An IDP is an agreement between an employee and their manager about what the employee will learn to do over a period, and why. It is not a list of courses taken but a list of skills, each with a way of telling that the skill has actually been acquired.
How an IDP differs from a training plan
A training plan lists activities: three courses, a webinar, a secondment. An IDP starts from the other end — from the gap between what the employee can do now and what the role they are moving towards requires. Courses appear in it as a way to close the gap, not as the objective.
Which is why an IDP cannot be written without two things: a description of the next level's requirements and an honest assessment of the current one. Where there is no competency matrix and no grades, an IDP becomes a set of good intentions nobody remembers by the next conversation.
What makes a plan work
A good IDP is short and checkable: two or three skills over six months, not ten items over a year.
- Every item is tied to a requirement of a role or grade — otherwise it is unclear why the employee is doing it.
- Every item has a completion signal: a certification passed, a task performed unaided, a mentor's confirmation.
- Horizons shorter than a year. An annual plan is not revised, it is forgotten — a quarter or a half-year is realistic.
- Responsibility runs both ways: the employee learns, the manager provides the chance to practise. The second half is forgotten more often than the first.
How this works in Verifix
In Verifix a development plan stands on the same foundation as the career grid: the requirements for the next grade are already written down, so an IDP is assembled from them rather than drafted from scratch. Training and tests are assigned in Learn, and results land on the employee's record by themselves.
Progress is then visible to both sides without reminders: to the employee in the app, and to the manager across their unit, together with a list of who has already met the conditions for a move.
In short
An IDP only works where the next level's requirements are written down in advance. Without them it becomes a list of courses connected to neither growth nor pay.