Introducing Development Plan
Career progression should be clear, measurable, and meaningful. Too often, employees are left guessing what it takes to grow, while managers lack the structure to guide them effectively. Traditional promotion processes can feel opaque or inconsistent, relying heavily on gut instinct rather than proven development metrics.
Development Plan changes that. This innovative feature provides a structured, skill-based, and transparent framework for driving internal mobility and employee growth. Whether an employee is aiming for a new role or looking to level up their current responsibilities, Development Plan brings clarity and structure to the promotion journey.
What is Development Plan?
Development Plan is a new TalentBoost feature designed to power personalized growth journeys across your organization. It gives managers the tools to define, monitor, and evaluate development paths based on real skills and job role requirements. Every plan is tailored to the individual, yet built on consistent criteria that ensure fairness and scalability.
Employees no longer have to wonder what “readiness” looks like. Managers can clearly articulate expectations, while HR teams can ensure promotion processes are equitable and aligned with business goals.
With this feature, development becomes intentional, measurable, and aligned with long-term success.
Solving the career progression gap
In many organizations, career development is reactive. Promotions are based on tenure or subjective evaluations. Employees may complete training, but there’s no clear connection to advancement.
Development Plan addresses these issues by answering a key question: What does an employee need to accomplish to be ready for the next step?
The benefits of Development Plan include:
- Clear, skill-based promotion pathways
- A guided, manager-led setup process
- Built-in feedback and progress tracking
- Multi-source evaluation options
- Consistent standards across departments
Whether you are a mid-size company or a global enterprise, Development Plan ensures career development is fair, transparent, and tied to results.
The four phases of Development Plan
TalentBoost’s Development Plan follows a structured four-phase process that guides managers and employees every step of the way:
1. Initiate the plan
Managers begin by creating a personalized development plan directly from the employee’s profile. A step-by-step flow walks them through the setup, with a visual outline of the process:
- Initiating the plan
- Defining the framework
- Learning and evaluating
- Finalizing the process
At this stage, managers choose which areas to include in the plan. These can include promotion path skills, additional skills to learn, personal goals, and feedback checkpoints. This ensures that every plan is tailored to the employee’s development needs.
The process is simple and intuitive, but flexible enough to reflect different organizational models.
2. Define the framework
This phase builds the structure of the plan. Managers select a target job position, and TalentBoost automatically pulls in the required promotion path skills associated with that role. This makes it easy to align development with actual role expectations.
From there, managers can enhance the plan by:
- Adding custom skills to learn beyond the core requirements
- Setting personal goals with tasks or milestones
- Defining structured feedback points such as mid-plan reviews
A plan overview dashboard tracks progress across each category and ensures all required elements are in place before moving to the next phase. Managers can edit, remove, or reset the plan at any time during this step.
3. Learn and evaluate
Once the plan is set, the focus shifts to execution. Employees work through skills, tasks, and feedback activities while managers monitor real-time progress. Key capabilities in this phase include:
- Skill ratings from multiple sources such as self, supervisor, peer, and expert
- Batch or individual skill evaluations
- Personal goal tracking at the task level
- Ongoing feedback and ad-hoc evaluations
The overview dashboard updates live, showing completion percentages for each category. Managers can drill down into specific skills or filter by ratings to quickly identify areas that need attention. Feedback checkpoints can be added at any time to capture meaningful progress insights.
This phase creates a shared understanding of where the employee stands and what still needs to be done to meet development goals.
4. Finalize the process
When all criteria are met, the manager is prompted to finalize the plan. This process includes confirming that all required skills, goals, and feedback checkpoints have been completed to the agreed thresholds.
Finalizing the plan:
- Locks the plan from further edits
- Provides a permanent record of progress and achievement
- Prompts the manager to update the employee’s job position
- Offers the ability to create a new plan for continued development
The final view offers a full snapshot of the completed plan. It includes all relevant ratings, goals, feedback, and timestamps, making it easy for HR or leadership to reference during promotion reviews.
Built for HR, L&D, and managers
Development Plan was designed to serve the needs of all stakeholders involved in employee growth:
- HR teams gain consistency and transparency across all promotion decisions
- L&D professionals can tie training efforts directly to real outcomes
- Managers have a framework for coaching and developing talent
- Employees get visibility into the path forward and how to succeed
This feature supports a shift from reactive performance management to proactive career development. It aligns with modern talent strategies that emphasize internal mobility, skills-first promotion, and structured development planning.
A new standard for growth
With the Development Plan feature in TalentBoost, organizations can bring structure and clarity to career growth. Instead of vague goals or once-a-year reviews, employees gain a real pathway forward.
Managers get the tools they need to support growth while HR and L&D leaders can ensure fairness, consistency, and measurable outcomes.
Career progression shouldn’t be a mystery. With Development Plan, it isn’t.
Take this self-guided demo to see Development Plan in action. Learn how you can bring structure to growth, clarity to career paths, and consistency to promotion processes with TalentBoost.
