When a person wants to take their career to the next level, creating a personal development plan can help them visualise what they need to achieve to get there. Some plans can be as short as a few months, while others can be as long as five years.
Personal development plans — also known as PDPs, help employees make the best decisions to further their career goals.
They promote self-improvement by identifying a person's strengths and weaknesses, or more accurately, raising awareness of their growth potential.
Using a personal development plan, a person can create clear and actionable goals that can be broken down into achievable chunks.
A personal development plan is a tool, which acts as a detailed roadmap for career progression. However, its applications are far-reaching and people use them to work on personal goals too.
Before creating a personal development plan, the following questions may help estimate the scope required:
Next, a person works on the initial plan structure. Generally, a typical personal development plan includes:
The length and breadth of these sections vary between individuals as everyone's goals are different.
Personal development planning is fulfilling, as a person can monitor the impact of newly learned skills — not to mention, tracking progression also boosts confidence as it documents growth and fosters a sense of accomplishment.
Look at it this way, personal development plans serve as loyal reminders. They keep tabs on progress, but more than anything, they help a person visualise what achieving their goals looks like.
When creating a personal development plan, here are some key points to keep in mind:
These are six steps for creating a personal development plan.
To find purpose, assess what is happening now and whether it is helping or hindering progress towards the goal.
Considering asking:
Write a list of 10 things to prioritise. This initial step gives a person an idea of how their goals will fit in their current personal or professional life and how to execute them.
Just because someone has the potential to achieve something does not mean that they should take that path, especially if it doesn’t actually appeal to them. For example, if a new role involves unsociable working hours or inconvenient shift patterns, is the sacrifice worth the reward?
The purpose should be motivated by a professional or personal desire, not just pure obligation. Ultimately a person has to enjoy what they do if they want to build a solid career out of it. If not, the whole process of striving towards something that was never really wanted can trigger burnout.
When creating a personal development plan, pay attention to its effect on personal and workplace wellbeing. Under no circumstances should it trigger feelings of overwhelm or anxiety.
Think about procedures or prerequisites required for personal career development planning. For example, will an advanced qualification be needed?
Now is also the time to brainstorm all career plan objectives and ideas, these help narrow focus so a person can hone in on areas of interest.
Personal development plan objectives don’t have to be kept a secret. In fact, we recommend sharing them with a manager, so they can offer support where necessary.
With Perkbox's culture tool, you could even post an example personal development plan template, which everyone can download. Think of it like a digital notice noticeboard that you post cards to. Each card supports a range of attachments, including video, audio, photos, PDFs and more. There are a number of card templates to choose from, or if something more unique is required, there are blank cards, too.
Collective development plans are motivational, especially when goals align with managers and colleagues. Good supervisors, like to see their team members excel — and development projects make wonderful team bonding exercises, especially when planning workshops are included.
An action plan is an extensive, realistic to-do list that caters for short and long-term results. Some personal development plans span over five years, so in this instance, goals may be more weighted for the long term.
Before creating an action plan, consider the following questions:
Finally, set a deadline or clear timeframe for each goal. To make the planning process more rewarding, we recommend setting some initial mini-goals that are easy to achieve.
Even if a person only has 30 minutes each day, that’s more than enough. Developing new skills only requires a minimum of 15 minutes daily practice.
Additionally, celebrating an employee's progress with rewards, such as reward vouchers, keeps them motivated to achieve everything in their personal development plan.
Frequent praise is a big factor in the effectiveness of recognition and reward, so use these deadlines as an opportunity to deliver that praise and make the rewards feel more deserved.
Perkbox's points-based reward system includes thousands of rewards. Managers can also attach points to each recognition they send on the Perkbox app. Employees can then save or redeem these points right away. The more points an employee has, the bigger the reward they can claim.
The following templates can be catered to individual goals or for managers working on a larger scale. They can be adapted to suit short and long-term projects too:
And here's a fuller checklist provided by the Chartered Management Institute.
Or, for five-year plans, you may have a more in-depth graph…
Block off time to consistently work on the development plan. This could be reading a book on personal development over lunch, or taking an online course at home before dinner.
With Perkbox, employees can access many books and courses at hefty discounts or as freebies using points. There are even audiobooks to listen to as well.
This makes fitting in 30 minutes of development planning much easier, as employees have most of what they need in the Perkbox app.
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