The widening digital skills gap is one of the most pressing challenges facing companies today. As the pace of digital transformation accelerates, in particular artifical intelligence, the demand for new competencies is outpacing the current skill levels in many workforces. This rapid change highlights the critical need and role of an employee development plan, designed to address these skill gaps and prepare employees for evolving roles.
By implementing structured development plans, HR professionals and L&D experts can not only bridge these gaps but also boost job satisfaction, engagement, and retention. In a landscape where skilled employees are more valuable than ever, an effective employee development plan is essential for sustaining both individual and organizational growth. Let’s begin with a quick explanation of employee development.
Employee development is all about helping your team grow and build new skills when they need them. It’s a way to support employees’ career progress while also meeting company goals. It isn’t just about one-off training, it’s a long-term plan to identify skills, set growth milestones, and track progress over time. When employees feel supported in their careers, they’re more engaged and more likely to see a future with their employer. Without development opportunities, people inevitably stagnant, feel demotivated and are left dissatisfied, leading to employee turnover.
Employee development boosts engagement and retention, reducing turnover in the long run. Companies have two choices: they can spend resources on turnover, letting go of employees with skill gaps and constantly hire replacements, or they can invest in developing their current workforce, building the skills they require in-house. By creating an employee development plan, companies don’t just fill skill gaps; they empower employees to grow, ultimately adding value to both the individual and the organization. In 2024 investing in employee development is an investment into the company’s future.
94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career.
(LinkedIn, Developing Employees and Improving Performance)
An employee development plan is a strategic tool for fostering professional growth, providing employees with a clear path to advance their skills and experience. These plans not only align with company goals but also offer measurable metrics and milestones for employees to track their careers. Whether it’s through quarterly reviews, annual performance evaluations, or opportunities for internal mobility and promotion, development plans provide a structured way for employees to gauge their achievements. Additionally, qualitative and quantitative metrics can enhance an employee’s profile, highlighting valuable career experience both internally and in the external job market. In today’s fast-evolving digital landscape, where job descriptions are constantly shifting, these plans ensure that employees’ skill sets keep pace with changing tasks and technologies, with continuous training as the driving force.
Employee development should be tailored to meet each team’s unique needs and goals ensuring they can effectively adapt to an evolving business landscape. For example:
The key is consistency in skills development across all teams.
An employee development plan offers significant benefits, both for individual career growth and for the overall success of your company:
As we mentioned before, companies can either accept the costs of turnover or choose to invest in an adaptable workforce!
1. Standardize your employee development plans
Building an effective employee development plan is all about empowering your employees to grow. Start by mapping out their journey: What are their personal career objectives? Typically, this means setting up a plan that could include:
The magic happens when you align their current role with future ambitions. Look at their day-to-day tasks and figure out which ones fuel their goals—and which ones are just work. The plan should include strategies to double down on meaningful work and find ways to automate, outsource, delegate, or minimize tasks that aren’t high value.
Don’t forget to leave room for skill-building. What knowledge or experience would give your employees an edge? Perhaps independent training, mentorship, or workshops. Regular check-ins are key to keeping the plan on track.
2. Identify Business and Employee Goals:
Smart employee development means aligning individual goals with a company’s long-term strategy. This alignment ensures that employee growth directly contributes to the company’s success while keeping workers engaged and motivated.
Mapping individual aspirations to business needs
Begin by having focused conversations with employees about their career goals and desired skill development paths. Review these alongside the company’s strategic roadmap to identify areas where employee growth can support key business initiatives. This process involves looking for opportunities where developing new skills can both advance the employee’s career and fill organizational skills gaps. For example, if an employee expresses interest in developing leadership skills while the company plans to expand its project management capacity, create a development path that guides them toward team lead roles. This approach ensures that professional development serves both the individual and organizational needs.
Setting SMART goals with dual impact
Develop SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound), measurable goals that create value for both the employee and the organization. These goals should include a mix of short-term wins and long-term development objectives, with clear metrics to track progress on both personal growth and business contribution. For example, a goal might be “Complete advanced data analytics certification within 6 months to lead the department’s new business intelligence initiative.” This type of goal-setting demonstrates how individual development can directly support business objectives while providing employees with concrete targets for their professional growth.
