Keeping your organization running means making sure your internal operations work, your employees perform the tasks that are expected of them, and your reach stays consistent.
Organizational growth is an entirely different matter.
If your goal is to keep getting better and to make progress every day, you’ll want to aim for a model of continuous growth. You need a robust employee development plan to make that happen.
After we define the topic and explain what makes these plans so useful, we’ll show you a step-by-step breakdown of how to start crafting your own development plans.
What is an employee development plan?
Sometimes also referred to as employee development programs or professional development plans, employee development plans (EDPs) are about maximizing an individual’s potential.
They involve determining the employee’s workplace goals and closely examining how to achieve them. They may also involve suggesting career development plans that the employee wouldn’t have thought of on their own, but that suit their strengths and preferences.
Since each employee’s needs and goals are unique, it follows that there are multiple different types of employee development to suit every type of employee. Some are focused on providing targeted training. Others offer more diverse development opportunities, such as short-term projects or temporary roles.
The key is that each plan should be tailored to the employee it’s created for.
Why do you need employee development plans?
Next, we’ll explore the close link between EDPs and organizational performance.
Each of the following results of using employee development plans helps create a company that’s better equipped for growth and internal improvement.
Upskilling your workforce
Many EDPs involve curating an employee training plan to help employees gain new, useful skills that will help them boost their work performance, from technical skills like using project management tools to softer leadership or communication skills. However, these training programs come with another added bonus: they let you upskill your workforce in specific, targeted ways.
For example, let’s say you want to take your newest IT talent from asking ‘what is PySpark’ to ‘how can I code my own interfacing programs in Python’. You would then include formal training modules related to coding, Python, and PySpark in their EDPs so they have the skills they need to boost their performance significantly.
The same principle applies when you’re looking to prepare your workforce for excellent leadership. By including leadership training and/or management training in many employee development plans, you’ll foster strong leaders who can take your company to new heights.
Optimizing efficiency
When you continually create plans to analyze your employees’ current performance and find ways to improve it, you’ll end up with better productivity and more streamlined operations with each new plan.
This is what employee development plans can help you do.
Employee performance is crucial to organizations’ growth as well. That’s because a company’s overall performance relies on the combined job performance of every team, and each member within those teams. EDPs for those team members will therefore help you create a more efficient organization on the whole.
This is particularly significant for industries like the restaurant business, where optimizing efficiency directly impacts customer satisfaction and consequently can increase restaurant sales.
You can think of an EDP as a kind of advanced performance review that comes with bespoke suggestions for improvement, like the kind that performance management software might help you create.
Securing individual career growth
There’s a lot more to professional growth than adopting a growth mindset and trying your best.
In order for employees to achieve their career goals, they each need an employee growth plan, together with career growth opportunities and the right support.
By including these growth opportunities in every EDP, you can ensure you’re shaping an effective employee growth plan while at the same time securing matching growth for your business. That’s because motivated employees who have what they need to succeed are a major asset to your business, as they’ll work hard for you.
Future-proofing your business
As we mentioned, upskilling is vital. Your employees must know how to use your newest contact center CRM integration, or you can’t reap the benefits of having it.
Employee development plans let you go beyond upskilling and into future-proofing, though.
Anytime a new tool appears on the market, you can add ‘learn to use this tool’ to relevant employees’ EDPs. This helps you stay ahead of new trends and adopt useful tools and approaches as soon as they become available, which acts as future-proofing.
Additionally, incorporating employee rewards into these plans, such as recognition programs or promotions, further incentivizes skill acquisition and fosters a culture of continuous improvement.
Boosting employee retention
Companies that want to grow need to keep their high-value talent on board. Thankfully, by helping employees reach management positions and other desirable future roles, EDPs help boost employee retention.
An employee development plan should always include details on an employee’s current position, whether they’re aiming to move to a different role or not. The plan needs to explore how they can better perform their current role, as well as practical steps to help them reach their ideal future position.
For example, let’s say an employee has been stuck in a team member position for some time. Each time new managerial positions open up, they’re passed over, but without experience in leadership roles, they’ll never be able to move to the executive position they eventually want.
Their EDP would then contain actionable advice to help them secure a managerial role in the new future, which encourages them to stay with the company and do their best work.
Steps for crafting the perfect development plan
Lastly, we’ll walk you through some actionable steps to help you get started with the process of creating an amazing employee development plan for each employee.
1. Choose your main metrics
Before we can get into the exciting action steps, we’ve got to do some groundwork.
You need to know which objectives your development plans will aim for. This includes both specific and broader objectives, and should balance personal development goals with organizational objectives.
Your chosen metrics need to measure employees’ progress towards accomplishing both their own goals and your company objectives.
2. Gather current data
Now that you’ve established your business objectives and how you’re going to assess whether they’ve been met, it’s time to start collecting information.
In other words, you’ve got to take stock of how close employees already are to their goals.
For example, let’s say someone has set the goal to learn all about data warehouse software. They already know how to use Apache Hive architecture, but they’re unfamiliar with the exact mechanics behind it. Your data should reflect their progress accordingly.
Consider leveraging technology such as executive search software to assist in identifying potential career paths and development opportunities for your employees, ensuring alignment with both individual aspirations and organizational needs.