5 Must-Know Best Practices for Employee Development

What is employee development?

Employee development is the ongoing process of helping employees build new skills, expand their knowledge, and grow their careers in ways that benefit both individual performance and organizational outcomes. Companies that invest in employee development retain top talent longer and build the internal bench strength needed to scale. Done well, it connects individual growth to business strategy, turning learning into a measurable competitive advantage.

Employee development vs. employee training

Employee development training is one input into a broader development strategy, not a synonym for it. Training closes a specific skill gap; development builds the capacity to take on new challenges over time.

Why employee development matters: the business case

The retention case for employee development is hard to ignore. According to the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report, 94% of employees say they would stay longer at a company that invests in their career development. The Conference Board research shows that 58% of employees are likely to leave their company without professional development opportunities, with that rate running higher for women, people of color, and Millennials.

The financial stakes are equally clear. LinkedIn research estimates that employee turnover costs organizations 1.5 to 2 times the departing employee's annual salary on average. When you run that math against voluntary attrition in a 500-person company, the cost of underinvesting in development quickly outpaces the cost of building programs. The Muse reports that engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their jobs, and SHRM's 2018 Employee Benefits Report found that 86% of employees consider opportunities for professional and career development important to overall job satisfaction.

The business case extends beyond HR metrics. Employees who develop new skills bring that growth directly to customer interactions. Organizations with strong employee development programs consistently report higher customer satisfaction scores and better NPS outcomes, because the quality of customer experience is a direct function of the capability and engagement of the people delivering it. For executive stakeholders, employee development programs are not a cost center; they are a customer experience investment.

Types of employee development methods

The following table covers eight of the most effective employee development methods, what each one does, and which career stage or goal it serves best.

The 70-20-10 rule for employee development

One of the most useful frameworks for allocating employee development methods is the 70-20-10 model. It holds that 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences, 20% from social interactions and feedback such as mentoring and peer coaching, and 10% from formal training programs. The practical implication is that organizations over-indexing on classroom training are spending the most money on the least retained form of learning. A well-designed employee development strategy weights stretch assignments, job rotation, and mentoring heavily, using formal training to reinforce rather than replace experiential learning.

Five staff development techniques to build a stronger team

Strong employee development doesn't happen by accident. These five techniques give managers and HR leaders a practical framework for building programs that stick.

1. Facilitate a learning-first business culture

The desire to learn and develop should be embedded in your company culture. Every leader and manager must make employee development a priority across all teams and departments, keeping all personnel moving in the same direction.

A good first step starts with performance reviews. To cultivate a learning mindset, standardize your performance review process to be built around learning goals. Managers should meet with employees individually to reflect on how they've grown within their given role, rather than focusing solely on productivity metrics or performance numbers. This will help you set tangible employee development goals that align with your employees' individual ambitions.

From there, implement regular internal knowledge-sharing sessions where employees from across departments come together to share expertise and learn from one another. The key is to assemble age- and experience-diverse development programs so employees learn from each other and grow closer through collaboration.

2. Personalize learning and development programs

A one-size-fits-all learning and development program simply doesn't cut it anymore. Just as customers want personalization, your employees do too. Each of your employees has a different level of experience and expertise, along with unique priorities regarding their own professional development.

The key is to make your learning and development programs specific enough that employees can glean actionable insights, but open-ended enough that they can apply them to their own career goals. Research consistently shows that employees from underrepresented groups, including women, people of color, and Millennials, face higher attrition risk when development programs don't reflect their specific career trajectories. Personalization isn't just a preference; it's an equity imperative.

We recommend speaking with as many employees as possible about their preferred learning styles. Provide several options, from interactive online content to in-person sessions, so each employee can choose the method that suits them best.

3. Cater to small screens

Accessibility is critical in all areas of modern business, and your professional development content is no different. To ensure a smooth integration into your employees' daily routine, offer a mobile learning option. Consider a mobile app, or at the very least a mobile-optimized website, so employees can access learning materials from anywhere.

As with any mobile strategy, there are a few things to keep in mind. Your employees are unlikely to read long blocks of text on their mobile devices, so prioritize easy-to-understand multimedia content. Also consider incorporating an element of gamification, such as a reward or point system, to motivate employees to progress through training programs.

