In any job these days, as an employee it is important to have a clear plan on how you are going to progress. As an employer, you need to consider how people want to succeed and gain promotion within your organisation and work with them to set clear targets, reviewing these targets to track their performance against objectives. The best way to improve your skills within any job role is to produce a personal development plan along with your direct line manager. A key point to remember is that a personal development plan is personal and needs to meet both employee and employer needs. Even within smaller organisations, it is important to clarify and agree on development objectives. If you haven’t used a plan like this before, you might ask yourself how do I create a personal development plan? This post looks at stages of creating a personal development plan (PDP) and the key features of a PDP that need to be included along with how these fit together help you develop and progress within a job role.

Identify needs for a personal development plan:

One thing that is important when producing a personal development plan is to find out what areas you need to improve on. There is no point planning to go a training event for a basic first aid course if you have done the same course within the last 3 months. A PDP needs to be structured based on current performance within the job role and the individual needs of each employee to maximise their development within a role.

One way to assess what an individual needs to do to improve is to look at formal reports such as performance data, performance appraisal notes or feedback from customers. An example of identifying a need based on performance data would be looking at recent sales figures for an employee. If the sales figures were below target then additional training may be needed for that employee to improve their performance. If the sales figures were above target and stood out among everyone else in the team then a manager may review this and ask the individual if they are interested in developing a training programme to help the rest of the team. As another example, if there was some customer feedback on the company website to say that an employee had been unhelpful with a query then there may be a need for some additional training on telephone etiquette for that individual. Identifying the need to improve in certain aspects should not be seen as a negative but an opportunity to produce a personal development plan so that they can improve and develop to improve both the employee and company relations.

Another way that individual needs can be assessed for a personal development plan is by using self-assessment. Self-assessment in preparation to agree a personal development plan with your line manager can identify individual needs for the employee. Allowing employees to self-assess their own needs can empower them and show that you really care about their needs and how they will develop within the workplace. For example, just say someone that normally worked in a telephone sales role was asked to monitor the company social media account for a week due to staff shortages. That employee might have really enjoyed the change in activity and might feel that it is an area that they would like to improve their skills in. Self-assessment allows the employee to give you honest feedback about how they believe they are performing. If done in the right way can go a long way to keeping employees happy and developing training programmes that help both them and the company.

As producing a personal development plan is very much an ongoing process then it is important to record performance and have regular target setting and appraisals to make sure that individual needs are being met. When doing this, records can be used to set new targets and plan different activities based on the progress of individuals. For example, initial targets could be smashed and the employee could be fast-tracked on to the next level of a training programme. Alternatively an employee that wanted to train in a particular area but has not shown the level of interest or aptitude will need to be re-assessed to check what their current needs are, possibly allowing them them to move forward within the job role.

Plan developmental activities to address needs:

After initial needs are assessed and agreed upon, it’s important to put a clear plan in place to address those needs within a PDP. There are a number of ways of methods to help an employee develop based on the needs outlined as part of their continuous professional development. Some examples are attending events specific to the industry that they work in, shadowing someone who they can learn from or undertaking training relative to their role.

A key developmental activity that can be used to improve your knowledge within a certain activity is attending events such as trade shows or fairs. These events could also be sales or marketing events were an employee will get the chance to network and find out more about how your product is marketed and sold. Events provide a great opportunity for employees to build their confidence and find out what industry leaders are doing. If it is the first time that they have attended an event it will give them the chance to see how more senior colleagues build relationships to promote both the company and their personal profile. Many industry events include drop in training sessions that allow employees to build their skills within that industry. They can pick up new skills and take them back to their own workplace to improve personal performance. One big advantage of asking an employee to attend an event as part of your company is that many will see it as a reward if they have not had much experience of this type of thing before. It’s an opportunity for both the company and the employee to grow and there are benefits to having a fresh face selling your brand or finding out new information about your industry to feedback to colleagues.

