Individual Development Plan

What an individual development plan is

An individual development plan (خطة التطوير الفردية) is a written document that an employee and the employee’s manager agree on. It sets out what knowledge and skills the employee will develop over a stated period, by what means, with what support from the organisation, and how anyone will know that the development has happened. It is a plan for one person, where a programme would serve a category of staff: each employee has a gap, a goal and a timeline of their own.

Four things turn a wish into a plan: a specific goal, a named gap between where the person is and what the role requires, activities with dates, and a review date written in from the start. If one of these is missing, the document turns into a list of ideas that is forgotten after the first meeting.

Where an individual development plan starts

The plan starts from two sources that have to meet. The first is what the employee sees in their own performance and what they want to become, and part of it comes from a self assessment, in which employees rate their own performance before their manager does, or alongside the manager. The second is what the organisation needs from the employee, which shows up when the demands of the role are compared with what the person actually has.

At team level that difference is called a skills gap: the gap between the skills a team has and the skills the work requires. The development plan brings the idea down to one person and asks which part of that difference sits with this employee, and which part the employee wants to close. If the two sources do not meet, for example when the employee wants something the organisation does not need, the matter calls for an open conversation before a word is written in the plan.

Before any activity is chosen, it is worth checking whether training is what closes the gap at all. A shortfall may come not from missing knowledge but from a missing tool or an authority that was never granted. That check is the work of training needs analysis, which identifies the gap between required and current performance before time or budget is spent on a course.

A plan for one year for a senior accountant who wants to become an accounts manager

Take a hypothetical case with simplified figures. A senior accountant is strong at closing entries and wants to move into managing an accounting team. The accountant and the manager agree a plan for twelve months with two named gaps: managing people, and reading financial statements analytically.

• Goal. To lead a team of three accountants through the next quarterly close, so that the statements are delivered on time without the manager redoing the work.
• A course in reading financial statements. 24 hours spread across the first and second quarters.
• Job shadowing with the current accounts manager. 16 hours, falling in the two weeks of the close.
• A practical project. Leading a review of the receivables accounts alone, estimated at 40 hours.
• Mentoring sessions. Twelve sessions of one hour each, which is 12 hours.

The activities add up to 24 + 16 + 40 + 12 = 92 hours a year. If a month is taken as 22 working days of 8 hours each, the year holds 22 × 12 × 8 = 2,112 hours, so the plan takes 92 ÷ 2,112 ≈ 4.4% of the employee’s time. That figure is the one to state openly: what leaves the employee’s schedule to make room for this, and who covers the employee’s work during the two weeks of shadowing? A plan that calls for 92 hours and frees nothing from the schedule is at risk of never being carried out.

At the review after six months the question is not whether the employee attended the course. It is whether the employee now reads an income statement and can explain a change in profit margin. Attendance is an activity, and the capability is what the plan is for.

The means an individual development plan is built from

A course is one means among many, and each suits a different kind of gap:

• Courses and recorded content. These suit knowledge that can be put into words. A learning management system records who completed what and when, which is evidence of completion, not of capability.
• Accompanying someone who does the work. This is job shadowing. It suits what is hard to put into words, because the employee sees how a colleague decides when priorities conflict.
• A continuing relationship with a more experienced person. This is mentoring. It suits judgement about a career path and professional judgement, and it rests on regular meetings over months instead of a single session.
• A broader assignment. A project or a partial responsibility that carries a calculated risk. This kind of means is close to the work itself, so it is practised as well as observed.

When the gap is one of behaviour rather than knowledge, a course does less and practical work and accompaniment count for more. The division of development effort among practical experience, relationships and formal training is the topic of the 70/20/10 Model, a formula offered as a framework and not as a calculated rule.

