Creating Development Plans That Deliver for Your Medtech Team

Development is often discussed during appraisals, written into a plan and then overtaken by day-to-day work. Six months later, everyone remembers the conversation, but very little has actually changed.

A useful development plan needs to go further than identifying a course someone could attend. It should be clear about what they want to develop, why it matters and how they are going to get the experience to do it.

Done well, development planning can help people progress, prepare for greater responsibility and see a future for themselves within your business.

What Makes a Development Plan Useful?

A development plan shouldn't simply be a record of training courses. It should connect an employee's ambitions with the skills, knowledge or experience they need to develop.

That means avoiding vague objectives such as "develop leadership skills" or "improve commercial awareness".

Instead, think about what development would actually look like in practice. Could the employee take responsibility for onboarding a new starter? Lead part of a sales meeting? Get involved in a product launch? Spend time with another department? Work alongside a more experienced colleague on a complex account?

The more closely development is connected to real work, the more useful the plan is likely to be.

Start With a Conversation

Development plans work best when the employee is involved in creating them.

Start by asking where they would like to develop and what they would like their career to look like over the next few years.

Don't assume everyone wants the same thing.

One person may want to move into sales management. Another may want to become a stronger key account manager, take responsibility for a larger territory, develop greater clinical expertise or move towards marketing or training.

Someone else may be perfectly happy in their current type of role but want to become better at it.

Understanding what the individual actually wants gives you a much better starting point than producing the same development plan for everybody.

Identify the Actual Development Gap

Once you know where somebody wants to go, look at what they would need to demonstrate to get there.

For somebody interested in sales management, that might include coaching colleagues, contributing to territory planning or taking greater responsibility within the team.

Someone hoping to move into a key account role may need more exposure to complex stakeholder relationships, longer sales cycles or larger commercial negotiations.

An employee interested in marketing might benefit from getting involved in a product launch, campaign or customer research project.

The aim isn't to create an enormous list of skills. It's to identify a small number of areas where additional experience would genuinely help them progress.

Look Beyond Formal Training

Courses and qualifications can absolutely form part of a development plan, but they aren't the only way people develop.

Some of the most useful development happens through the job itself.

Depending on the person and the role, opportunities could include:

• Mentoring or coaching from a more experienced colleague
• Shadowing somebody in another role or department
• Taking responsibility for a project
• Supporting or mentoring a new starter
• Getting involved in a product launch
• Working alongside colleagues on more complex accounts
• Presenting at team or customer meetings
• Cross-functional work with marketing, clinical, sales or other teams
• Product, clinical or commercial training
• Relevant external courses or qualifications

Formal training is most useful when there is a clear reason for it, rather than simply because completing a course looks good on a development plan.

Make the Goals Specific

It's difficult to make progress against a goal nobody can clearly define.

"Improve presentation skills" doesn't give an employee or their manager much to work with.

"Prepare and deliver a product training session at the next regional meeting" is much clearer.

Likewise, "develop management skills" could become "take responsibility for supporting and onboarding the next new member of the team during their first three months".

Specific goals also make development conversations easier because both sides can see what has happened and what still needs to happen.

Agree Who Is Responsible for What

Employees have responsibility for their own development, but managers often need to create the opportunity for that development to happen.

There's little point agreeing that someone needs experience of coaching others if they are never given anybody to coach. Equally, an employee can't gain exposure to another part of the business if their manager never helps make the introduction.

Be clear about what the employee will do, what support the manager will provide and whether anyone else needs to be involved.

That could be as simple as arranging time with another department, introducing a mentor or giving someone responsibility for a particular project.

Keep Talking About It

One of the easiest ways for a development plan to fail is to create it and then forget about it until the next formal review.

Development doesn't need another complicated reporting system, but it does need regular conversation.

A short check-in can cover:

• What have you done since we last spoke?
• What have you learned?
• What's getting in the way?
• What opportunity would help you next?

Regular conversations also make it easier to spot when a plan isn't working. Perhaps an opportunity hasn't materialised, priorities have changed or the employee needs a different type of support.

Be Prepared for the Plan to Change

A development plan shouldn't be set in stone.

Roles change. Businesses change. People's ambitions change too.

Someone may discover that the career move they originally had in mind isn't actually what they want. A new opportunity might appear that neither the employee nor manager had considered when the plan was created.

That's not a failed development plan. It's a reason to revisit it.

The purpose is to help somebody continue developing in a direction that makes sense for them and the business, not to follow a document regardless of what happens along the way.

Turning Development Plans Into Real Progress

The best development plans are often relatively simple.

They start with an honest conversation about where somebody wants to go, identify the experience or knowledge they need to get there and create opportunities for them to develop it.

Most importantly, they don't disappear into a folder until the next appraisal.

When development becomes part of the regular conversation between managers and their teams, employees have a much clearer idea of where they're heading and what they need to do next.

And for employers, helping good people see how they can continue to grow within the business can be an important part of giving them a reason to stay.