Creating a career development plan

A career development plan is a personal roadmap for career growth. It serves as a strategic game plan that outlines where the worker is now, where they want to go, and how they can get there. It reflects a proactive approach to managing one's career rather than simply letting it unfold.

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Career development plans are available under Workbench > Performance Management > Career Development Plans. Access to Workbench depends on your role within the platform. This feature is available for users with the Configuration and HRBP professional roles.

The Career Development Plans section in PaySuite helps you create and manage career development plans. There, you can see summary tiles: Development plans, with the total number of plans, as well as Published, Closed, and Draft tiles, with the number of plans in each status.

The page also includes a list of career development plans with names, codes, start and end dates, owners, statuses, and available actions, which we discuss in Working with career development plans.

The following figure shows Career Development Plans:

Career Development Plans page

Below you will find step-by-step instructions on how to create a career development plan using this page.

Step 1 - Plan details

Start by clicking the Create career development plan button in the upper-right corner of the career development plan list. The plan creation form is opened at the first step: Plan details, as you can see below:

Plan details step

To specify plan details, proceed as follows:

1. Fill in the basic details of the career development plan:

   • Enter a name for the new career plan in the Name field.

   • Enter a unique code in the Code field.

   • Enter a description for the career plan in the Description field. We recommend that you state in this field the purpose of the career plan to avoid any confusion if you create several plans in your system.

   • If required, select additional owners in the Owners field by typing their name in the search field and then clicking the name of the relevant person in the search results. If you don't add additional owners, you will be the only owner of the plan.

   • If required, select additional owners in the Local owner field by typing their name in the search field and then clicking the name of the relevant person in the search results. The local owner will obtain specific management capabilities, primarily focused on the plan's population. If you don't add a local owner, you will be considered the local owner of the plan. Only one local owner can be added per plan.

2. In the Key dates section, select the Start date and End date of your career plan.

3. You may also send the career development plan in PDF format to the Documents tab. To do that,in the Plan transmission section, check the Send career development plan PDF to Documents box and select the communication round from the drop-down list.

4. If your company uses several languages and you want to translate your career development plan, select the new language in the Translations drop-down list, and then enter the proper information in the Name, Code, and Description fields. Repeat this operation for all the languages that you want to support in your career development plan.

Click Next in the progress widget on the right side of the form to move to the next step of the career plan creation process: Population.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Step 2 - Population

Once you have entered the basic information for the career plan, you need to define its target population; in other words, the managers and workers who will be part of this plan.

To do so, proceed as follows:

1. If you want to include one or several populations, open the Population drop-down list and check the boxes corresponding to all the populations to be included.

2. If you want to take into account specific roles, open the Role drop-down list and select a role. The default All roles option includes all available roles at once. Alternatively, you can choose the Worker or Manager role.

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Keep in mind that this method creates a restrictive (AND) condition, meaning that the more criteria you select in the drop-down lists, the fewer workers will appear, as only the workers meeting all criteria will be included.

3. You can include or exclude individual workers in the Manual worker selections section. Click Manage workers and select Include worker or Exclude worker from the drop-down list, as shown in the following illustration:

   

   Population step

   Depending on your selection, the Include worker or Exclude worker pop-up window will appear, with a list of workers whom you can choose by checking a relevant box and clicking the Include selected or Exclude selected button. Workers added via this method will be included in – or excluded from – the list of recipients regardless of whether they satisfy the criteria defined in steps 1–2. You will then see the included/excluded workers in the table in the Manual worker selections section. The table allows you to search for workers using the search bar. You can also delete a worker from the included/excluded list by clicking the three-dot icon next to the worker's name and selecting Delete.

Click Next in the progress widget on the right side of the form to move to the next step of the career plan creation process: Workflow.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Step 3 - Workflow

In Workflow, step 3 of the career development plan creation form, you can update the labels of your workflow stages.

The Start date and End date are automatically added according to your selection from the Plan details step.

You have access to two workflow steps: Worker self-assessment and Manager feedback. You may change the title and description of these steps by clicking the icon and then the Apply button.

In the Worker self-assessment step, you may check the box next to the Allow workers to refuse the career development, as illustrated in the following figure:

Workflow step

Click Next in the progress widget on the right side of the form to move to the next step of the plan creation process: Career plan questionnaire.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Step 4 - Career plan questionnaire

After working with the workflow, you can create the questions that will appear in the career plan questionnaire.

To add a question, proceed as follows:

1. Click Add question in the upper-right corner of the Career plan questionnaire section. The following drawer will slide from the right side of the screen:

   

   Add question drawer

2. Type your question in the Question field.

3. Use the Response permission drop-down list to select Worker only, Manager only, or Worker & manager.

4. Choose the Answer type from the drop-down list:

   • Text input

   • Checkboxes, where you can create a list of answer options by clicking +Add answer option.

   • Radio buttons, where you can also create a list of answer options by clicking +Add answer option.

   You may mark this question as mandatory by checking the box next to the Answer to this question is mandatory option.

5. Click Add to add your question.

6. Once your questions are ready, they appear in the table in the Career plan questionnaire section where you can manage them:

   • Drag the selected question by the far-left side of the table row and drop it to change its placement.

   • To edit a question, click the icon located at the far right of the row corresponding to your question and select the Edit option.

   • To delete a question, click the icon located at the far right of the row corresponding to your question and select the Delete option.

   • If you want to see only enabled questions, change the state of the Show disabled toggle to inactive (gray).

Click Next in the progress widget on the right side of the form to move to the next step of the career plan creation process: Core components.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Step 5 - Core components

In Core components, step 5 of the career plan creation form, you can define the parts of your plan. By default, the plan consists of five sections:

• Career plan questionnaire

• Skills

• Goals

• Check-ins

• Attached files

The following picture shows this step:

Core components step

To configure the sections, proceed as follows:

1. Change the state of the toggles located on the right side of the sections to enable or disable them.

2. Drag the sections by the far-left side and drop them to change their order.

3. In the Skills section, click All skills from the library and then Select competency scale from the drop-down list. Alternatively, click Selected skills & competency groups and then Select skills & competency groups from the drop-down list.

4. In the Goals section, Select goal plan from the drop-down list and then Select goal type from the second drop-down list.

Click Next in the progress widget on the right side of the form to move to the next step of the career plan creation process: Sidebar widgets.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Step 6 - Sidebar widgets

In Sidebar widgets, step 6 of the career plan creation form, you can set up the widgets that will be shown in the career plan. By default, there are three sections:

• Career chat

• Behavior wheel

• Resources

You can see them in the illustration below:

Sidebar widget step

To define the sections, proceed as follows:

1. Change the state of the toggles located on the right side of the sections to enable or disable them.

2. Drag the sections by the far-left side and drop them to change their order.

3. In the Resources section, click Add resources in the Resource list and then add the Label and Link.

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Click Save as draft in the upper-right corner of the application to simply save your changes and finish the creation later on.

Click Publish in the progress widget on the right side of the form to publish the career development plan and finish the creation process.