4. Define a clear career path

A good employee doesn't just strive for excellence in their current role. They want to know there's room and opportunity to progress over the course of their career with your company. For this reason, it's crucial to outline a clear career path for each of your employees, sometimes referred to as talent mapping. If a junior employee has the ambition to grow into a managerial role, your learning and development program should provide them with the tools to develop the skills they need.

A comprehensive learning and development program serves a bigger purpose beyond individual growth: succession planning. Professional development prepares employees for more advanced roles, which is invaluable when you need to fill a position quickly. When managed correctly, employee development prepares your organization for the future and nurtures employees into leadership roles, saving a significant amount of time and money.

5. Demonstrate your commitment to your employees

If implemented correctly, a learning and development program can be a significant driver of employee engagement. The Muse reports that engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave their jobs, making engagement a retention strategy in its own right.

When you make learning and development a company-wide priority, you create a sense of community among all employees. Conversely, a mismanaged program can have the opposite effect. To signal genuine commitment, consider building these practices into your organization:

• Dedicate a specific annual budget to employee development, visible and communicated to staff

• Train managers on coaching skills so development conversations are substantive, not perfunctory

• Build recognition programs that celebrate employees who demonstrate meaningful growth

• Create regular feedback loops so employees can shape the programs they participate in

As with any new business program, collect feedback and take input from your staff. A learning and development program has a direct impact on your employees, and the best programs are co-designed, not imposed.

How to create an employee development plan

A structured employee development plan turns good intentions into measurable outcomes. The following six-step framework applies whether you're building a plan for a single employee or rolling out a program across a department.

Step 1: Conduct a skills gap assessment

Start by comparing each employee's current skills against the requirements of their target role or the organization's future strategic needs. Use a combination of manager input, self-assessment, and performance data to build an honest picture of where gaps exist.

Common mistake: assessing skills in isolation without connecting the findings to your business strategy. A skills gap that doesn't map to a business need isn't a development priority.

Step 2: Set SMART development goals

Translate the skills gap into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. "Improve communication" is not a development goal. "Deliver one cross-functional project presentation to senior leadership by Q3" is.

Common mistake: setting goals that are too vague to measure. If you can't define what success looks like at the end of the period, the goal needs to be rewritten.

Step 3: Select development methods

Use the 70-20-10 framework to weight your method selection toward experiential learning. For most goals, a stretch assignment or cross-functional project will deliver more lasting skill development than a course or workshop.

Common mistake: defaulting to classroom training because it's easiest to schedule. Formal training is the most expensive and least retained form of learning; use it to reinforce, not replace, on-the-job experience.

Step 4: Build a timeline with manager check-ins

Set quarterly review milestones, not annual ones. Development plans that are reviewed once a year become stale documents. Quarterly check-ins give managers and employees the opportunity to adjust goals, celebrate progress, and course-correct early.

Common mistake: treating the employee development plan as a one-time document. It should be a living record that evolves as the employee grows and business priorities shift.

Step 5: Identify resources and budget

Map out the specific resources each development goal requires: internal mentors, external courses, stretch assignments, conference attendance, or peer learning groups. Most high-ROI development methods, including mentoring and on-the-job projects, cost very little.

Common mistake: assuming development requires a large budget. The 70-20-10 framework makes the case that the highest-impact methods are often the lowest-cost ones.

Step 6: Measure and iterate

Define your KPIs before the plan launches, not after. Useful metrics include internal promotion rate, engagement survey delta, skills assessment score improvement, and 90-day post-training performance scores. Completion rates tell you whether employees showed up; behavior change metrics tell you whether the program worked.

Common mistake: measuring completion rates instead of behavior change. A 100% completion rate on a course that produces no observable skill improvement is a program design failure, not a success.

Employee development plan template

Use this template to document and track individual development plans across your team.

Employee development examples that work

The following examples show how organizations have turned employee development investment into measurable business outcomes.

• Amazon Career Choice: Amazon pre-pays 95% of tuition for employees pursuing education in high-demand fields, regardless of whether those fields are related to their current role. The program is designed to reduce attrition by signaling long-term investment in employees' futures, and participating employees show measurably lower voluntary turnover than non-participants.

• AT&T Workforce 2020: AT&T launched a $1 billion reskilling initiative to retrain 100,000 employees whose roles faced obsolescence due to technology shifts. The outcome was a significant increase in the internal fill rate for new technology roles, reducing the cost and time associated with external hiring for critical positions.

• Internal mentoring circles: Cross-functional pairing of junior and senior employees creates structured development relationships at low cost. According to Gartner research, employees who participate in formal mentoring programs are promoted at rates approximately five times higher than those who do not.

