Employee development plans are designed to help employees grow both professionally as well as personally. Employee development Plans help employees in their career development. It is essential for employees to enhance their skills and upgrade their existing knowledge with time to survive the changes in the workplace.

Implementing Employee Development Plan Effectively

Once an employee development Plan is created, the next challenge is to implement it successfully. You need to be extremely careful while putting your plan in action.

You need to understand why your employees and organization need employee development plan in the first place? Remember, employee development plan does not mean asking employees to fill few forms and questionnaires.

Questionnaires and forms are just a medium through which you can actually know what your employees expect from you? The feedback forms must be read and evaluated properly. Creating piles of documents would not help.

You really need to sit with your team members and discuss their problems individually. Ask them to analyze their skills and knowledge. Let them come up with their problems and challenges they face in their day to day work for you to provide the right and appropriate solution.

Make your employees believe in employee development plans. Highlight the benefits of trainings, conferences, forums, online courses or any other employee development initiatives. Employees ought to get benefitted out of training programs for them to understand the importance and also motivate others to attend the same. Give some kind of special benefits to employees who regularly attend training programs and strive hard to acquire new learnings and knowledge to benefit themselves as well as the organization.

Employee development process does not always mean inviting employees for formal trainings, conferences, sessions, seminars, Webex sessions or formal discussions. Taking employees out once in a while for an informal get together also goes a long way in employee development and motivating them to deliver their lever best. It is not necessary you have to be after your employee’s life to make him attend training programs.

Informal meetings where every employee has the liberty to express his/her opinions also help in employee development. Ask employees to bring their mugs of coffee for morning meetings. Do not create any sort of pressure on them. They would never open up. Their ideas, concepts, opinions should be respected.

You would automatically come to know that employee development plans are implemented successfully when every employee attends training sessions with a smile and shows remarkable progress. Employees should not treat employee development initiatives as a burden.

Managers should keep employees and their career growth at the top of their priority list. Do not be rigid. Do not hesitate if you have to slightly deviate from the policies of organization if it is eventually benefitting the employee and making him happy. A slight modification in the management practices can sometimes make significant impact on employee development.

Appraisals should not come as a surprise to employees.Progess should be discussed with them on a regular basis. Employees must be aware of their key responsibility areas and their growth path in the organization.

Do not treat your employees as “slaves”. No amount of employee development plans would help if you do not respect your employees. Employees must have a say in major organization’s decisions.