Personal Development Planning

Personal Development Planning (PDP) is a process which prompts you to focus upon your life and development of it in a purposeful way, enabling you to gain maximum benefit from all the experiences life offers you.

There are many motives to go to university, develop your qualifications, and get a degree and to get a better job. What all these motives have in common is a focus upon development. Most people hope that the opportunity to study further and improve their skills will offer them opportunities and challenges to grow. PDP gets you to think about exactly what you are learning from all the things you do-including academic work, part-time jobs, voluntary work, work experience, leisure activities, responsibilities etc. PDP’s can be constructed by organisations to enable them to see what training and development each individual employee needs in order to achieve organisational aims. A good personal development plan can improve employee motivation; it will provide a focus for discussion and interaction between an organisation and employee while devising a strategy for staff training and development. However, conflict may arise if the individual career development aims of employees differ from the aims and needs of an organisation.

PDP focuses on:

The full range of situations in which you learn
What you are currently learning
How you are learning
How successfully you are learning
What skills and qualities you are developing through your learning
Where you’re learning may take you in the future.

By participating in a personal development plan it enables you to clarify what you want to achieve and review your progress towards these goals.

Deliberately thinking about the learning which is taking place in all these contexts will help you to be come more self-aware. You will realise just how many skills and qualities you are developing through your activities, as well as recognising situations in which you lack confidence or essential skills. Such insights will cause you to think specifically about the skills you would like to develop and how you will go about gaining them. Writing them down will give you an aid to refer back to and review your progress.

The advantages of PDP on your own personal development are:

Recognition of your current skills and qualities which will increase your confidence.
Understanding how your activities are developing you as a person, which will increase your motivation and your attitude towards learning.
You will feel more able to take control of your own learning and know more about where it’s taking you, how you learn best and what skills you would like to develop further.
Self analysis will inform your thinking about your future career-you will have a clearer idea of your strengths and skills you enjoy using, which will help identify career areas which may suit you. Furthermore the skills audit may reveal gaps in you skills profile which may be essential to address before applying for a job.
You will enhance your employability. A clearer understanding of your skills and strengths will enable to market yourself well to employers in a competitive labour market.

PDP causes you to step back from what you are doing, evaluate your achievements and skills and plan for your own future development. In doing so, it supports your academic learning, but will also help you make a confident transaction in your life. Many graduate employers now expect their employees to be involved in Continuous Professional Development. (CPD) They need a flexible workforce who are able to respond to change quickly; so they look for employees who are aware of their performance and able to reflect and analyse their contribution to the company, as well as learning new skills and evolving with the company. Such as learning new skills in order to promote to a higher role in the job , or learning new skills to be a more valuable employee to the company , and able to do more things. Although this could cause problems if the company cannot afford to train their staff in the way they desire, which could cause conflict. Also, this can cause de-motivation and lead to a higher turnover in staff for a company, if an employee feels they are being ignored, or under valued if they spend the time to create a PDP and their manager doesn’t do anything about it.

The best way of getting started is to do an audit of your skills and subject- specific knowledge, showing how you have developed these.

Your skills audit should:

Review the skills you currently possess
Record the activities/contexts in which you have developed them, including the coursework and feedback which provides the evidence of this
Identify skills which you still need to develop
Suggest activities you intend to try, which enables you to develop them.

Completing this exercise, will gather you relevant information for your CV and identify gaps in your skills profile which you need to address.

There are a range of strategies which the organisation can use when completing this process to identify the individual development needs of their employees:

Job Analysis

The general purpose of a job analysis is to document the requirements of a job and the work performed. Job and task analysis is performed as a preliminary to successive actions such as; defining a job domain, writing a job description, creating performance appraisals, selection and promotion, training needs, assessment and organisational analysis/planning.

In the fields of Human Resources, job analysis is often used to gather information for use in personnel selection, training, classification and/or compensation.

There are several ways to conduct a job analysis including: interviews with supervisors, questionnaires, observation, and gathering background information such as duty statements. In job analysis it is common to use more than one of these methods. For example, the job analysts may tour the job site and observe workers performing their jobs. During the tour the analyst may collect materials that directly or indirectly indicate required skills (duty statements, instructions, safety manuals, quality charts etc.) The ...

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In the fields of Human Resources, job analysis is often used to gather information for use in personnel selection, training, classification and/or compensation.

Job analysis can result in a description of common duties, or tasks, performed on the job, as well as descriptions of the knowledge, skills, abilities and characteristics required to perform tasks.

When carrying out a job analysis, it is important to consider the function of the job and to anticipate future developments that might alter this function or the current job tasks. E.g. Developments in technology may require different skills or lead to increased productivity so that some employees have to be redeployed within the organisation. Each case requires different types of training and development.