Job shadowing is an other important developmental activity that can be used to help an employee work towards agreed personal targets on their PDP. Job shadowing allows for real-world on the job training were employees can observe people already doing the job that they will be doing as part of their role in the future. Job shadowing can also be used for employees trying to get a better understanding of the business on the whole. For example, someone working in the sales team might spend a week shadowing a manufacturing operative to get a better understanding of the technical aspects of how a product is made to help them to sell it better. Similarly the sales team employee might shadow a marketing executive to see what they are doing to promote the product pre sales. This might help them understand why the same questions are being asked over and over again during the sales process and the two employees could work together to improve business processes. Empowering employees like this is an excellent opportunity for them to build a greater bond with all aspects of the business and become a more effective employee. Some times job shadowing can be used instead of paying for expensive training courses. A person who is highly skilled within your company can allow someone else to develop their skills by allowing them to see how they use the tools and techniques needed to do the job at a higher level. This is beneficial for the person shadowing and also the more senior person. In fact many companies will ask skilled staff to provide experiences like this and to develop training materials as part of their own PDP to help others improve. Sometimes the best way to learn is by teaching others!

To develop skills needed to meet the targets that are outlined on a personal development plan training courses are another excellent developmental activity. Training can take place within the company or you can pay for external training events if there are no internal training opportunities. Investing in your employees by paying for external training opportunities can be really positive in showing them how much they are valued within your organisation. One of the key aspects of starting any job role is to have a generic personal development plan for new employees during a company induction that enables them to learn more about the key processes within a business. The length of an induction process could vary from one day or one week to 3 months or beyond depending on the technical aspects of the role. Internal training will form a large part of the induction process and any completed training will be mapped on to the personal development plan to show that employees have received training in key areas. When this is assessed and reviewed at a later date, areas of strength and areas for development can be identified to update the personal development plan for future needs. One of the great things about the internet is that there are many free courses available online to employees that really link to their current role and help them bring new ideas to a company. Part of identifying needs and developmental opportunities can be exploring different training courses that are available and presenting them to your line manager for consideration.

Consider learning styles:

Another key aspect to consider when you produce a personal development plan is the learning style of the individual in order to tailor developmental activities for that person. Understanding how someone learns is important as you can make sure that they will maximise the time spent when working towards key targets. For example, if someone is a very hands on (or kinaesthetic) learner then job shadowing along with practice exercises will really help them meet agreed goals and targets. Alternatively, if someone is a visual learner, providing them with video based training materials on the latest processes will enable them to work at their own pace and understand information in a format that suits them. It’s difficult to tailor every developmental activity to each individual but having a good understanding of how each person works and learns will maximise the effectiveness when working with them to produce a personal development plan. As mentioned previously, one aspect of a personal development activity might be agreeing to provide training for others within your organisation. When doing this, you need to consider the learning styles of others so that as many learning styles as possible are covered. Developing training materials for a range of learning styles will enable people to access materials in a way that best meets their individual needs. In turn each person will get the best out of the training activity.

Producing a personal development plan:

When producing a personal develop plan it’s important to have a clear set of processes and related recording documentation to make sure it is formalised within the business. An example of the steps that could be taken to produce a personal development plan could be as follows:

• Initial meeting with employer/line manager and employee to discuss needs
• More in-depth analyse of employee needs using existing performance data and self-assessment
• Agreement of personal targets between employee and line manager
• Discuss the ways that the individual learns and what types of training they like best
• Agreement of development activities and budget for training to meet targets
• Clear time scale set for targets and interim review of them
• A fully documented personal development plan in agreed format to be signed by both parties

The personal development plan can then be reviewed and updated accordingly at regular agreed intervals. Each review may allow for new targets and activities to be set based on current performance. One big fall down of producing a personal development plan for both employee and employer is that it is not agreed and updated regularly so keep this in mind. If you have a PDP in place make sure that you are given time to review it. Employees need to be encouraged to keep developing skills needed to enable them to succeed within the organisation. This is beneficial for both them and the employer as it’s a win-win situation as long as all parties have agreed on training and development activities. Knowing that they have the opportunity to develop within their current role can be a major motivational factors for all employees. Instilling a focus on progression to a more senior role should be a long term goal on any PDP also to get the best out of your employees and again this is something that will be looked on positively by all parties.