Building a Career Development Plan - All the Steps and Templates You Need

You've got a team bursting with potential, but without direction, that potential withers. Enter the career development plan, a GPS to professional growth for professionals and the managers guiding them.

So in this post, we'll:

• Share what a career development plan is + its five core components.
• Take you through every single step of creating a comprehensive career development plan.
• Share a free downloadable career development plan template.
• Dissect five career development plan examples and share what they are doing right (and where they can improve).

🔮 What is a career development plan?

An employee career development plan is a strategy that focuses on helping employees build their skills, knowledge, and experience to advance in their careers. An employee career development plan aims to support the growth and development of an individual's career path while also helping the organization achieve its strategic goals.

What are the 5 components of a career development plan? 

The five core elements any career development plan should include are:

1. Assessment: An assessment of the employee's skills and interests to identify career goals, interests, and values.
2. General development plan: A plan outlining the employee's career goals and how they'll be able to achieve them.
3. Training and education: Training and educational opportunities that will help the employee reach their career goals.
4. Mentoring and coaching: Mentoring and coaching opportunities from experienced professionals (within your organization or not) to help employees reach their goals.
5. Performance evaluation: Regular performance reviews to assess progress and provide feedback on the employee's progress.

⚒️ How to create a career development plan for employees

Start with the assessments

By using assessments as a starting point, employers can create tailored plans tailored to each employee's unique skills and goals, leading to greater engagement and success.

At this stage, it's essential to consider two types of ways to assess employee skills and competencies:

• Self-assessments: These allow employees to take ownership of their development and identify their own strengths, weaknesses, goals, or other types of interest.
• Manager and peer assessments: Use these to get an objective look at what an employee's coworkers think about their strengths and weaknesses. Even identify those an employee might not even realize they have. This can improve transparency and fairness as managers and peers can provide their perspectives.

Run a skill gaps analysis 

This step lets you identify the specific skills an employee needs to develop to reach their career goals. 

A skills gap analysis can provide a realistic look at what competencies and skills employees need to acquire for a specific role or to reach their career aspirations.

Use a template 

Templates can save time and energy by giving you an easy-to-use framework you can change to fit the needs of each employee. Creating a standardized template within your entire organization will also let you keep things consistent and ensure everyone receives the same quality of support and resources when developing their career. 

➡️ We added a template, which you'll find below. 

Define the current state and desired states

Defining what the current and desired states for career development planning for employees helps you ensure that the plan is tailored to their individual needs and goals. 

You need to sit down with each of your employees to understand this. Otherwise, you risk having one single plan for everyone. That's not going to work for the majority of your employees. Not seeing progress would mean they're not staying motivated and won't have many results to celebrate. 

Set SMART goals

As per the SMART framework, the development goals you set should be:

• Specific: Clearly define goals so everyone understands what they need to accomplish.
• Measurable: Add a metric for each goal to track progress and measure success.
• Achievable: Ensure these goals are realistic and attainable so employees can feel motivated and inspired to reach them.
• Realistic: Goals should be achievable within your given timeframe and resources.
• Timely: Set a timeline and deadline for each goal so employees can plan accordingly.

➡️ Not sure where to start? Have a look over our best ideas for development goals you should set. 

💡 Tip: Don't forget to distinguish between performance and development goals so employee progress on each will finally make sense.

The more detailed and actionable the steps are, the easier it'll be for the employee to follow through and achieve their career aspirations. So follow up with every person once you've shared their career development plan to clarify any uncertainties.

Prioritize tasks once you've defined your steps 

To decide which tasks an employee should achieve first to reach their desired outcome, you can prioritize tasks based on:

• their urgency;
• how well they align with organizational goals;
• your employee's own aspirations.

You'll then have to further tailor the career development plan to the individual and their particular needs and interests. ]

💡 Tip: Encourage managers to give employees tasks or responsibilities in their current role that align with their development goals. This will make employee growth more manageable, compared to having to sit through courses that would take the employee out of work-related tasks.

Assign deadlines for each task

No deadline? Employees won't prioritize it. You need clear timelines (and particularly due dates) to prompt employees to work towards those tasks or goals. 

Let's be clear: Nothing extreme should happen if they don't finish a task on time. 

Instead, follow up with them regularly and check on any missed deadlines to assess the situation. Sometimes employees could get caught up with other tasks or miss the resources needed to finish a development activity.

💡 Tip #1: Consider setting milestones to keep employees motivated in their professional life. 

💡 Tip #2:  You can gamify the entire process by giving out shout-outs or small rewards once they hit these milestones.

Allocate resources

This is probably the most challenging and often overlooked part of a career development program. But ensuring employees can access high-quality resources is vital to keeping them motivated and engaged throughout the process. Plus, it guarantees that their training and progress meet industry standards.

➡️ Try Zavvy's extensive library with over 10,000 training materials and courses for various roles and professional levels.

Incorporate feedback and leave room for adjustments 

Nothing's set in stone. Career development planning should continuously evolve as you observe progress, results, struggles, or new goals.

One-on-one meetings are perfect for regular check-ins on employees' career development progress. 

Alternatively, set aside time for dedicated career growth conversations where the employee and their manager (or mentor) can adjust timelines or actions and re-prioritize tasks.

Establish a mechanism for documenting and tracking progress

You don't need to call a meeting for every update, though. Allow employees to self-track their progress and create documentation managers can openly access to keep up with everything.

💡 Tip: Use digital tools like Trello, Asana, or specialized HR software like Zavvy, where employees can add progress updates, attach certificates, or leave notes.

➡️ Drop an eye over our list of recommended career development tools for more digital solutions that can take your employees' growth to the next stage.

