Investing in the growth and well-being of your employees has an enormous impact on reaching your business goals. It lowers turnover rates, increases employee engagement, and directly impacts revenue as well.
According to PwC, investing in employee experience and development can increase revenue by over 12%.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- How to structure a successful individual development plan, including a step-by-step breakdown with tips from our own team.
- An IDP template you can use right away or tailor to your own needs.
- Last but not least, real-life examples and a filled-in template that you can draw inspiration from if you have no idea what to write in your IDP template.
What is an Individual Development Plan (IDP)
An Individual Development Plan outlines employee career goals, along with skills, knowledge, and resources needed to achieve them. The purpose of employee development plans is to align personal ambitions with company objectives.
In other words, create a win-win scenario.
For employees, it provides a clear career path with defined milestones and actionable steps. This empowers employees to take ownership of their career growth and professional development, boosting motivation in the process.
For employers, IDPs are a way to increase employee engagement, retain talent and make sure each employee’s development contributes to long-term business goals.
If this sounds like too much theory, here’s one real-life example from my colleague who worked as a Head of Marketing at a fast-growing startup.
His department was organized into two teams: growth and brand. Even though this company was growing over 20% month-over-month, one of the Copywriters in the branding team was feeling unmotivated and lost in translation.
It was hard for him to see how content he’s creating is contributing to that growth. Their work wasn’t directly linked to revenue, hence why he start feeling unmotivated.
After sharing this, his manager made sure to break down the funnel to him, help connect the dots and challenge him to deploy different growth experiments in his content that will directly conitnue to influence revenue.
As a result, not only did he boost his Copywriter's motivation, but he also helped the junior creator broaden their horizons, develop growth on top of their content skills, and encouraged them to be proactive in bringing up ideas.
Interestingly, that Copywriter has since founded his own startup and become a well-known growth marketer. It's remarkable how things can turn out, especially when you have a manager who truly supports and understands you.
The contents of a development plan vary from one company to another but it all comes down to covering a few key components.
The key components of a successful IDP include:
- personal aspirations
- current skills and performance
- development opportunities
- future goals and an action plan to reach them
- a timeline for achieving set goals
How to create an Individual Development Plan for employees
Here’s a breakdown of the steps you can take to structure a development plan for your team members.
1. Define organizational goals and vision
IDPs shouldn’t exist in a vacuum; they need to be directly aligned with what the company is striving to achieve. That’s why your first step will be making sure you’ve clearly defined your organizational needs and objectives.
Every team member should understand the company's mission. Each team's goals should align with the broader company objectives, and every individual should contribute to their team's goals.
Let’s say a company has set a goal to go international and the first step is expanding to the US. Each team will contribute to that goal. The product team might need to adapt the product, marketing will work on a customer acquisition strategy and HR will hire local employees and set up operations in the new country.
Keeping goals like these in mind is essential when working on development plans because employee growth should eventually contribute to company goals.
2. Identify personal goals and aspirations
A few years back, a friend of mine was in a role that had a clear career path laid out. Even though she was happy in her role at the time, she couldn’t see herself following the pre-planned career path. When she voiced her concerns and shared her own ideas, it seemed there was little flexibility to tailor this path. This left her feeling unheard and, ultimately, less motivated.
Not having a career progression plan or having a rigid one are common complaints among employees. If you’re serious about developing your people, knowing employees’ aspirations is crucial.
Do you know what your employees want? While some employees are excited to grow into a leadership position, others look for opportunities to move horizontally, exploring different teams or becoming experts in their current field. Understanding that career progression doesn’t have to be vertical makes a huge difference when it comes to people development.
Our team at Kadar uses 1-on-1 meetings to learn about employee goals and aspirations. My manager included Career goals as one of the topics to discuss in our next meeting and shared questions we’ll discuss so I can have time to think about my personal goals.
There’s one brilliant video where Simon Sinek shared a very impactful device. If you think about it, this is what individual growth development is all about.
3. Assess employee skills and performance
Every effective IDP includes a thorough assessment of the employee. Before setting goals, it's crucial to gain a clear understanding of the employee's current skills and strengths.
With skill assessments, you can get an objective evaluation of an employee’s skill level. You can measure hard skills like programming languages for developers, copywriting for marketers, or reporting for finance roles. You can also assess soft skills like communication, feedback, and conflict resolution.
Let me share an example from one of our users.
