E-learning and LMS blog articles

Looking to ensure your employees enjoy a long career within your organisation? Then help them thrive with an effective employee growth plan. Not sure what this is or how to create one? This is the blog for you. Follow our simple six-step guide to get started today. 

What is an employee growth plan?

An employee growth plan, also referred to as an employee development plan, is a strategic plan that supports the professional development of an employee. Typically, the plan will have been outlined by managers, HR professionals, or L&D teams but should be developed in collaboration with the employee to achieve the best results.

Speaking of best results, don’t expect to achieve the optimum outcome if you’re not tailoring the plan to each employee’s unique requirements. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to employee growth plans. When developing a plan, you need to tailor it to specific individuals, considering factors such as job roles, current competencies, skills, and goals.

Once these have been identified, an employee growth plan will outline the process that an employee should embark upon to reach their goals. This may be completing a series of training courses or attending role-specific seminars. No matter what steps are outlined in the plan, managers or L&D leaders must incorporate plenty of opportunities for feedback and assessment throughout. Keep reading to find out how.

What might be included in an employee growth plan?

• Existing skills, knowledge and competencies
• Professional development goals aligned with wider company objectives
• Competency frameworks outlining new competencies
• Career aspirations
• Resources and activities that will help employees reach their goals
• Feedback opportunities
• Assessments

Why should you implement employee growth plans?

We’ll let the stats do the talking on this one.

Staff retention: 86% of employees say they’d switch jobs for one with more chances to grow.

Increased productivity: 74% of workers say that a lack of employee development opportunities is preventing them from reaching their full potential.

Boost employee engagement: 80% of workers say the chance to learn new skills would increase their engagement levels.

Improve company culture: 84% of companies agree that a learning culture leads to a more resilient organisation and a better workplace culture.

Create an agile workforce: 74% of employees are willing to learn new skills or re-train to stay employable.

Strengthen employee ROI: Companies that invest in employee development and training gain 21% more profit.

How to create an employee growth plan with an e-learning platform in six simple steps

Step 1: Evaluate

To create a tailor-made employee growth plan that targets the unique requirements of individual employees, you must first evaluate their current situation. This is your opportunity to identify skills and knowledge gaps, along with understanding what an employee wants to achieve both in the short-term and long-term.

Establishing employee goals and aspirations is a straightforward process that requires a conversation or survey. However, identifying skills, knowledge and competency gaps may require a little extra work. The most effective solution here is to use LMS assessments that target specific skills and knowledge gaps, providing accurate and data-driven insights into employee evaluation.

Step 2: Identify

Once the above information is established, you can begin the process of identifying the key skills and competencies that will help employees reach their career goals. For example, if an employee has expressed an interest in moving into a leadership role, they’ll need to develop specific leadership skills and acquire any knowledge required to perform this new role.

Step 3: Outline

With a clear idea of the competencies and goals an employee is working towards; you can begin to outline any employee growth activities that will help them get there. This may include training courses, certifications, and seminars.

With an LMS such as Totara Learn, you can create tailored learning plans that use workflows to provide a structured and automated approach to any training activity, ensuring learners stay on track with enrolled courses and assigned competencies. What’s more, with visual markers such as percentage bars, learners and managers/L&D leaders can instantly measure how far an employee has come, which will help when moving on to step 5.

Step 4: Create

Having explored the library of available training content and assessed development activities, you may find gaps in your current offerings when aligning them with an employee growth plan. If this is the case, this is your opportunity to create some new training materials and courses using your e-learning platform’s content creation tools.

This is also the time to incorporate any live training events into an employee growth plan, such as webinars or seminars, that target specific skills and competencies that will be relevant to a number of employees across the organisation.

Additionally, you can look to incorporate some employee-led development opportunities such as mentorship activities or social learning activities. Peer-to-peer learning is an excellent opportunity for aspiring employees to chat with those who have already achieved the goals they are working towards and lean on the support of those with more experience. Social learning activities such as these can play a significant role in cultivating a culture of learning across your entire organisation.

Step 5: Measure progress

To ensure employees are staying on track with their growth plan, both managers/L&D leaders and employees must monitor and measure progress. Employees can share their progress updates in development meetings and discussions. However, to get the most out of this process, data-driven insights gathered from LMS analytics and reports will provide the most accurate picture of employee progress.

Find out how to use LMS reports to gain insights into training and development by reading our blog here.

Step 6: Assess

Using data taken from LMS reports and development chats with employees, you can begin to regularly assess the effectiveness of the employee growth plan. Are employees acquiring the right skills? Do they feel supported? Are they on the right path that will help them achieve their goals?

This is an opportunity for both employees and managers/L&D leaders to provide feedback. Using feedback and data, any necessary adjustments can be made to the growth plan to ensure it is optimised to produce the best results.

Create an effective employee growth plan with a Hubken LMS solution

While the steps outlined above are straightforward, you may find they’re not easy to implement without the help of a robust e-learning solution. That’s where our Totara and Moodle platforms come in. With all the necessary tools and functionality required to create the most effective employee growth plans, your employees will benefit from thorough development opportunities that ultimately maximise their potential within your organisation. Schedule a chat with us today to find out what a Hubken solution can do for your L&D initiatives.