Have a Personal Developmental Plan at Work? No?!
Feb 13, 2020
Personal Developmental Plans at Work – A Must Have
I’ve heard from too many people recently that they do not have personal developmental plans (PDP) at work. They are essential to a business because they 1) keep your stars and potential stars, 2) allow the employee to have an impact on his/her career, 3) force you to have a future or aspirational job description, not just of the present job (finding evidence of this missing also), 4) add accountability that’s easy yet powerful, and 5) so much more.
If you do not have a PDP or don’t use them as a manager, read on as it could change your life and career path for His glory.
What Is A Personal Developmental Plan?
A Personal Developmental Plan includes the following:
- Statement of how the skills’ proficiencies could help the employee advance the company’s or division’s strategic plan. This statement shows the employees the impact they could have and where they fit in.
- Priority of deadlines for the skill level development
- List of resources & actions that are designed to develop the skill level of the necessary aptitudes
- An assessment of each of the current skill levels for the impacted aptitudes
- A statement of some kind that indicates some reward system (not just money as explained later) for the employee along the way of a successful PDP implementation.
Benefit #1: Keeping Your Stars and Potential Stars
Without company growth, there won’t be opportunities for staff to grow. A fairly recent Harvard Business School study concluded that the biggest motivator is steady growth in meaningful work. So, if you don’t have opportunities for your best people to grow with a PDP in meaningful work, they will look elsewhere.
Benefit #2: Employee Has Some Impact on Their Personal Growth
When the employee is playing an active role in the development of the PDP, he begins to own it. Ownership is key in the motivation of the employee, and the success rate in the PDP implementation will be much higher.
At my last prior company, we gave employees a discretionary dollar amount for skill development that the employees researched themselves. They would write up a proposal for the expenditure of the money and what it would do to help with the implementation of their PDP. The supervisor would have to approve it or decline it with some suggestions of how to make the training more relevant to the PDP. One way or the other, the employee ultimately had some direct control over their own progress.
Benefit #3: Forces Manager & Employee to Design an Aspirational Job and Needed Skills
I am in the camp that the PDP is more important than the job description for one simple reason. The PDP incorporates both the current job, which time and innovation will change, and the description of the aspirational job of the future. Creating both will force management and employee to look ahead and see what skills are needed to advance the company’s strategy and the employee’s personal growth. The employee will understand much better what their impact could be which is motivating.
Benefit #4: Adds Accountability to the Employee and the Supervisor
By having a plan laid out to which both sides genuinely agree, accountability is much easier. I used to tell my wealth management clients how to make accountability for their pending decisions easier and avoid the wife, for example, from always being the “bad guy” saying “No”. When the husband would say, let’s go out to dinner to that fancy restaurant since we are so tired. The spouse has every right to say, “Well, we have a budget to which we both agreed to follow. What does it say about this spending?” The budget likely will tell you that the extra $100 on a fancier dinner needs to go to the children’s education fund instead. “OK. Let’s throw some burgers on the grill and have fun at home.”
The same is true at work. With deadlines, goals, proper resources and actions, both sides should have frequent monitoring of the PDP so that no one is surprised by an unmet deadline or one that is in trouble. It’s also easier for the supervisor to check in and not have to be the “bad guy” all the time.
Conclusion
I have just touched the surface on this very powerful tool for your career and/or business. There are numerous templates on the internet to fit your industry, business, management style, etc. If this tool is new to your team, I would also recommend you starting with an industrial psychologist or leadership coach like Fox Foxworthy, who has an international practice and somebody I have used. This tool properly implemented will produce great results for His glory.
Charlie Haines