Not too long ago, this startup discovered that one of their top-performing developers (let’s call him Lucas) was facing challenges in team communication.
Lucas’s team lead decided to assess hard skills and soft skills of each team member.
When it comes to technical skills, Lucas scored highly. Here’s a chart showing how peers and external collaborators rated his React skills, bringing his score to an 8.3 out of 10.
However, in a team environment, expertise alone isn't sufficient. You also need to excel at skills like team communication, receiving feedback, and problem-solving in various situations.
To assess how well team members collaborated, the manager conducted peer reviews where employees rated each other.
Here’s a similar report to the one Lucas received.
The team rated Lucas’s communication and feedback highly, bringing them to a score of 7.5 and 8.1 out of 10. However, his score for conflict resolution is only 5.6, with the majority of the team noting that he gets into arguments easily and doesn’t compromise.
Skill assessments provide valuable insights for both managers and employees, highlighting strengths and pinpointing areas that need improvement.
✅ Take action: Perform focused skill assessments, build career frameworks, and upskill employees while keeping them engaged. Start for free, no card required.
4. Define development opportunities
Once you’ve evaluated the employee, it’s time for the fun part — finding ways to grow. It really should be fun, if you do it right.
Development can take many forms: training, courses, mentorship programs, regular feedback and learning on the job. The issue with development is that it often comes down to mandatory programs that the majority of employees can’t stand.
For example, making every employee take workshops about things like assertive communication and remote work practices. Although the workshops were great, most of people aren’t excited about them because they feel like schoolwork. They are not tailored to personal skill sets or interests.
When you provide those same employees with a learning budget, motivated individuals will invest it in developing skills they're passionate about and can apply to their daily work.
Let’s say you’re a backend developer working in Python. Your learning library might have intermediate Python courses but also materials for learning database design.
If you're interested in a leadership role down the line, your manager might arrange 1:1 meetings with a mentor who has proven experience in leadership and is a few years ahead of you on this career path.
Users can add things like mentorship sessions to the learning hub. The best part? They can also tailor the learning hub on an individual level.
✅ Take action: Create personalized learning hubs for every team member and help them unlock their true potential. Start for free, no card required.
5. Set goals and action plans
Each IDP should break down the employee’s larger aspirations into specific, measurable objectives. These action steps provide a roadmap for growth.
With the goal in place, the next step is to put together an action plan that will bridge the gap between where the employee is and where they want to be.
This plan includes specific steps needed, such as enrolling in courses, attending workshops, or taking on specific projects.
For example, a frontend developer’s goal for Q3 could be to improve their React skills, following a plan they agreed on with their manager.
Don’t forget to include KPIs that will help you measure employee progress.
6. Support employees
Setting up goals and action plans is only the beginning. When the employee starts working on their goals, make sure they have access to whatever is needed to achieve their goals.
Without proper support, goal setting can have the opposite effect. Employees may feel stuck if they’re given feedback on what needs improvement but not the tools or guidance to make those improvements. If an employee is told they need to improve their SEO skills, but no training or knowledge sharing are provided, they might feel lost or discouraged.
Whether it’s tools, resources, mentorship or emotional support, your organization is responsible for providing support to employees.
7. Monitor and adjust
An IDP shouldn’t be set in stone, it can evolve over time. That’s why it’s important to monitor the employee’s progress, evaluate their performance and refine the IDP document as needed.
As employees develop new skills or take on new responsibilities, their goals may need to shift. The company’s priorities can also change and we need to adapt.
Regular check-ins allow managers to evaluate the employee’s progress, offer support when it's needed, and make real-time adjustments. Don’t forget that monitoring progress also means celebrating milestones and solving any roadblocks along the way.
You can schedule a review every 3 to 6 months to go over work quality, assess team collaboration and see the employee’s progress towards the goals you set together. After the review, you can set tasks for the next period.
By making IDPs flexible, you’re keeping them relevant to both the employee’s career growth and the organization’s strategic goals even when they’re changing.
Employee individual development plan example
Although IDPs are highly specific to a company and a role, here’s an example of an individual plan to give you some inspiration. Don’t worry, we’ll leave a blank version for you at the end!
Steal IDP template + how-to example
Whether you’re looking to help employees develop their skills or prepare them for future leadership roles, IDPs provide a clear roadmap for success.
Take the time to invest in your people, and you’ll see the impact on both individual and company growth.
