11 Inspiring Individual Development Plan Examples (+ Templates)

Whether you’re a startup of 50 or an enterprise of 2000, your people are at the forefront of your organization. And if there’s one thing that guarantees a successful business, it’s investing in your employees’ career growth.

Picture it: Your employees are thriving, engaged, and ready to conquer new challenges. But how do you get there? How do you create employee development plans that work?

We’re giving you 11 inspiring examples of employee development plans. For all these employee development plans, we go through what they do well and how to improve them.

1. Basic employee development plan

Creating a basic wireframe of your employee development plans is a good way to kickstart this program. Here is a sample template taken from the career website Indeed.

While it’s basic and not specialized for a role or even an industry, this sample development plan guides you to think in the right direction.

The biggest advantage of this template is that it’s a blank slate and gives you the freedom to customize it (via Microsoft Word or Google Docs).

At the same time, it comes with a drawback. You need to closely follow each employee’s progress to be familiar with their strengths, weaknesses, and desires for their future careers.

To make it even better:

• Start by listing each employee’s strengths, needs, and professional goals. This creates an opportunity for you to spend 1:1 time interviewing your employees and build a development plan that aligns with their expectations
• Next, create an actionable list of steps they need to take to grow in their current roles. This is a great practice to gain foresight into how your company and each department will scale in the months and years to come

2. Employee development plan for company growth (Slideteam)

Similar to the previous example, here’s another template from Slideteam – one that can be used across different industries and roles.

This is a great example of a career development plan best suited for a junior accountant role. One of the key highlights of this plan is that it has a section for estimated costs.

There are two main benefits of this template: ‍

• First, it gives you an overview of how much of the budget needs to be allocated per employee. This means that your employees will know from the start that you’re willing to invest in them—they can see cold, hard numbers rather than promises you make
• At the very end, there’s a section for manager notes. As hard as we might try, we often cannot categorize and label all our employees. This section gives you some room to leave additional notes for individual employees

To make it even better, create a more comprehensive follow-up process to ensure the employee stays on track, offer feedback, and provide additional support if they ever get stuck.

3. Career development plan example with comments (Lumenlearning)

Here is another great example of an employee development plan by Lumenlearning, complete with manager notes.

This employee development plan spans over two years. It has comments from the manager related to assessing their employees’ skills as well as specific plans for the future.

In this plan, the manager is responsible for external training in the form of courses and degrees and internal training through one-on-one mentorship.

One thing that sets this example apart from the previous ones is that it promotes accountability for both the employee and the manager.

While the manager is in charge of designing the development plan and choosing the right activities, the employees are responsible for creating their own timelines to complete the assigned tasks.

This is a great way to present the potential of career development to your employees. Through this, they can see opportunities to develop their role. At the same time, they can realize that the success of this plan largely depends on their willingness and hard work. This is strengthened by the fact that this is a long-term, two-year development plan and not a short-term initiative.

To make this development plan example even better, use the SMART goals framework. With specific, measurable sub-tasks and a set time frame, it is easy to measure one’s professional development.

4. Skill-based development plan

The examples we shared above all focus on the bigger picture: the soft and technical skills and the necessary training to develop an employee’s career. However, you don’t have to go into such a level of detail if you plan to develop skills by yourself. Here is an example of such an employee development plan:

The plan is simple: managers list their employees’ skills and grade them on a scale of 0 to 10. Then, there is a “Desired State” explaining what the manager expects from the employee to advance in their careers and within the company.

The “Gap” section defines what employees need to advance in their careers. The “Initiatives” section offers the specific actions that they need to take to achieve their goals.

To make this example more impactful:

• Ensure that your skill-focused development plan is not exclusively based on the managers’ assessment of employee skills (skills gap analysis)
• To achieve this, add employees’ self-assessments and even peer reviews to get more accurate results, and to prepare an effective skill-based development plan

5. Side-by-side employee development plan example (Smartinsights)

Here is another example of a detailed individual development plan by Smartinsights.

There are three elements that set this plan apart:

• There are two sections: one for the employee and another for the manager, adding an organizational context to the employee perspective
• There is a clear alignment between the individual career goal and the organizational needs and goals
• There are dedicated sections for progress reporting and feedback sessions

Having these two sections in one place gives a clear overview of the two different perspectives: individual and organizational. For example, you understand whether employee self-assessment is objective or not.

Overall, this is a perfect example if you’re looking for a template that makes the employee and their manager equally responsible for planning and execution.

6. Professional development plan example (University of Wisconsin)

Let’s analyze a new professional development plan example, this time from the University of Wisconsin.

What’s interesting here is that the employee is the one who is responsible for doing all the “development work:”

• They have to search for a peer member to shadow rather than receiving a specific suggestion from their leader
• They have to search for their own learning resources rather than receiving access to a library of learning materials

To make this even better, make development planning a more collaborative task. The team leader can act as a coach and facilitator, for example, by assigning tasks to mentors, providing access to training materials, etc.

7. Individual employee development plan example (Adobe)

Although single at first sight, the individual development plan example from Adobe masters strategic alignment.

The first part of this plan example focuses on employee self-reflection on:

• The most satisfying part of the job;
• key skills or strengths;
• skills or strengths to further develop.

By identifying their unique strengths and skills, employees can focus on areas where they excel and build on their strengths, which can lead to increased engagement, job satisfaction, and productivity.

