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Did you know that 94% of employees would likely stay longer at a company if it offered learning and development opportunities?
It makes perfect sense, actually.
If you position your organization as a place where employees come just to get the assigned work done and then grab the monthly salary, then you'll only get the bare minimum from them.
Instead, if you actually take an interest in helping your employees to grow and then advance their careers in the company, they will stay loyal to the firm, and the employee retention rates will also increase.
So, a personal development plan is the way to go.
In this blog, we'll discuss what personal development plans are, its importance, and how to create one for your employees.
Most employees are passive about their work and do it monotonously, like muscle memory. There are only very few who actually have a clear goal ahead of them and have a game plan in place.
So, instead of letting your employees wander aimlessly by just doing the bare minimum, a personal development plan can give them a few goals to focus on and something to aspire for. It helps employees understand their absolute strengths and weaknesses and align their personal goals with the objectives of the organization.
What this does is show the employees a roadmap for their careers and what they can achieve with the right guidance and support.
The best part of providing a personal development plan for your employees is that it gives them the power to take action by giving them an idea of the set of skills and capabilities they would need to reach the pinnacle. These skills can align with the organizational and leadership competencies that the company would like to see in its employees as well.
A thorough employee development plan begins with self-evaluation in which the employee is able to figure out their strengths and weaknesses. The manager can help them structure their skills around their strengths and find a way to minimize their weaknesses. All of these actions can be streamlined to bring out the best in the employees and help them contribute effectively to the growth of the organization.
Apart from the obvious impact a self-aware employee can have on an organization, there are actually quite a bit of areas where a personal development plan for employees shows its significance. Let us look at some of the most relevant of them:
1. Enhances Skills
When a manager comes up with a personal development plan for an employee, the central area it focuses on is the skill gap. This signifies the areas where the employee could get better by acquiring more relevant skills.
For example, if an employee only has basic knowledge of MS Excel but could get ahead in the competition with a piece of more advanced knowledge, it would eventually lead them to become an expert in it. Similarly, any skill can be learned by an employee over time with proper guidance, which ultimately leads to an increase in the overall skillset of the organization.
2. Clarifies Career Goals
If employees have no clear goals for their careers in front of them, then they soon feel disengaged and demotivated in the work they do. This is where the relevance of personal development plans comes into play.
These plans help employees see the big picture and where they can reach the right goal in mind. Clarity in the goals they can achieve helps them become more loyal to the company as well.
3. Retains Your Best Employees
The time and effort a company puts into coming up with a personal development plan for employees indirectly speaks to how devoted the company is to the well-being of its employees. It shows the employees that the company cares about their growth and development within the company and sees them as irreplaceable. This reflects increased employee retention rates and decreased turnover.
4. Motivates them to Perform Better
The most obvious benefit of a personal development plan is that it motivates employees to perform better. They now know that if they acquire the right skills and work hard towards achieving their goals, they can have a bright future in the company. This knowledge is enough to make them stay motivated and engaged.
It's no rocket science and is pretty simple. All you need to have is the time and resources to dedicate to the process. You can create personal development plans for employes in just four simple steps:
Step 1: Conduct a Comprehensive Self-Assessment
Self-assessment is the foundation upon which the company can build a personal development plan on. The manager can ask the employees to understand their areas of strengths and weaknesses.
Along with that, the manager can take a look at the past few performances of the employees to have an idea of their caliber as well. Combining both these aspects, the manager can help the employee identify where they currently stand and where they want to reach.
Read more: Self-evaluation template to assess an employees' strengths, skills, and areas of improvement.
As a manager, you can streamline your employees' self-assessments with an employee success platform like ThriveSparrow. The platform allows you to facilitate these evaluations with ease and efficiency.
Moreover, you can pinpoint their strength and areas of improvements with the automatically generated performance reports.
Try ThriveSparrow for free and see how you can lay a solid foundation for your employees sustained professional development and career growth.
Here are some self-evaluation examples that you can add to your employees' self-assessment questionnaires.
Step 2: Set Clear Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Once the managers have an idea of the aspirations of the employees, it is time to create both short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals can focus on things they can achieve in the immediate months, whereas long-term goals can focus on areas they can work on in the next one to three years. It is an exciting way to get things heated up.
Step 3: Identify Necessary Skills and Plan for Development
You now have the list of goals the employee can achieve in the coming years and months. The next logical step to take here is to find out the list of skills they need to develop in order to achieve these goals effectively. When you create the goals, they must be achievable and must not give them any additional workload. The development plans must also not clash with the work schedule of employees.
Step 4: Monitor Progress and Provide Ongoing Support
The final step in implementing a personal development plan for employees is to follow up and measure the progress every now and then. What this does is redirect the employees whenever they stray from the path and help them with the right tools to speed up the process.
Depending on the category and type of goals an employee wants to accomplish, their personal development plan also varies.
Career Goals
If the career goal of an employee is to attain a leadership position within the next three years, the following steps can be included in the personal development plan:
- Attend leadership development workshops.
- Seek a mentorship with a current leader in the organization.
- Complete a management certification program.
Skill Development
Let us say that the skill an employee is looking to enhance is their project management skills. The action steps are as follows:
- Enroll in a project management course.
- Act as a project lead for a small team.
- Attend workshops on agile project management.
Communication Skills
If the goal is to improve presentation and public speaking skills, the following action steps can be taken:
- Join a local Toastmasters club.
- Take a public speaking course.
- Practice presenting in team meetings.
Technical Skills
The main goal here is to help employees acquire proficiency in a new programming language.
- Enroll in an online coding boot camp.
- Work on a real project using the new language.
- Seek guidance from experienced developers.
With ThriveSparrow, you can conduct online performance reviews and generate reports that highlight development plans for each employee, along with their strengths and areas of improvement. ThriveSparrow's AI-Based Personal Development Plans makes the process of writing PDPs for each employees that much easier.
Download your free sample of a 360 performance review report to see what insights you can leverage to enhance your organization's performance.
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Final Thoughts
Personal development plans are great tools to make your employees engaged, improve retention rates, enhance skills, and foster a culture of growth.
Such plans not only bridge the skill gaps but also provide employees with a clear roadmap for their career progression, aligning personal ambitions with organizational goals.
By prioritizing personal development, companies can unlock their employees' potential, ensuring a more satisfied, productive, and loyal team ready to contribute to the organization's growth and success.
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