What is a Professional Development Plan (PDP)? Examples & Template
Ready to begin growing and developing your professional identity but unsure where to start?
A professional development plan is a great starting block for mapping out where you want to be at certain points in your career. Whether you’re looking to gain more professional experience, improve your knowledge or level up your skill set – it’s the perfect way to focus your goals and aspirations into smaller, more achievable steps.
Ready to learn why they’re such a vital career tool? Read on for the best practices and tips on how to create a professional development plan.
Quick links
- What is a professional development plan (PDP)?
- Benefits of creating a professional development plan
- How to create a professional development plan
- Professional development plan template
What is a professional development plan (PDP)?
A professional development plan (PDP) is used to document both long-term and short-term development within your career.
As well as providing you with realistic goals, it will give you a roadmap to follow, including the skills, qualifications, and experience you will need to reach your goals.
Typically, a manager will create your PDP for you, but there’s nothing to stop you creating your own, using online resources or a mentor to help you outline realistic targets for your career.
A good PDP is dynamic and takes into account your strengths and weaknesses so that you can reach realistic targets and progress through your career.
Once you have a PDP, you can update it as you reach milestones and goals, alongside being able to refer to it throughout your career. With a regularly updated PDP, you’ll be able to measure your career progression while staying on track to hitting new goals.
Benefits of creating a professional development plan
While some people find that they’re able to progress steadily through their career and progress at a considerable rate, they’re absolutely the outliers in this situation.
Career progression can be difficult to track, but with a personal development plan, you can set targets and put training and experiences in place so that you can achieve your goals.
Many top organisations have found that by implementing PDPs into their organisation’s structure, staff can efficiently gain skills and climb the ladder.
How to create a professional development plan
Creating a PDP that is ambitious but realistic is a difficult undertaking. Below are some of our main tips for getting started with yours.
Conduct a self-assessment
Conduct a self-assessment before writing your PDP. Work out your current strengths and weaknesses, where you want to be in the next 5 years and how you can improve in order to achieve your goals.
Also, assess what motivates you so you can be more motivated to achieve your goals in a timely manner.
Identify your strengths and weaknesses
Once you have your self-assessment under your belt, you can begin identifying the things you’re best at. Talents like problem-solving and client communications with demonstrable examples are ideal things to include in your PDP.
Weaknesses might be harder to assess yourself, but you can try speaking to colleagues to find out areas in which you can improve. They may also give you strengths that you hadn’t considered.
Set goals
Realistic goals are the key to a great PDP. Discuss with seniors about goals such as moving into a management position or creating your own team within the business and how that might realistically be achieved with a set time frame.
Think about extra training or education you might need, or anything else that would aid with your plan.
Using the SMART method, set goals for the next 3, 6, and 12 months.
Create a plan and timeline
Before you start to write your plan, you’ll need to think about the timeline for your development. Does your manager have a set timeline in mind for your progression? Or do you want to achieve something by a certain date?
Setting a long-term target first will allow you to also set short-term goals while still aiming for your long-term target.
Measure your progress and successes
When working towards a PDP, be sure to measure success based on the timeframes that you’ve set.
You might find that you’re ahead or behind your target, and so you may need to reassess your goals and timelines so that they’re more realistic.
Professional development plan template
Ready to create your own PDP? We’ve provided a customisable template for you to use below.
When trying to progress your career, a PDP is an invaluable tool that can help you achieve targets within a tighter timeframe than you might otherwise have achieved.
By using the tips outlined above, you will be able to supercharge your progression and become a more valuable asset to your team.
To find out more about careers at SEFE please visit our homepage.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within this article are those of our third-party content providers alone and do not represent those of SEFE. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. SEFE accepts no liability for any errors, omissions or representations.