Observation

Observation is perhaps the easiest and most obvious way of assessing the needs of an employee for training and development. Observation normally consist of an employee’s manager or supervisor being aware; through day-to-day contact and seeing an employees productivity in terms of throughput, errors or waste, capabilities, the employees strengths and weaknesses etc. This can be used to decide whether training is needed to improve employees’ skills and abilities. Employees however, may feel intimidated, if they feel they are being observed too closely or judged too harshly, therefore, this will affect both productivity and motivation.

Self-Observation

Self-observation seeks to avoid any feelings of intimidation by letting employees consider their own performance and to make a judgement about the skills they need to develop in order to become more efficient in their jobs. Being given the responsibility of assessing their own ability and training needs can lead to increased motivation. However, the main problem with self-observation is that it’s likely to result in a subjective assessment.

Peer Assessment

Peer assessment is when an employees’ performance is assessed by their colleagues. This is likely to be more objective than self-observation and give a more all-round assessment than simple observation by the employees’ manager/supervisor. However, the result could be bias, if colleagues feel they have to support an employee. In 360 degree assessment or appraisal the assessment is made by everyone who has working contact with that employee, including the employee’s manager or supervisor, colleagues, subordinates and others in the organisation, and even customers and suppliers where this is appropriate.

Appraisal

Appraisal, normally involves an interview between the employee being appraised and his/her manager or supervisor. The interview must be carried out in an atmosphere of trust and support, and the employee should not feel intimidated or threatened in any way. A well-conducted appraisal interview will help an employee feel valued and identify the areas of concern for the employee as well as the employer. Poor appraisal interviews can de-motivate employees. Appraisals which are not acted upon can also lead to de motivation.

Performance Review

A performance review is the most wide-ranging method of establishing the training and development needs of an employee. Usually, a performance review includes use of the tools described above to provide an in-depth analysis of an employee’s training and development needs.

Examples of how different companies undertake this investigation:

Tesco

All Tesco Staff have Personal Development Programme, to ensure they have the right skills to do their job and can access learning tailored to their own personal development needs, from induction and operating and leadership skills to core skills, such as project management, personal efficiency, effective meeting management, presentation skill and facilitation. Each individual has a career discussion with their manager to plan their career progression. They are placed in a “talent pool”, and this information is used to determine who fills future vacancies and to identify cross-functional movement and development opportunities.

Marks&spencer

In-depth training and performance coaching is offered and the employees are regularly assessed to ensure that they have the support needed to achieve their potential.

At the end of every 6 months a performance review or appraisal takes place. Employees discuss their progress with their line managers. Employees are given ratings for the skills and competencies they have shown over the past year. These are compared with expected skills profiles for these areas.

This feedback helps employees identify how they are performing in relation to the expected technical skills and business competencies and reveals any gaps.

The line managers and employee then discuss and agree on a plan for further development for the following year. All staff have a personal development plan in which they set objectives based on the feedback from their performance review. This helps them to construct a realistic and focused career path.

They use training and development to improve the technical skills and business competencies they need in order to undertake particular management roles. This performance cycle helps Marks & Spencer to maintain an efficient, effective and motivated workforce.

LogicaCMG

To help develop the talent required, the company operates a performance development programme for all staff, and amongst management, the company runs a leadership and succession planning programme. These development programmes are provided to help employees expand on their skills and competencies with the aim of, where appropriate, developing their careers within LogicaCMG.

The company’s performance management system for employees is annually reviewed and developed. It embraces, amongst others, the following principles:

clear and agreed personal objectives
career pathways that identify key capabilities and behaviors at different competency levels across core career paths
personal development and succession planning to support training and personal growth
Annual appraisals to review progress and determine pay and promotion.

These programs are an important foundation for growing the business and meeting its global ambitions.

This benefits the employees as they feel valued in the company takes an interest in them;causing them to be more motivated and hardworking.

Wales Millennium Centre

An audit is undertaken to establish which staff speak Welsh or are learning welsh, and their level of proficiency. The audit will also establish which staff wish to learn Welsh or are required to do so. Information on the bilingual skill needs of each post and the bilingual skill level of the existing post holder will be inserted in the central Personnel record system. The system will enable the information to be accessed and sorted in such a way as to allow an overview of progress to be maintained, and reports to be produced. Posts where bilingual skills are considered to be within the desirable-to-essential range will be ‘tagged’, which means they will be prioritised for language training, and appropriate bilingual abilities will be attached to the job description should the post become vacant. Job focused language training will be provided during work time to facilitate aspects of Scheme implementation, such as dealing face-to-face or over the phone with customers, or for more demanding situations such as formal presentations or media interviews.

