IDP · Individual Development Plan
Individual Development Plan
What is an IDP?
- An employee-driven, individual development plan
- Assess → Set goals → 70:20:10 activities → Follow up
- A development tool, not an appraisal tool
Introducing an IDP changes who owns development. Before, training meant HRD drafting an annual plan and team leaders assigning people to courses. Once an IDP is in place, the conversation shifts from "Which course do you want to take this year?" to "What role do you want in three years, and what assignments do you need this year to get there?" The numbers the organization tracks change too. Instead of training budget spent and enrollment counts, it tracks how far each employee’s skills have moved and whether that progress led to the next role.
In practice, the first requirement is drawing a clear line between the IDP and performance goals. MBO and OKR cover the results to deliver this year, while the IDP prepares someone for the next role. Put both on one sheet and urgent performance work crowds out the development items, leaving them unfinished year after year. The IDP also sits at a different level from the CDP. A CDP is the career path the organization designs and presents; an IDP is the plan an individual carries out this year along that path. There are two operating models: a blanket model, where every employee writes a plan once a year and reviews it quarterly, and a selective model, where only succession candidates and key talent are managed closely on a monthly cycle. Either way, it works better to limit goals to two or three. Treat 70:20:10 less as a rule that forces ratios and more as a check that the plan isn’t filled with training courses alone.
The most common failure is tying the IDP to performance reviews. The moment progress on development items counts toward ratings, employees list things they already do well and hide their weaknesses, and managers use the form to justify grades, so the development conversation disappears. The second is when HR treats completion rate as the success metric. They report a 95% submission rate, yet only 20% of quarterly check-ins happen, and next year’s form repeats last year’s sentences word for word. The third is the most dangerous: asking people to state their career goals and then failing to respond with any project assignment or job move. The IDP then only makes one conclusion clear, “there is no path for you here,” and speeds up departures.
Hwi KimCEO of HRDIST & Talent Development Systems Consultant
John KimJohn Kim, author of B2B Marketing Design and CEO of Nanum ConsultingThe IDP grew out of talent development practices that link individual career goals with organizational development. Global companies and public-sector agencies established its standard formats and processes. It took its current form as findings from career development research, such as the 70:20:10 learning principle, were built in.
Consider a hypothetical case: Company A, a specialty chemicals maker with 480 employees. Among its 130 R&D staff, 7 researchers in years 3 to 5 resigned voluntarily in the previous year alone, and exit interviews kept repeating the same line: "I can't picture what I'll be doing here five years from now." The HR team ran a six-month IDP pilot with 62 people across three R&D teams.
- The HR manager dropped the old 12-box IDP form and cut it down to a one-page sheet with just '2 goals, 3 development activities, 4 check-in dates'. The reason: "If it takes more than 20 minutes to fill out, nobody will use it."
- In a first meeting with a 4th-year researcher, the Development Team 1 leader skipped the usual question about preferred training courses and asked instead, "Which project would you like to lead in 3 years?" Based on the answer, they set this year’s goal as 'leading a client technical meeting independently'.
- In the activity design stage, the team leader gave the employee a sub-leader role on a new mass-production project, and added monthly side-by-side feedback from a senior researcher and a 16-hour statistical quality control course, combining experience, relationships, and training.
- The HR team changed its tracking metric from completion rate to the 'quarterly check-in rate' and, at the end of each quarter, sent team leaders who were behind on check-ins a list of the people still due. The check-in rate rose from 43% in Q1 to 88% in Q4.
- Six months later, 11 of the 62 pilot participants had taken on new project roles, and voluntary exits among employees in years 3–5 fell from 7 in the same period the year before to 2. Agreement with “I can see my growth path” in the internal survey rose from 38% to 71%.