When I joined a year back as HR Business partner, I understood that one of the major challenges faced by business leaders is to effectively engage with the talents. Most of the time, the review meetings witnessed discussion around targets/goals and hardly anything around individual development. With ageing workforce and global competition for talent, the need of the hour is to engage and retain our talents. The talents need personalized development plan to close the skill gaps and get more engaged workforce. We need the right talent at the right time with the right skill set to give our business the competitive advantage.
Hence along with business leaders my task was to sensitize the talents on 3 parameters of development plan/goals – What, why and how.
Preparing a Development Plan:
- To create the development plan one has to complete the assessment on the skills, knowledge, and/or competencies one would like to develop within your current role or a future role. The development tool also gives a provision for taking feedback, considering aspirations , SAP strategy etc. and then frame the development plan
- Each developmental goal also follows the learning activities in order to achieve that. SAP follows 70-20-10 learning approach.
3. Define the learning activities that will help you achieve each development goal. Learn about choosing the right activities by reviewing "My Development Playbook."
4. Document your learning activity results to recognize your accomplishments.
Development Plan in Successmap:
The Development plan in Success map starts with the following 3 questions:
- Who am I?– talks about one’s relevant experience, industry domain
- Where do I want to go?– talks about whether to grow in the current role or future role based on potential and performance assessment
- How do I get there?- talks about the means to get to one’s aspiration
The most striking feature in the Development plan is “My development playbook”
The development playbook helps one to navigate through 3 critical questions and thereby helps to achieve the most fulfilling career in SAP. Each critical question also has a resource section with ample tools for self-evaluation and assessment.
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- Who am I?– The path to self- discovery enables one to assess skills, aspirations, growth opportunity, value and personal brand. This section is quite enlightening since it sets one in the mode of introspection.The resources available for exploration are potential assessment and development direction, gap analysis, personal brand building.
- Where do I want to grow? - Once the self-discovery phase is over, reflect on the personal and career goals and identify how this can be applied at SAP. This section really outlines the career path for navigation starting with understanding SAP’s strategy, passion, industry trends (Know your SAP). Once you understand what SAP has in store you need to start thinking on your preference and career path opportunities (Career Navigator). The Career Pathfinder is a great tool for understanding SAP’s global job architecture. Once you identify the aspiration role, the required skills, competencies, responsibilities can be viewed through Global Job profiles. Also the open positions can be viewed through Job openings.
- How do I get there?– According to me once you are done with Step 1 and 2, half of the task is completed. Now it’s all about realizing your dreams and taking some solid actions around it.
The first thing that comes to someone’s mind when we talk about development plan is training. The tool urges you to think outside the box and apply 70-20-10 learning principle here. You need to choose the goals (can divide into short –term and long term goals) and decide on the tasks to achieve those. The development goals can then be recorded in success map for regular update.
Most of the time, one of the bottlenecks for accomplishing a development plan is the lack of managerial support. The beauty of the tool is that it enables manager to view the goals given by directs and mark their commitment. This provides sufficient window for manager to understand the aspirations and extend the required support for accomplishment.
Overall, I find the tool very intuitive, easy to navigate, quite resourceful and this serves as a career guidance for managers and employees. Diligent use of the tool will enable one to chalk out a successful career path @ SAP