Development planning overview

EchoSpan’s Development Planning Module helps to close the loop on your 360-degree feedback process by enabling employees to create and manage professional development plans based on their review results. Plans can be created by employees and/or their managers and can be accessed throughout the year. Historical plans remain accessible indefinitely for comparison reporting.

Development plans consist of one or more goals in which employees are seeking to improve skill, abilities, frequency of behavior or performance. Goals can be tied to their most recent multi-rater feedback review's competency and behavior scores. 

 Goals can be aligned with the employee's most recent 360-degree feedback review, ensuring that they focus development efforts on areas important to the company's goals. A coach or observer can be selected for each goal on an employee's plan. Admins get real-time information on where their employees are focusing their development plans, which employees are participating and which plans are leading to developmental improvement.

Within the development planning tool, goals can be identified in one or more of the following ways:   

1. Automatically selected by the tool based on highest- and lowest-rated items or blind spots and hidden strengths from their review (the thresholds for highest- and lowest-rated items / blind spots and hidden strengths may be modified under the Dev. Plan menu option >> Feature Settings).
2. Manually identified by the employee.
3. Manually identified by the employee’s manager.

The development planning tool supports the creation of four different types of goals:

1. Key Strengths: Areas associated with the highest scoring items on the employees most recent feedback review. These are automatically selected by the development planning tool when they request the system auto-populate their plan.
2. Development Needs: Areas associated with the lowest scoring items on the employee’s most recent feedback review. These are automatically selected by the development planning tool when they request the system auto-populate their plan.
3. Personal Objectives: Any goals the employee manually creates in the tool.
4. Objectives Set By Manager: Any goals identified by the employee’s manager.