What Is Individual Development Plan And How To Design It

Remember, the first time you entered the company of your dreams as a trainee? Over a period of time, you grew and progressed from one designation to another. How did you manage to grow or know what to expect when you reach the next level? Well, this is because an Individual Development Plan or the IDP was formulated to guide you. This is an official document which is prepared by both the employee and his immediate superior. It mainly contains goals related to individual learning and development. What is Individual Development Plan and how to design it? The answer to this question is very simple yet complicated. As earlier explained, IDP is an official document to help and guide the employee as well as his superior. Apart from the goals to be achieved, it also contains both the formal and informal ways and the training etc. required to achieve those goals. IDP is mostly used for

· The identification and the assessment of developmental needs in the future and areas related to individual competency.

· Providing learning capabilities which are structured and organized in nature.

· Deciding upon learning objectives and other individual developmental activities which will enhance the skills and pave way for future growth opportunities.

· Leveraging strengths.

Individual development plans are generally a little tricky to design. However, here are a few steps which will provide a clear understanding as to what is Individual Development Plan and how to design it?

Reason

One must have a reason for individual development plan. The reason could be as simple as a routine procedure for every employee or implemented on the request of a particular employee. Whatever be the reason, IDP is a tool to document areas of improvement and track developments linked to it. This document prepares the new employee to upgrade himself and be a chance to be a better resource to the organization. Situations like being new to the job or the challenges faced while being on a job or even department to department transfer is necessary for the development of an individual development plan.

Identify

In the next step to find out what is Individual Development Plan and how to design it, one needs to determine how the skill sets, attributes and knowledge base which are the three competencies, can be enhanced or taken to the next level. This up-gradation is very important in order to be able to perform your job well. These three competencies, individually or in culmination enables a person to achieve new heights of success. The employee and his superior will sit through sessions to arrive to a common agreed upon competencies. One also needs to ask question to make sure that the IDP is according to his needs. This is because specific jobs have specific competencies to be developed in order to do the job. You may be having a few of them already in you and hence do not require training on them. Thereafter, documenting the remaining competencies is necessary and can be done with ease.

Assign

This step holds key importance because in this step to ascertain what Individual Development Plan is and how to design it, you need to fix dates, costs, timeframes ad responsibilities. This step will decide the time frame by which the employee is expected to master certain skill sets or behavioral or even procedural training. Of course, this can be done only upon prior approval on the cost issues from his superiors. The implementation part comes from the employee but the support part has to come from the management.

Discuss

Though individual development plan will be jointly created by you and your superior, it is still better to discuss with him how you plan to achieve your goals. Your superior could provide valuable inputs and practical ways to approach your problems and challenges. Things could take a different course of action, if you are not that comfortable with your immediate higher up. In such cases, you can confide into one of your trusted senior colleagues. There are chances that colleagues of your age or in the same cadre, might be going through the same phase and may not able to offer you much help either due to their own inadequacy or inability to help you progress.

Open To Modification

The last and one of the most crucial steps to determine what Individual Development Plan is and how to design it is to keep your channels open. At any given point of time, your individual developmental plan should be open for further improvement and suggestions. This gives a scope for others to provide valuable suggestion which might have been missed out earlier.

Thus, these steps will be useful in answering the question what Individual Development Plan is and how to design it.