How an individual development plan differs from related documents

• The corrective document. A performance improvement plan (PIP) names a specific performance gap, what is expected to be reached, over what period, and the support provided. It starts from an existing shortfall and addresses it within a set time. A development plan starts from ambition and need, and the employee takes part in choosing its direction.
• The map of roles. Career pathing sets out the possible sequence of roles inside the organisation and what each move requires. It is a map for the whole organisation, and a development plan is what one person walks along that map, so the plan assumes the map exists or creates part of it.
• The needs analysis. It identifies where the gap is. The plan sets out what is done to close it.

A plan must not turn into a promise. An employee whose plan says they are preparing for a higher role has not been told that the role will open for them, because promotion is a separate decision that follows a vacancy and an assessment. The plan states plainly what the organisation does promise, which is support, not the role.

The role of each party in an individual development plan

The plan is the employee’s document before it is the organisation’s, so the work is divided like this:

• The employee. Proposes the goal, blocks out time for the activities in the employee’s own schedule, and comes to the review with what has been achieved, not with what was intended.
• The manager. Removes whatever obstructs the work, assigns tasks that build the missing skill, gives feedback close to the event, and protects the agreed time from being swallowed by urgent tasks.
• Human resources. Supplies the template, provides the tools and courses, and gathers what the organisation needs from the plans without writing anyone’s plan.

If the manager writes the goal and asks the employee to sign, the employee loses the first thing needed to act, which is ownership. A plan its owner does not want gives no reason to expect that owner to set aside hours of the working day for it.

How an individual development plan is reviewed

A plan needs two fixed dates: a short review every quarter and another at the end of the period. That is our reading, offered as a judgement and not as a rule to cite. The natural place for the short review is the one on one meeting, a regular meeting between an employee and the manager in which the time belongs to the employee, not the manager. The short review asks what was achieved, what got in the way and what should be adjusted.

The plan changes when what it was built on changes: a new role, a different priority, or a goal that no longer matters to its owner. An employee who completes the plan exactly as written after its goal has been lost has carried out a document without developing.

Goals should be worded so that they can be measured. The SMART goals framework requires a goal to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and set against a deadline. A goal such as “improve leadership skills” cannot be reviewed, whereas “lead the third quarter close with a team of three” can.

How an individual development plan changes with the employee’s stage

It changes in emphasis. For an employee in the first year, the plan’s priority is mastering the current role: the procedures, the tools and what is expected. For an employee who has spent years in the same role, the goal widens to what surrounds the role: getting to know the work of neighbouring departments and taking responsibility for part of someone else’s work. For an employee approaching a supervisory role, the goal lies in working with people as well as in technical skill.

How individual development plans are kept and used after they are written

A plan is kept in a place that the employee, the manager and the body that follows development plans can reach, because it contains the manager’s estimate of the employee’s shortcomings. It is not circulated to anyone with no connection to it. Plans can also be gathered, without names, to show the gaps they share. When the same skill appears in the plans of a number of employees, that is a signal that feeds training needs analysis across the organisation, and one programme can be designed for it in place of scattered individual requests.

What weakens an individual development plan

• One template for every employee, with no conversation. The boxes are filled in because human resources asked for them, and the plan becomes a file, not a tool.
• General goals with no measure. They cannot be reviewed, because they do not say what will change.
• A plan with no time. Activities are added to a full schedule, and daily tasks take precedence over them.
• A plan owned by the manager alone. The manager writes it and hands it to the employee, so the employee owns nothing in it.
• A direct link to pay. If completing the plan raises pay automatically, there is a risk that the goal becomes completing activities instead of gaining capability.

What happens when an individual development plan ends

At its close the plan is reviewed against evidence, not impression: what the employee now does alone that the employee did not do before, and what completed work bears that out. If the goal was met, the plan is closed and a new goal is opened from the next gap. If part of it was met, the question is why: was the time too short, was the means unsuitable, or did the role change during the period?

The record also states what the organisation delivered of the support it promised, because the plan is a commitment from both sides. An employee who achieved half of what was written because the organisation did not free the agreed time is not held to account for what was outside the employee’s hands. What is set aside from the schedule for the plan is named openly at the start, since whoever does not write down what is being given up has not stated the real commitment.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.