The plan then differentiates short and long-term goals. This approach can help the employee prioritize their development efforts and stay on track toward their goals.

We really like that each development opportunity links to concrete action items. This will ensure that the employee has a clear roadmap to follow and understands how their development activities contribute to their professional growth. And to go one step forward, these also clearly link to business impact.

Strategic alignment between employee and company objectives means that the employee’s development efforts will also contribute to the organization’s strategic priorities and goals.

8. Learning and development plan example (DCU)

The learning and development plan example from Dublin City University is the most comprehensive plan example.

This plan contains sections that outline the specific what, how, when, who, and cost components of the plan, which can help to ensure that the employee and their manager are aligned in terms of expectations and goals.

We also really like the progress evaluation section, which is essential in a development plan. This section encourages self-reflection by asking questions such as:

• What will I do differently as a result of this experience?
• How will I continue to build on these skills?
• How can what you learn outside of work be integrated into your job to further your career?

The fact that this development plan covers multiple types of learning methods is also helpful, as this allows the employee to choose the learning method that suits them best.

The only elements we think are missing are:

• A dedicated section for manager comments
• A lack of a clear link between development opportunities and business impact. While it’s essential to develop employees’ skills and competencies, it’s also important to ensure these activities align with the organization’s strategic priorities

9. Performance development plan example (Reading University)

This performance development plan example from the University of Reading presents several assets:

• It allows the employee (and any reviewer) to reflect on their past performance and identify areas for improvement. This can help the employee to set clear goals and develop a plan for achieving them
• The tips and recommendations included in the plan can also be useful for employees who are unsure of how to proceed with their career development. These resources can provide guidance on how to set goals, identify learning opportunities, and create a plan for achieving career objectives
• The dedicated space for achievements and recognition can serve as motivation and a reminder of specific employee strengths

To improve this performance development plan example:

• Include a space to document whether your employee’s future professional goals align with the organization’s goals or objectives—if the employee has aspirations that are not aligned with the organization’s strategic priorities, as it may be more difficult to support their career development.
• Add a section for the available development budget
• Add a follow-up section where you can take notes during the development conversations that would happen throughout the 12 months that the plan covers.

10. 70-20-10 Individual development plan (University of Michigan)

The individual development plan example from the University of Michigan starts off with an expectations model (The Michigan Expectations Model - MEM). MEM identifies 12 benchmark behavioral standards that all staff should demonstrate.

This sample development plan starts with concrete guidelines for employees. The concrete steps that people need to take to create an individual development plan are:

• Self-assess
• Identify areas of development
• Select the resources to address gaps or build on strengths
• Create the plan

When creating their individual plan, each employee should set maximum three development goals. And they should formulate them with the SMART goals framework (to ensure they set specific goals that are time bound).

For defining the hows to achieving their goals, employees need to use the 70-20-10 developmental approach. For each goal, they need to define the different types of growth activities. The employees are also encouraged to share the plan with a supervisor or mentor to see where they can help.

To make this individual development plan even better, add a concrete timeline for each step. Plus, add milestones to keep people motivated to keep on working toward their goals.

11. Formal performance and development plan example (Washington State)

This Performance and Development Plan (PDP) example from the state of Washington looks more formal than most of the examples we reviewed so far.

We can definitely see that this is more than a development plan. The link to performance improvement is clear from the sections on performance expectations (key results and core competencies) and organizational alignment.

To make this performance and development plan even better, start by adding a section stating the employee goals. Then, add a new section with a concrete deadline and the given time frame for meeting the goals.

Bonus: Employee development strategy (MongoDB)

This employee development strategy example from MongoDB showcases the 70-20-10 model of learning:

• 10% formal training
• 20% social learning through manager support, coaching, comparing experiences with peer
• 70% on-the-job learning, feedback, and stretch-assignments

Free development plan templates

The easiest way to get started is by using our career development plan templates. They combine the best practices from all of the development plan examples we reviewed so far without requiring too much effort.

Our free employee development plan template is a structured tool for managers and employees to create and track employee growth collaboratively. Download it now and ensure that both individual and organizational growth objectives are aligned and measurable over a set period.

You can also use the 70-20-10 model for employee development planning, steering employees toward learning in the flow of work. Use our free 70 20 10 development plan template to get you started.

Bonus: Performance improvement plan template

Use performance improvement plans for employees whose performance has been declining. You can see PIPs as roadmaps that show employees how to get to their destination of increased performance.

Plan for your workers’ development with Deel Engage

When managing development for a significant number of people, the process can quickly become unmanageable:

• Individual development plans are dispersed across various formats, whether in Excel, PDFs, or PowerPoint presentations
• There is no centralized method for tracking progress
• A lack of centralized competency models for each role can lead to confusion and goal misalignment
• Daily work pressures can cause your people to overlook important development activities

With Deel Engage, you can manage your talent development strategy in one centralized location and automate the process. Transform your static spreadsheets into dynamic tools by:

• Creating engaging training courses—accelerating the process with the AI assistant
• Engaging all participants with clear guidance and motivational messages
• Assigning learning journeys from the learning library
• Ensuring the relevance of development plans by linking them to career frameworks and feedback systems

Additionally, Deel HR, our truly global HRIS solution, is always included for free

Book a demo to see how our solutions will help you develop, motivate, and retain your best performers.