitor, and adjust development plans at the touch of a button.
Develop gives managers and employees a common language to discuss development goals, including specific skills to work on, immediate next steps to improve those skills, and key milestones to track progress.
7. Review and adapt
Employee development planning is a continuous process. Individuals change over time, and so should your plans. Regularly reviewing your development plan ensures that it stays aligned with current business objectives and employee goals.
By reviewing and tracking progress, employees and managers can see how much progress has been made. This helps identify areas where goals have been met and areas that need more focus, ensuring ongoing improvement.
Software with built-in features that track the progress of development goals ensures that both employees and managers can regularly check on milestones and achievements. This means goals can be flexible, and achievements can be acknowledged and celebrated – keeping employees motivated and inspired.
What are the benefits of a self-led employee development plan?
Finding ways to stay competitive and inspire your employees to perform their best doesn’t have to be challenging. Self-led employee development plans offer numerous benefits for both employees and organizations alike.
Greater accessibility to resources
If we look at industries in technology and care services, subject matter experts (SMEs) or experienced mentors are in high demand but in short supply. This scarcity means employees may miss valuable insights and guidance that could accelerate their learning and development. Not only that, but SMEs often lack the time or willingness to mentor others, making it difficult for employees to access their expertise.
Self-led plans empower employees to access a wider range of resources, such as coaches and training materials, making it easier to find relevant information without relying on limited SMEs or experienced mentors.
Increase employee engagement
Just like designing a workout routine that caters to personal fitness goals and interests, a self-led development plan encourages individuals to assess their needs and seek knowledge independently, using tools and resources like industry publications and software platforms, such as Wonderlic Develop.
As employees achieve their self-set learning goals, they build confidence in their abilities. This sense of accomplishment spurs them on to take on more challenging tasks, look for other learning initiatives, and perform their jobs better. Even better, it keeps high-performing employees engaged as they improve and grow in their careers, eventually becoming leaders themselves.
Cost-savings
Coaching services can cost around $278 per hour. If you have 20 employees and offer four coaching sessions each, … we’ll let you do the math!
Self-led professional development plans from Wonderlic can reduce the cost of external coaching by empowering employees and providing scalable solutions. When employees create personalized staff development strategies without relying on external coaches, the need for outside assistance is minimized, saving your business a small fortune.
Wonderlic Develop includes built-in feedback mechanisms, allowing your people to assess their progress and adjust their learning paths as needed. This reduces the need for external coaching sessions that focus primarily on feedback.
Address skills gaps
Today, 44% of workers risk having their core skills disrupted because of rapid technological advancements.
Since self-led employee development plans give employees ownership and responsibility, they proactively adapt to emerging technologies and market shifts. For example, a self-led development plan for a healthcare worker may include them seeking networking opportunities to learn more about new healthcare technologies or the latest regulations.
Manage change
The workplace never sits still. Emerging technologies and constantly changing employee and employer expectations mean organizations and employees must be able to deal with a constantly changing environment.
A self-led plan allows employees to reflect on upcoming changes and identify actions to help manage uncertainty. This may include identifying additional one-on-one meetings with their direct managers or attending specific training sessions about managing change.
Reduce employee turnover
The real strength of professional development plans lies in the structure they bring. People want to know where they’re heading. When employees visualize their future, they’re more likely to stay, commit, and deliver stronger results.
Employee development plans give them something tangible, not just a vague idea of growth but a clear roadmap of where they can go and how they can get there.
How to tell if your plan is working
There are several ways to tell if your plan is working.
Look at people analytics, such as retention or engagement figures in learning programs. Tracking retention and learner engagement statistics over time can provide insights into the effectiveness of your employee development planning.
Monitor how much time you spend on coaching duties instead of focusing on the team and their daily operations. If you notice an increase in coaching time, you may need to give the plan more attention and structure.
If employees constantly email you with the same questions, it may indicate that the development plan lacks clarity. This could mean that the plan needs to be more explicitly communicated or that the employees require additional training to understand their objectives.
What’s not so obvious is the use of common language or terminology to describe their development journeys. Look out for common phrases like goal-setting and career development. They can highlight shared understanding.
Finally, when individuals use Wonderlic Develop to shape their own career journey, it shows that the employee growth plan is not just a well-meaning idea but a reality, proving your organization’s commitment to employee success.
Measuring the success of your plan
Success means different things to different people, so depending on an employee’s career goals and priorities, there are various ways to measure the success of an employee development plan:
- Analyze turnover rates. Gather data about before and after the implementation of professional development plans. Improved retention can show that employees feel more satisfied and engaged in their work.
- Track promotion figures. Look at promotion rates after a specific period. For example, participating in development programs for six months can reveal which learning initiatives are most effective.
- Listen to what employees are saying. Chats at the water cooler or at the beginning of an online meeting can give valuable insights into employee sentiment. For example, overhearing one employee talk positively about a mentor can reveal that the plan is working. Sentiments on common business review sites like Glassdoor can also provide helpful insights into how well your current strategies are working.
- Monitor productivity. Gather insights from line managers and comprehensive data about customer service complaints and production output before, during, and after an employee development plan to get a well-rounded view of whether processes are more efficient.
Get a demo of Wonderlic today
Take your employees and your organization’s performance to the next level. Our award-winning software, created with leading industrial-organizational psychology, is the premiere choice for helping businesses and their employees grow, learn, and perform.
With all the features needed to create, implement, and monitor a highly effective employee-led development plan, Wonderlic Develop gives your employees the confidence and ability to unlock their full potential. Get started with a free demo.
FAQs
Building an employee development plan involves several steps:
1. Align Identify organizational goals.
2. Identify areas for improvement.
3. Create a plan that connects personal aspirations with broader company objectives.
4. Review the plan regularly to ensure progress and relevance
Employee development plans should include whatever will be most beneficial and conducive to an employee’s growth. Examples include:
– Short and long-term career goals the employee wants to achieve with clear timescales
– The skills an employee wants to improve or new ones to learn
– How these goals link to company objectives
– Skills and knowledge the manager wants the employee to develop further
– The action steps and resources needed to achieve the goals
– Clear review dates and details about how progress will be measured
Conduct a business evaluation to identify gaps and strengths in operations. Set realistic goals. Gather information about what resources are available to achieve your goals. Set a review date to monitor progress and adapt the plan when necessary.
1. Understand your business goals and evaluate your immediate priorities.
2. Take a collaborative approach by working with employees to discuss aspirations, interests, strengths, and weaknesses and identify goals.
3. Agree on timescales, responsibilities, and resources needed.
4. Monitor at regular intervals. Be prepared to adapt and flex as employees and organization needs change.
5. Celebrate successes!
