The use of Personal Development Plans: Effects, purposes and supporting conditions

Despite the popularity of Personal Development Plans (PDPs) in the workplace, relatively little is known about the actual use of the tool and its impact on the employee’s learning and development. Empirical evidence of the impact or effectiveness of PDPs is limited. As a consequence, the implementation of the tool by Human Resource Development is often based on assumptions instead of evidence. While the idea behind PDPs is that they should stimulate the employees’ learning and professional development, practice shows that the opposite seems to be true in many cases. Employees perceive the tool as ineffective, part of an annual ritual dance or an alibi serving as cover-up to mask that when it comes to personal development organizations do not care much. In this book the effectiveness of the PDP practice for undertaking learning activities, expertise-growth, flexibility and performance within an organizational context was researched. More specifically, the following questions are posed: ‘Is the PDP effective for the undertaking of learning activities and the employee’s performance?’, ‘Which purposes is a PDP used for and how does the employee’s perception of those purposes influence the employee’s undertaking of learning activities and performance?’ and ‘Does the PDP practice influence the undertaking of learning activities, expertise-growth and performance?