📝 Free career development plan template

Don't postpone building an effective career development plan. Download our free template to get your copy and customize it today.

💡 Bonus: Get an extra career discussion template to help you structure follow-up conversations and one-on-one calls. 

🔍 5 Career development plan examples

Already got a rough idea of what you want in your employee career development plans? 

We're analyzing a few public career development plans to share extra inspiration. We'll cover what we like about them and where we'd like to see improvement.

Individual career development plan by MIT Human Resource

This career development plan from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses a process of analyzing their current position and past roles from the perspective of the goals employees need to achieve.

🌟 What this career development plan does well 

• It allows employees to self-reflect on their strengths and weaknesses and potential goals and wishes.
• It incorporates realistic self-assessment to shape the focus of the plan.
• It provides a general overview of what an employee's career could look like to help them visualize their careers and keep them motivated.

🛠️ What could be improved

• Doesn't include any mention or focus on goal setting.
• It doesn't include examples to show people how to fill in the template.
• Doesn't leave room for a section to document the input of managers or peers.
• It doesn't fully assess current skills and knowledge as employees could provide a general answer.
• There's no dedicated skills gap analysis model.
• It focuses too much on self-evaluation, which can be one-sided.

Career development template by SEEK

This career development example from the employment marketplace SEEK is broken down into two core sections:

• one for analyzing strengths, weaknesses, and measurable goals;
• a second section outlining the training and development steps.

🌟 What this career development plan does well 

• Has a dedicated section for providing personalized training recommendations to address the areas of improvement identified in the first section.
• It allows employees to self-reflect and self-assess their strengths, weaknesses, and goals. 
• It gives concrete examples of ideas employees can fill in for their training and learning development.

🛠️ What could be improved

• Needs a space for managers and peers to leave their thoughts.
• Doesn't come with a dedicated list of resources and materials employees can access for training.
• Questions and timelines are limited to two or five years.
• Needs more structure in learning objectives.
• Doesn't use the SMART framework to clarify the specifics of the plan.

Personal and career development plan example by The University of Newcastle, Australia

This personal and career development plan example is similar to the one by SEEK as it's heavily focused on development goals and actions.

🌟 What this career development plan does well 

• It is filled in so employees get a rough idea of what they need to add.
• It follows the SMART framework.
• Allows for a great level of detail under each action item.
• There is a dedicated section for tracking results.

🛠️ What could be improved

• There is no dedicated section for manager and peer comments or feedback.
• There is no clear link between development opportunities and business impact.
• Employees have to look for their own learning opportunities and resources instead of accessing a library of study materials.
• There is no self-assessment section for employees to reflect on their strong and weak points.

Individual career development plan template by Case Western Reserve University

This example by Case Western Reserve University is more than a template. It is a guide designed to help employees and their supervisors set goals and identify the training or support needed to achieve those goals.

🌟 What this career development plan does well 

• It focuses on goal definition and includes a dedicated section for goal tracking.
• Includes both the employee's and the manager's perspective on career development.
• Has an entire sample page so employees can see how they need to fill in the template.
• Allows for self-assessment and self-reflection.

🛠️ What could be improved

• No room for progress tracking or follow-ups.
• No focus on timelines or deadlines.
• No 360° feedback system to spot blind spots from previous performance reviews.
• There's no concrete timeline (only deliverable dates) for achieving goals or completing action items.
• No section for the development budget.

Personal career development planning template by Pertemps Professional Development

This career growth and development plan provides a structured approach for employees to consider their individual, professional, and career progression goals. By evaluating any deficiencies in their abilities, knowledge, and past experiences, many employees can develop an actionable plan to reach their career goals.

🌟 What this career development plan does well 

• Allows for self-assessment and self-reflection.
• There's a strong focus on tracking if they're making progress.
• Has a highly-detailed section for action planning where employees can plan what activities they need to work on and how to measure success for each.
• Includes an introduction for getting employees familiar with the document.

🛠️ What could be improved

• Doesn't use the SMART framework to clarify the specifics of the plan.
• Only focuses on self-evaluation, which can be one-sided if the manager or peer feedback isn't considered.
• There's no room for managers to leave their feedback or contribute to action planning.
• There's no filled-in example, so it might confuse employees seeing the plan for the first time.
• It doesn't fully assess the current skills and knowledge of an individual.

➡️ Plan your people's career development with Zavvy

We want to stress the importance of making data-driven choices to guarantee you've got happy and skilled employees.

Zavvy's AI-based career management software will allow you to:

• 🗺️ Build relevant career frameworks based on impartial information, allowing for progression from one point to another.
• 🤹🏼 Measure, manage, and train competencies for all with our competency management software.
• 🤖 Use AI to create actionable development plans based on tangible insights and supply corresponding follow-up training materials.
• 📈 Run regular performance reviews and skills gap analyses.
• 🧑‍🎓 Let employees study via over 10,000 courses so they can reach their development targets faster.

And so much more!

📅 Ready to use Zavvy for your employees' career development plan? Book a free demo to see how it can change the future of your employees.

❓ FAQs

When is the best time to create a career development plan?

The best time to create an effective career development plan for employees is as early as possible, even during their first weeks within your company. This will help to ensure that both you and the employee have a clear understanding of that employee's career goals and objectives. Remember you should regularly review and update the career development plan to ensure it is still relevant.

What is the difference between career development and professional development?

Career development is focused on achieving long-term career goals. It's a process of making decisions and taking action to help employees move up in their current career path or into a new career. On the other hand, professional development focuses on improving and developing skills and knowledge to stay up-to-date in their profession. Its purpose is to help employees remain competitive in the job market and their careers.