Hands up if your talent development planning looks a little like this: once a year you deliver a blank questionnaire to your managers and staff and ask them to fill it out. From scratch, the manager and employee are expected to identify development areas, set learning goals, and outline a plan to achieve them - with no data, no guidance, and no tools to help.
If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. The individual development plan (IDP) is one of the most universally disliked processes in HR - and for good reason. It does not work.
The traditional IDP problem
The traditional IDP process asks three groups of people to do something they are not equipped to do. Managers are expected to be people development experts. Employees are expected to know what they need to develop and how to develop it. HR is expected to track and measure progress against plans that are often vague, impractical, and disconnected from business needs.
The result is a process that produces compliance, not development. Drawers full of worksheets. No meaningful change.
Why managers do not like IDPs
For one, they are uninspiring. Managers see the exercise as compliance-driven - it is just something they have to check off their list. Most managers are not prepared to make an effort to complete them constructively.
Organisations are expecting managers to be people development experts, but they are simply not skilled in that area. Without guidance, frameworks, or data, managers default to generic development goals that have no real impact.
Why employees do not like IDPs
Employees are not only bored by the task - they are also not entirely equipped to complete the forms. It is difficult to simply conjure up a list of things you would like to develop, and solutions on how to do that, from thin air.
How would employees know how to develop something they are already not good at? The blank form is not just uninspiring - it is genuinely unhelpful. It asks people to solve a problem they do not have the tools to solve.
Why organisations do not like IDPs
Even if the forms are filled out, there is no guarantee it will result in action. Are the development actions compiled by the employee and manager actually practical and implementable in your business? Chances are your HR team will be left with pie-in-the-sky ideas for development that might not fit in with your budget, organisational goals, succession plans, or business strategy.
And then, how do you track that the development they outline has started - and is progressing? Enter: another form in six months.
The compliance trap
The IDP process is designed to produce compliance, not development. When the process is compliance-driven, the output is compliance - not growth. The goal is to design a development process that people actually want to engage with because it adds value to them.
What works instead
If the way in which talent development has always been done is not working, what is the next option? Essentially, you need to remove the requirement for staff members to be people development experts.
You cannot expect employees to fill in the gaps in their development journey when they have been trained in accounts, project management, or social media. You need to guide them through development discussions with carefully-constructed and personalised questions they can answer, based on actual challenges they may face in the office.
You then need to provide pre-written but personalisable development advice, using their answers and the data you have about your employees. And since development is not a once-off task, you need to be able to continuously have development discussions when new challenges or areas in need of development arise.
Talentprint - Guided Development That Actually Works
Talentprint replaces blank IDP forms with guided development conversations that are personalised, data-driven, and actionable. Managers get the tools to have meaningful development discussions. Employees get personalised development plans with over 320 practical development ideas.