How to Create an Employee Development Plan That Actually Works

Employee development plans (EDPs) are standard practice in most organisations. They are also, in most organisations, largely ineffective. The plan gets written during the annual appraisal, filed somewhere in the HR system, and revisited — if ever — only at the following year's review.

The gap between the intention of development planning and its actual impact is not a mystery. It reflects a set of consistent design and implementation failures that, once understood, are correctable.

What an Effective Development Plan Actually Does

A genuine employee development plan is not a list of training courses. It is a structured roadmap that connects an individual's development needs to specific learning activities, embeds accountability, and creates the conditions for real capability growth.

Effective development planning rests on four foundations:

Clarity about the development need. The plan must start with a clear, honest assessment of what needs to develop and why. This requires distinguishing between skill gaps (the person has not yet learned to do something), knowledge gaps (the person does not yet know something), and performance gaps (the person knows and can do something but is not applying it consistently). Each type of gap requires a different development approach.

Connection to meaningful goals. People develop more effectively when the development goal connects to something that matters to them — a career ambition, a role requirement they find genuinely challenging, or a capability they want to build for personal as well as professional reasons. Development plans that feel imposed rather than owned consistently underperform.

A portfolio of activities. The 70:20:10 framework, developed by McCall, Lombardo, and Morrison at the Centre for Creative Leadership, suggests that roughly 70 per cent of effective development happens through on-the-job experience, 20 per cent through learning from others (coaching, mentoring, feedback), and 10 per cent through formal training. Development plans that consist entirely of formal training courses miss the most powerful development levers.

Accountability and review. The plan needs a named owner (the individual), a named supporter (typically the manager), defined milestones, and scheduled review points. Without these, even the best-designed plan evaporates under the pressure of day-to-day operational demands.

The Structure of an Effective Plan

A useful employee development plan includes:

Development goals — stated as outcomes, not activities. "Become confident and competent in presenting to senior stakeholders by Q3" is an outcome. "Attend a presentation skills workshop" is an activity. Outcome-focused goals are more motivating and enable better evaluation of progress.

Current state assessment — an honest baseline. This might come from a recent 360-degree feedback report, a performance conversation, a psychometric assessment, or the individual's own reflection. The baseline provides the reference point against which progress can be measured.

Priority development areas — most plans try to address too many things simultaneously. Two to three priority areas produce significantly better results than eight to ten. Priority should reflect both the importance of the gap and the individual's readiness to address it.

Development activities — a portfolio of experiences, relationships, and formal learning. For each priority area: what will the person do on the job to practise and apply the capability? Who will they learn from through coaching, mentoring, or peer feedback? What formal learning (workshop, online course, reading) will they engage with?

Success indicators — how will both parties know the development is working? Behavioural indicators (what will be observable if the development is effective?) are more useful than completion of activities.

Review cadence — scheduled conversations, not assumed conversations. Monthly or bi-monthly development conversations maintain momentum. Annual reviews are insufficient.

The Manager's Role

Managers are the most important factor in the success of employee development plans. Research consistently shows that the single most powerful predictor of transfer of learning from training to the workplace is manager support — before, during, and after the development activity.

Specifically, managers who:

• Discuss the development plan before a learning event (setting context and expectation)
• Check in after the event (asking what the person learned and how they intend to apply it)
• Create opportunities for the person to practise new skills on the job
• Provide regular, specific feedback on the development areas

... produce significantly better development outcomes than managers who simply approve training requests and ask nothing more of the experience.

Common Failure Modes

Confusing activity with development. Sending someone on a training course is not the same as developing them. Development requires application, feedback, and reflection — not just attendance.

Addressing everyone's development in the same way. Different people at different career stages with different learning styles need different approaches. A one-size-fits-all development planning process produces mediocre results across the board.

Neglecting the motivational dimension. People develop most effectively when they want to develop. A technically excellent plan imposed on someone who does not see the relevance or share the goal will underperform a simpler plan that the person has genuine ownership of.

Under-investing in experience-based development. The most powerful development opportunities are usually right at hand: a stretching project, a cross-functional role, the opportunity to lead something new. Organisations that treat formal training as the primary development vehicle leave enormous value on the table.

Development Planning at Scale

For HR Directors and L&D leaders managing development across large populations, the challenge is creating a system that enables genuine individual planning without becoming an administrative burden.

The most effective approaches combine:

• A simple, flexible development plan template that guides without over-constraining
• Manager capability development (managers need to know how to have good development conversations)
• Integrated data from performance assessments, 360 feedback, and capability frameworks
• Regular governance: are plans being completed? Are review conversations happening? What does the population-level data reveal about systemic gaps?

References

McCall, M.W., Lombardo, M.M. and Morrison, A.M. (1988) The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Kirkpatrick, D.L. and Kirkpatrick, J.D. (2006) Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels. 3rd edn. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Jennings, C. (2013) 'The 70:20:10 Framework Explained', Charles Jennings & Duntroon Associates.