3. Assess skills and competencies
Conducting a skills gap analysis is an effective way to ensure your team stays competitive. This assessment process helps identify the critical areas where employees need development to meet current demands and prepare for future challenges.
But what exactly is a skills gaps analysis? It’s a way to identify the difference between the skills an employee currently possesses and the skills they require to perform their job effectively or advance in their role. Think of two lists: “what we have now” and “what we need,”. Compare them in order to identify skill gaps that need to be filled through training or development.
For example, a customer success manager might be excellent at customer communication but lack experience with data analytics. If analyzing customer usage data is a new requirement for their role, this would represent a skills gap that needs to be addressed in their development plan.
Use a combination of self-assessments, manager evaluations, and performance data to create an accurate skills inventory.
4. Create clear objectives and milestones
Once you’ve identified your employees’ development needs through the skills gap analysis, the next step is to set clear, measurable objectives to guide their progress. These objectives should be realistic, achievable, and aligned with both individual career aspirations and overall business goals.
KPIs and Metrics
When defining objectives, focus on establishing a balance of quantitative and qualitative key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge progress. Quantitative metrics could include measurable outputs like:
Qualitative metrics can assess more subjective competencies, such as:
Together, these KPIs will provide a well-rounded view of an employee’s progress and the impact of their development.
Let’s look at how this could apply to the growth plan for a content marketing manager over the course of a year:
Short-term (3-6 months):
Mid-term (6-9 months):
Long-term (9-12 months):
By setting a mix of quantifiable targets and developmental milestones, you can chart a clear path for the content marketing manager to build new skills, take on more strategic work, and contribute meaningfully to broader business priorities.
5. Select developmental activities
Once you’ve defined goals and milestones for employee development, the next step is to identify the specific activities and resources that will help your team acquire new skills and knowledge. Build a broad learning ecosystem that goes beyond the traditional training course.
When selecting developmental activities, it’s important to consider the unique learning styles and preferences of your employees. Some may thrive in hands-on, experiential environments, while others may prefer structured, traditional formats. Additionally, the type of skills being developed, whether technical, interpersonal, or strategic – may call for different approaches. By offering a diverse menu of learning opportunities, you can empower employees to take ownership of their growth and acquire the skills needed to drive your organization forward.
Key developmental activities:
LMS, digital adoption platform, or eLearning. Each can provide extremely effective training to help increase software adoption. Digital adoption platforms such as Lemon Learning in particulzar can aid immediate adoption and correct use of data input and feature use, thanks to its learning by doing methodology.
Pair employees with experienced internal or external mentors to offer personalized guidance and support.
Tailor development plans to individual needs, such as software training on specific features in conjunction with weekly webinars and coaching sessions.
By blending these diverse learning modalities, you can create a holistic employee development ecosystem that addresses a wide range of skill gaps and learning preferences.
6. Monitor progress and offer feedback
Continuous assessment and feedback are essential for ensuring your employee development plan remains on track and delivers the desired results. Leverage a combination of digital analytics and regular check-ins with management to track progress and make adjustments as needed.
To gain comprehensive visibility into employee training and development on software, consider implementing a digital adoption platform like Lemon Learning. This solution offers cross-application analytics that track user behavior, engagement, and adoption across your organization’s various tools.
7. Adjust the plan as needed
Remember, your employee development plan isn’t set in stone. As you implement the plan and monitor progress, be prepared to adapt it based on feedback, performance, and changing company needs.
Schedule regular check-ins to review each employee’s growth trajectory and make any necessary tweaks. These conversations provide an opportunity to celebrate wins, look at challenges, and refine timelines, learning activities, or target metrics. By maintaining an agile approach, you can ensure your development initiatives remain relevant and impactful, as business priorities evolve.
View the plan as a growing document – not a rigid, one-time exercise. With this flexible mindset, you can equip your team no matter how their roles or the company may change over time.