4 Simple Steps for Better Employee Development Plans

You need an individualized approach to your employee growth and development, and you need one soon. In research from the American Psychological Association (APA), 23% of American workers are unhappy with their growth opportunities at work.

Even though the majority of people (71%) in the survey didn’t intend to change jobs, respondents also said they often have negative feelings at work, ranging from lack of motivation and exhaustion to lower productivity.

On the flip side, a trustworthy manager and development opportunities top the list of reasons (at #5 and #6, respectively) for why people stay at their job.

Keep reading for advice on how to rev up your people’s potential, and help your whole organization grow as well, with effective employee development plans.

Key Takeaways for Employee Development Plans

An employee development plan, sometimes called an employee growth plan, is a process for helping individuals improve current skills and gain knowledge and skills for new roles and responsibilities in an organization.

Here are the three key elements every development plan for employees should include, plus questions you need to answer as you build their plan:

1. Organizational Needs:
   • What are the demands of your organization?
   • What are its strengths and weaknesses?
   • What skill sets and technology does it need to stay competitive within the industry?
2. Employee Competence:
   • What are the strengths of the employee?
   • How can they use their skills to bring greater results to the team and organization?
   • How can these results benefit their career and help them grow?
3. Employee Interests:
   • What is the employee passionate about?
   • What do they truly enjoy doing and find fulfillment in?
   • How can these passions better align with their strengths and the needs of the organization?

Most importantly, you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach and use the same employee development plan ideas for everyone in your organization. Everyone has unique strengths and weaknesses that need to be built upon. The key is to tailor your approach to individuals.

Key Benefits of an Employee Development Plan

Investing in a good staff development plan can pay off for both your organization and your employees in a variety of ways:

• Attract talented applicants.
• Increase worker engagement and motivation.
• Improve employee performance.
• Increase your firm’s efficiency and profitability.
• Nurture promotable employees.
• Improve employee retention and satisfaction.
• Help your company plan for the future.

These are important benefits to keep in mind and share as you structure your employee growth plan and seek support from managers and decision-makers.

4 Examples of Innovative Employee Development Plan Goals

Leadership Training

An employee has been at the company for a few years and feels ready to develop their leadership skills. After conferring with their direct supervisor to find suitable opportunities, the employee takes on a bigger share of the mentoring and coaching duties in the team.

The employee’s direct supervisor provides guidance and tips on mentoring during this time.

Increased Duties and Responsibilities

An employee who excels at both verbal and written communication takes on a more challenging project intended to help break down the walls between siloed departments. This project will help the employee advance in their current role while helping the company benefit from enhanced collaboration.

As part of the project, the employee identifies the teams’ pain points and tests out different strategies to help team members collaborate better. This employee may learn and help incorporate new technology, systems, and processes and train team members.

Professional Organizations and Seminars

An employee who’s part of a fairly new department at your organization attends local conferences and workshops to network and learn about new strategies and ideas to drive the department forward.

This employee is also able to speak with other professionals in their field who offer insights on how to successfully build teams and achieve meaningful results. These events allow the employee to take on a more active role in their organization and industry.

Professional Certifications

An employee with a Fundamental Payroll Certification (FPC) decides to pursue their Certified Payroll Professional (CPP) after three years of working in your payroll department. The employee’s goal is to win a promotion opportunity, make a bigger contribution to the company, and receive a higher salary.

To actively support this employee’s development, the organization could offer to cover the fees involved in the payroll certification course and exam.

How to Create a Professional Employee Development Plan

Step 1: Evaluate Your Needs

Evaluate where your organization currently stands, what your employee development plan goals, opportunities, and challenges are, and how you need to shape and strengthen your workforce to achieve your objectives.

To help you begin, here are a few questions you might ask yourself about your organization:

• Do we have knowledge or skills gaps?
• Are we able to attract the talent we need?
• Do we align our training and development with our strategic needs?
• Do we align our benefits with our employees’ priorities?
• How do we measure and improve employee satisfaction?
• Are we doing enough to reduce turnover?
• Are we keeping up with changes in our industry?
• Are we preparing employees for our succession plan?

Think carefully about such issues and ask leaders and trusted colleagues for their suggestions. Create a list of answers and priorities that are as specific as possible.

Where possible, use data to answer these questions. From tracking turnover to how many employees are currently completing training programs, you can create a baseline and see how changes in your employee development plans impact the company.

