An IDP is an operational tool: it links the organization's strategy with the individual's personal goals, making development a manageable, measurable, and useful process. When a IDP is vibrant, reviewed, and maintained, it increases the employee's market value while simultaneously reducing the company's HR risks.
To ensure that an individual development plan (IDP) brings real benefits to the employee and the company, it is important to correctly complete the initial setup stage.
In this article, we'll look at the basic steps involved in working with the IEP module: from filling in initial data to selecting competencies, goals, and educational activities.
This material will be useful for both those new to the IDP module and those already experienced with the system: it helps you understand the overall structure of sections and build a step-by-step employee development plan, easily and without overload.
Step 1. Creating a competency tree
A competency tree is a group of related competencies and skills, united by meaning. At the top are competency clusters (groups of competencies united by meaning or functionality). The next level are competencies , and specific skills are associated with each . This allows you to assess employees' compliance with the requirements of their positions, identify knowledge and skill gaps, and plan their further development and career advancement. Furthermore, this structure simplifies competency management within an organization, allowing for centralized tracking of professional skill development and the creation of training programs based on the company's actual needs.
A competency tree doesn't have to contain exactly three levels; it can have more or fewer depending on the company's needs. However, for a number of reasons, we recommend sticking to the classic three-level model: cluster/competency/skill.
Creation and configuration of a competency tree is carried out in the Skills Tree section .
Step 2: Create and configure user profiles
1. Adding Employees and Accounts .
The IDP module's administrative panel has two sections for managing accounts: " Account List " and " Employee List ." The former is used to configure access and display rights, while the latter manages employee profile data and skill assessments.
Accounts and employees are related entities. They are almost always created and appear together. However, their existence is permitted independently (for example, if an administrator account is needed to perform technical tasks without being assigned an IDP).
During integration, an employee is created along with the account, and their data is pulled from the source system.
To enable integration, please contact your support manager.
Please note: for the integration to function correctly, you will need to ensure a specific user group structure on the CleverLMS side. You can read more about this in this article .
Information on how to set up a user account in the " Account List " and " Employee List " sections can be found in the articles at the links.
2. Assigning roles to accounts.
At this stage, existing Account roles are defined and adjusted. Each role has its own set of rights and capabilities for working in the IDP.
Standard list of roles: Administrator, HR, Manager, Employee.
If you need to create an additional role, please contact support.
3. Setting up Job Profiles and Staff Units.
The Job Profiles section describes the key responsibilities, requirements, and competencies associated with a specific job position within the organization.
A job profile can combine multiple jobs (e.g., those automatically added to an Employee's account during integration) that are similar in their stated task requirements. The administrator can create and edit a list of skills for each job, as well as set required proficiency levels for them.
Thus, the Employee's job title will be associated with an existing Job Profile, in which the administrator specifies skill and competency requirements. The table with Staff Positions is used to refine the data in the Job Profile. Each of these positions can be used to specify additional skill and competency requirements for users. The Staff Positions functionality is not required for basic IDP setup.
4. Uploading existing employee assessments to the IDP module
If you already have employee evaluation results, you can upload them to the " Employee List " section using the " Import " function.
Step 3. Adding training materials to the IDP
The "Materials Catalog" allows you to manage (add/modify) a directory of materials that will later be available for selection when setting goals and are attached to them so that the employee can use them to achieve the assigned tasks.
Detailed information on working with the " Materials Catalog " section can be found in the article at the link.
At this stage, the IDP can already be opened for user access.
If necessary, you can set additional settings.
Advanced Features: Fields, Forms, and Scales:
List of fields - to ensure the collection of more data displayed in the Employee card;
In the Form Editor, you can adjust the set of displayed fields for Goal and Material Cards. Possible goal types can be specified in the "Goal Settings" section.
The platform uses a default rating scale of 1 to 4 to assess skills and competencies, but in the Rating Scales section , you can further configure various grading options for skill and competency assessments for further use, if necessary.
Process automation:
Cyclical training - to automate the process of creating goals for employees when certain events occur or at a specified frequency, which can significantly simplify the work of HR specialists and managers;
You can also set up Goal Alignment Routes to automate the most common scenarios for coordinating individual employee development plans;
It is possible to enable automation of changing the target status depending on certain conditions.
Evaluation of results and analytics
In the Summary section , you can edit surveys used to assess the success of goal achievement and work with an unlimited number of surveys based on the results of the IDP as a whole.
The Analytics section provides a convenient visual display of statistical data in the IDP module.