Guidance

Career Development Plan

Updated 18 August 2023

1. Introduction

This Career Development Plan (CDP) will help you be planned and deliberate about your development in your current and future role. It will help you work towards your personal goals and aspirations by helping you identify these, set out your learning objectives, and help you track your progress throughout your learning and development journey. In this document, you can detail your learning experiences by writing brief reflections on what you have done, helping you monitor your continual growth and development.

We suggest you also include in your CDP the five days of learning and development every year that the Civil Service asks all employees to complete.

You should follow your department/business policy and guidance and use tools you may have already been provided to capture your learning. Using this CDP is entirely optional and is here for your personal benefit.

2. Using the Career Development Plan

• This CDP has spaces for you to map your career pathway, write down your goals for the year and advice on mapping out your specific strengths and areas for improvement. Plan your learning quarter by quarter, and tailor each quarter’s learning objectives to the opportunities that are available to you during that period.
• Whether you’re learning on the job, in an event, or in your own time, set some time aside to reflect on what you’ve learned. Use the space provided in the progress tracker to note down your thoughts on your learning as you go.
• This CDP will not be assessed and is solely for your benefit. However, if you share this with your line manager, coach or mentor, it will be a useful means of providing feedback for them, so they can continue to help you to learn in ways that suit you.
• See Appendix A and Appendix B if you need help figuring out which behaviours and professional areas you need to focus on. Consult the HR Success Profiles Matrices and the CIPD Profession Map to self-assess and see how well you measure up against these. They detail the skills, behaviours and experience needed for anyone in the HR profession and what behavioural indicators HR professionals should be demonstrating.
• If you have any questions about the learning opportunities available to you, talk to your line-manager – find out what’s on offer in your department. Also discuss your learning with your coach or mentor.

3. HR Career Development Offer

Whether you want to become an expert in what you know or learn something new, the HR Career Development Offer (CDO) is all about you.

Use your CDP to track your learning and development using the opportunities that the CDO gives you.

To find out more about the offer, refer to the HR Career Framework.

4. Mapping your career pathway

It’s the next step that matters:

4.1 Focus on current role first

• What do I want from the role?
• What do I want my legacy to be?

4.2 What am I really good at? What are my strengths? How do I know?

• Feedback, 360
• Easy and quick to do

4.3 What sort of work do I want to do next?

• Shadowing
• Mentoring
• Secondments

4.4 How will I get there?

• Career/Talent conversation
• What’s on offer?
• CDP

Career pathway isn’t necessarily about promotion, it’s about taking a deliberate and planned approach to what you do and how you do it.

5. Starting off

Before you start writing your learning and development plan, it’s important to reflect on the skills and behaviours you have and think about where you want to improve. Use this space to jot down how you feel about your current skillset.

• These are the topics, skills and behaviours in which I want to improve in the near future.
• These are the topics, skills and behaviours in which I want to improve in the long term.
• These are the areas and skills in which I am expert and confident.

6. My learning goals

Write down your overall goals for your next year of career development.

Try asking yourself the following: Where do you see yourself in a year’s time? Which areas do you most want to learn about? In which skills and behaviours would you like to progress? Jot them down below.

• Goal 1
• Goal 2
• Goal 3

7. Progress tracker

Use this space to make notes on how your learning and development is going over the year. It is recommended that you keep a detailed set of notes on what you have learned for future reference.

• Quarter 1 (April - June)
• Quarter 2 (July - September)
• Quarter 3 (October - December)
• Quarter 4 (January - March)

8. Mid-year reflection

Focus your reflection in this space on the most memorable and effective learning you have done in the last six months. What made it so effective? How do you learn best? Think back to when you filled in your Starting Off table. How has your skillset changed in the last six months? What are your current learning and developmental priorities?Feed back your thoughts on this to your Job Family Lead.

9. End of year reflection

For this reflection, consider the following questions:

1. What skills have you learned in the last year and what behaviours did you improve upon?
2. What ways of learning have been most useful for you?
3. How much time have you put into your L&D, and if you break down those hours further, on what did you spend the most and least time?

10. Appendix A: Behaviours for HR

The HR Success Profiles are a powerful tool when considering your career path. They are a great way to help you assess your strengths and behaviours, and draw out your experiences and skills. Understanding these can help you shape your career path and keep your skills relevant for current and future roles.

HR Success Profiles Matrices sets out the technical skills, behaviours and experience required in HR. Download the Matrices to see how well you measure up against these.

11. Appendix B: The CIPD Profession Map

CIPD’s Profession Map defines the building blocks of effective people management practice across ten professional specialisms and describes eight fundamental behaviours that underpin good practice regardless of specialism. It’s also flexible, so you can choose what to focus on depending on your area of work, the level of accountability you have in your role, and your career development ambitions.

The CIPD Profession Map is an interactive tool. Why not give it a try!