From this investigation I can see that large companies when undertaking audits/PDP programmes ensures their staff are well trained for their job, but are also motivated by the chance that by training and learning new skills , they have the opportunity of being promoted , new opportunities and feel valued and prioritised by the company , motivating them to work , causing the company to be more successful.

My personal Development Plan

Where am I now …?

I am currently, just ending my first year at 6th form, having just complete my AS examinations; where I have been studying Applied business, English Literature and Welsh. I achieved the grades of a B in business; B in English Literature and an E in welsh. As I can see that my weakness is Welsh , and it will be hard to improve this grade next year , I have decided to finish this course and I now study History 1 night a week at college where I will be able to achieve my A level in 1 year. I have previously achieved my GCSE grades of 3A’s, 6B’s and 3C’s. Last year, I also achieved my key skills level 2 in both Math and English. I gained a B grade in both English and Mathematics, and a C in Science. I feel I didn’t do as well here as I only studied single award science and was entered for the foundation tier, as I feel I wasn’t as devoted to this subject as I didn’t enjoy it. I can see this in other subject areas as I gained better grades in subjects I enjoy such as business studies, Welsh and Music. I enjoy Music and I recently achieved my grade 6 in piano, which I have been playing for about 10 years, as it’s something I’ve been interested in for a long time, just as a hobby and usually play just at home, although sometimes performing in school assemblies/shows.

I have also been attending a night course in college for the past year which is a part time course over the time of 2 years, where I have recently achieved my Hairdressing NVQ level 1 and I’m studying towards my NVQ level 2 hairdressing. I enjoy this is a hobby out of school , where I am also learning a new skill at the same time, which is job related, and gives me more options for a career if I chose so. I also have had some work experience for this career, which has helped me see into the industry some more to make my decision, as I have worked part time at weekends in a local salon. Although I enjoy this, I find the work quite tiring with long hours , for a small salary , and believe there are more advantages to teaching. As with teaching , there is more opportunity for promotion, which maybe could be achieved in a smaller time rather than waiting to be able to open my own business. Also, the wage will generally be higher, as from researching some salon jobs , I have found that the average pay I would receive is national minimum wage, or wage depending on experience; again meaning It would take a length of time to achieve a good salary.

I completed a skills audit on the University of Gloucestershire website. From completing the various skills audits , it helped me to see which areas I was lacking/doing well at, to help me with the next section of my PDP; I have included the audits in the appendix. A skills audit identifies and recognises the skills I currently possess, and helps me to decide what I need to work on or continue doing. It allows a business, to consider whether the skills available within the organisation are being effectively utilised, and it identify potential skills gaps or skills shortages.

I have good IT skills, and I’m able to use most Microsoft Office programmes, which I’m constantly using at school/college and home. I’m able to use the more sophisticated functions of the word processor and use spreadsheet, database and e-mail software effectively. I feel I have good organisational skills, and I’m motivated to finish a task I have started, I can see this from completing tasks in college and tasks at school where I need to meet deadlines and complete coursework, also preparing well for exams and organising revision well. I feel I am able to make notes effectively, and express my ideas and opinions on paper. I also feel I can use the internet to research well, and through projects which I have completed in school, I know that I’m able to interpret statistics and graphs well.

I could improve my communication skills, as I tend to be shy around new people, although it depends on the environment. I think I need to improve my ability to cope with change. I feel I’m able to work well in a team with people I have chose to work with, but then less effectively with people I don’t know , which I need to improve. Although, college helps with this and enables me to talk to new people constantly as I’m working in a busy environment, meeting customers; building on confidence. I know that I need to work on my confidence for that type of job industry.

Where do I want to be….?

In college, as I enjoy the hairdressing course I am studying, I definitely want to pursue this and carry onto achieve my level 3 qualification after this course. Although, I don’t think this is a career that I would want to do all my life, and would just continue it part time or through friends and family, as I also enjoy English literature and I’m more bias towards this as I believe it will lead me to more career options in the future. Therefore I will put hairdressing on a hold until I have achieved my other goals. For this reason, I decided to stay in school as well as go to college to have more options.

In school, the subject I enjoy most is English literature, as I enjoy both the reading and analysing part of it and would like to go on and continue to study this when I have finished my A level course. My ultimate goal is to become an English teacher.

How do I get there….?

My motive for learning and development is to learn and improve new skills and to be able to plan what I will be doing with my qualifications, and achieving them to get a better career, and set goals for myself for the future.

I have no specific timescale, as I could change my mind, and career at any point in my life, or problems could arise etc. Although, realistically I would like to have at least started my career or be in a steady job I want to do by the time I am 25.There are no imminent changes I will have to make to my lifestyle, except obviously move further onto education, which will cause me to move house and change my lifestyle in that way. Also when I’m studying at a high level I will have to ensure that I keep up with all the work and put the revision in to achieve the qualifications I want.