Step 2: Focus on Individuals

Even though your development plan will affect your entire organization, it works by helping one person at a time. There’s no room here for lumping people together in groups. The magic of customized, one-on-one collaboration is what produces superior results.

Start by setting the right expectations for both managers and employees.  Explain that they will work together on individual employee development plans for the worker’s career development.

Next, clarify responsibilities.  Employees should take responsibility for their own career development by researching available resources and sticking to their self-training schedule, for example. Managers should act as facilitators who provide guidance, resources, and feedback.

Finally, encourage regular development-focused conversations.  Each employee should meet privately with their manager to discuss the employee’s professional accomplishments, abilities, interests, and needs. The manager should expect to do more listening than talking in this initial meeting. Remember—two ears, one mouth.

Here are some key questions to help managers launch the conversation:

• What skills are required to do your job?
• Tell me about something you’re proud of accomplishing in your current job.
• Do you have what you need to do your best work?
• What would help you improve your performance?
• Are there other positions in our organization that you are interested in?
• What are your career goals?
• What have you done to advance your career?
• What would help you make further progress in your career?
• What obstacles do you face in your employee growth plans?

A few more tips:  Emphasize the value of asking follow-up questions to managers, so they can better understand the employee’s situation. For the most insightful answers, managers should tell employees in advance what they’ll be asked.

Employees should also work with their managers to set specific, measurable goals using appropriate resources (such as those mentioned below). Also, make it clear to them that the growth and development plan isn’t because of anything they’ve done wrong. This is to avoid any false assumptions.

Step 3: Offer the Right Opportunities

Once you know what employees need and want, there are many possible ways you can help them work toward their staff development plan goals. It’s best if the manager has a list of resources ready to offer during the meeting. That way, the manager and employee can collaborate on the plan right away instead of having to schedule another meeting.

Here are some popular employee development plan ideas and resources to consider:

In the workplace:

• Coaching and mentoring
• Cross-training, job rotation, and job shadowing
• Stretch assignments
• A corporate university
• Succession planning
• Group training classes (when several people share a common need)

Online:

• Videos
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Classes
• Ebooks

Elsewhere:

• Membership in industry organizations that provide networking and training opportunities
• Conferences, seminars, and other events within your industry
• Tuition reimbursement

Some types of training and employee development may not be practical due to cost, time, and effort required, or other reasons. Managers should know in advance what they can and can’t offer. Many online resources are inexpensive or free but be careful to evaluate their quality.

Step 4: Track the Results and Refine Your Strategy

Once you’ve trained managers on employee development plans, evaluate the success of your managers’ efforts with individual employees and the impact of their employee growth plan on your organization as a whole.

Managers and Individual Employees

Managers should periodically meet with each employee to review their development plan progress, praise their accomplishments, and discuss where to go from here.

• Were there unexpected obstacles or difficulties?
• How can they be overcome?
• Are there new opportunities?
• Have the individual’s needs, career goals, or personal circumstances changed?

These growth plans for employees shouldn’t be set in stone. They should be living, breathing documents that managers continually adjust and improve to keep helping the employees thrive. The key is to be flexible so that you can adapt to changing circumstances if need be.

Additionally, how often a manager and employee formally meet isn’t as important as keeping their lines of communication open. This is so adjustments can be made as soon as they’re needed. Between meetings, occasional quick, informal check-ins can help. It’s an ongoing process and not a one-time thing.

Still, it’s a good idea to require a minimum number of meetings per year to avoid hearing the excuse, “Everything’s fine so we don’t need to meet.”

Organization-Wide

Consider what’s practical for your organization’s size, structure, and situation.  Measure individual results, assess aggregate progress, consider new opportunities to develop employees and obstacles, and adjust goals and strategies for your development philosophy. Repeat regularly.

Decide who’ll be in charge of overseeing employee development plans overall.
Small businesses may need to rely on one person who already has other responsibilities, likely in HR. Larger organizations may appoint a full-time employee-development person or decide a team works best.

Any of these approaches can work. The goal is to give whoever’s in charge appropriate power to act, accountability for the results, and a strong voice to advocate for the interests of both the organization and its employees.

Consider how your organization will evaluate and share results. Your executive team also needs to understand the bigger picture. Career development efforts should ultimately create a more optimized workplace with happier, more engaged employees.

One of the best ways to find out is by asking for feedback often. A brief, anonymous email survey can quickly take the pulse of your entire organization and show what’s working well and where there’s room for improvement. Make it absolutely clear to your employees that it is anonymous, to avoid suspicion that they are being “spied on.”