My ultimate goal is continuing to study English literature at university and to be able to teach English in a comprehensive school up to an a–level standard.

I will measure my success by seeing if I actually achieve this goal, and gaining my qualifications to allow me to work in a school and teach, successfully with a steady job, being able to support myself, and pay for my home, bills , food etc.

Factors which may stop me from achieving my goal could be a lack of resources such as a lack of money which may stop me from being able to pay for university fee’s and not being able to continue on my education. However, there are now a lot of funds / loans available to students, and teachers just starting out, which I have researched these shown below; grants for English teachers training are at around £7,200.

In the short term, to achieve this goal, I will need to work hard and achieve my a-levels, and specifically receive a good grade in English literature.

My medium term objective will be to go to university, and achieve a degree in English literature, as well as carrying out some work experience as a teaching assistant while I continue with this course, and achieve my QTS.

My long term objective is to get a job teaching English in a comprehensive school. I could then try and continue onto becoming head of department at the school for the English department.

Information about the job

When I have achieved my degree in English literature, I will need to start to train as a teacher.

Ways of getting into teaching

The next step I will need to take is to plan and achieve my qualified teacher status (QTS), enabling me to teach across state-maintained schools across England and Wales. This almost always means completing a program of initial teacher training (ITT).

Combining theoretical learning with at least 18 weeks spent practicing teaching on placements in schools, ITT helps will help me to develop the skills I need to become an effective teacher and achieve qualified teacher status (QTS).

By taking a Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree with qualified teacher status (QTS), you can study for a degree and do your initial teacher training at the same time.

If I successfully complete my induction year, I can hope to be eligible for a teaching grant. The chart shows an idea of the amount of money I would be able to receive.

Which kind of school am I interested in teaching in?

The kind of school I choose to work in will make a significant difference to the kind of experiences I will face as a teacher.

As I’m still at school, I have thought carefully about the degree I’m going to take.

Getting some experience of being in a classroom is one way of helping me make my decision of if I really would like the teaching lifestyle , and assure me I’m choosing the right career/age group/subject to teach etc. Although while completing my degree I will get work experience of being in a classroom while I am training so this will help me gain experience of the career.

Pay and benefits

Once I have completed my initial teacher training and achieved qualified teacher status (QTS), from September 2007 I can expect to start as a newly qualified teacher (NQT) in England and Wales on £20,133 a year (or £24,168 if I plan to work in inner London).

Benefits

In addition to my basic salary, I will also receive a range of benefits, including:

Responsibility payments - additional money if I take on additional responsibilities
Teachers' pension - the second largest public sector pension scheme in the country, and
Holidays - more days than many people in other professions

Career prospects and development

Management and leadership responsibilities

There are a number of ways in which I could progress in my career, either within the classroom or in a leadership role.

As I would like to teach in a secondary school, I could be promoted to a number of different roles as:

a particular subject as head of department, faculty or curriculum
a particular age group as head of year or key stage coordinator, or
a particular area such as special educational needs or pastoral care (i.e. personal guidance).

Ultimately, I could progress to a senior management position such as deputy or assistant head and, of course, head teacher.

Examples of Job Descriptions

Here are some examples of job descriptions for English teachers in secondary schools, so I can get an idea of the salary, hours, and skills employers are looking for. I realise that I may have to re-locate for my career, if there are better options elsewhere.

From this vacancy advertised I can see that, I need to be hardworking and have knowledge of the job, and there is a good salary. The downfall of this advertisement is that I will need experience before applying there, and I could not go straight into this job after university as I would have to work somewhere else first.

This vacancy is appealing as newly qualified teachers are welcomed meaning I could apply for this job as soon as I achieve my degree.

The bad point of this advertisement is that it’s only a temporary contract, for about a year. Although if I had no work this could be good and provide experience for me.

Again the drawback of this vacancy is stating that it’s looking for a ‘well qualified’ teacher which would also mean experienced, which I wouldn’t be as soon as leaving university, meaning I couldn’t apply for this job straight away.

From looking at a selection of job advertisements, I can see that I will have to be willing to travel to achieve a high salary, as the location where I live has limited options, meaning there would be a lot more competition in the area, and it may be easier to get a job in larger cities/towns. I can also see that some of the advertisements require experience which shows me I will need to devote some time to being in a classroom and learning practically.

From this investigation, I can see that PDP’s can be useful to both employees/organisations to improve training and motivation. Also I can see how PDP’s can help individuals from completing one myself as it has helped map out my skills, and caused me to think step by step how I will get to my ultimate goal.