• Stretch assignments: Temporary, high-visibility projects outside an employee's current scope accelerate leadership readiness by compressing years of experience into months. Organizations that use stretch assignments systematically report faster bench development and stronger succession pipelines.

• Microlearning modules: Short, on-demand learning units of 5 to 10 minutes have been shown to improve knowledge transfer by approximately 17% compared to traditional training formats, according to learning science research. They are particularly effective for reinforcing skills between longer development experiences.

Common employee development challenges (and how to solve them)

Even well-designed programs run into friction. Here are the five most common implementation challenges and practical ways to address each.

Manager resistance and deprioritization. Managers often treat development conversations as optional when performance pressure is high. The fix is structural: tie development goal completion to manager performance reviews, and equip managers with coaching toolkits that make development conversations easier to run, not just expected.

Low employee participation. Programs imposed top-down consistently underperform programs that employees help design. Research from Simpplr highlights that development should not be imposed but invited through deliberate culture and communication. Co-design programs with employee input from the start, and communicate the "why" behind each initiative before launch.

Budget constraints. The 70-20-10 framework is your best argument here. If 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experience and 20% from social interactions, the highest-impact development activities cost very little. Calculate the ROI using the 1.5 to 2 times salary replacement cost figure from LinkedIn research: even a modest improvement in retention pays for a meaningful development program many times over.

Measuring program effectiveness. Completion rates are not a measurement strategy. The Kirkpatrick Model provides a more rigorous framework across four levels: reaction (did employees find it useful?), learning (did skills improve?), behavior (are new skills applied on the job?), and results (did business outcomes improve?). Build measurement at all four levels into every program from the start.

Keeping programs relevant as roles evolve. Development plans built in January can feel disconnected from reality by October if roles and business priorities have shifted. The solution is to build quarterly skills gap reviews into your plan-creation process, treating the development plan as a living document rather than an annual deliverable.

How to measure employee development effectiveness

Completion rates tell you whether employees showed up. They don't tell you whether the program worked. The Kirkpatrick Model's four levels provide a more complete measurement framework: reaction captures whether employees found the experience valuable; learning measures whether skills or knowledge actually improved; behavior assesses whether new skills are being applied on the job; and results connects the program to business outcomes. Organizations that measure only at the reaction or completion level are missing the data that matters most to executive stakeholders.

Key performance indicators for employee development

Reporting cadence and executive communication

Run quarterly check-ins to review individual development plan progress and flag any programs that need adjustment. Conduct annual program reviews to evaluate aggregate outcomes across the organization and reallocate budget toward the methods with the strongest ROI. When presenting results to executive stakeholders, lead with the business metrics: turnover rate change, internal promotion rate, and engagement score delta. These connect development investment to the outcomes executives care about most.

According to the Zendesk Employee Experience Trends Report, nearly 50% of employee experience leaders plan to increase investment in development over the next 12 months. As more organizations build formal measurement accountability into their programs, the bar for demonstrating ROI will rise. Building a rigorous measurement framework now positions your program to meet that standard.

Final thoughts on employee development

Employee development is not a one-time program or an annual review exercise. It is an ongoing organizational commitment that drives retention, engagement, and business performance when it is built into the culture, the manager toolkit, and the budget. The organizations that do this well don't treat development as a benefit; they treat it as a business strategy.

ZoomInfo is an all-in-one AI GTM Platform built on three foundations: the most comprehensive B2B data, the GTM Context Graph intelligence layer, and universal access through GTM Workspace, GTM Studio, and APIs. The data foundation spans 500 million contacts, 100 million companies, and 135 million verified phone numbers, continuously refreshed by more than 300 human researchers and multi-source verification to maintain accuracy at scale.

The GTM Context Graph is the intelligence layer that sits above that data. It processes 1.5 billion data points daily, fusing ZoomInfo's B2B data with customer CRM records, conversation intelligence, and behavioral signals into a unified reasoning layer that captures not just what happened in a buying cycle, but why. For revenue teams, this means moving from reactive outreach to proactive engagement grounded in real-time context.

Universal access means teams can work with ZoomInfo's data and intelligence in whatever environment fits their workflow. GTM Workspace puts AI agents and verified contact intelligence directly in the hands of sellers. GTM Studio gives marketers and RevOps teams a natural-language environment for building audiences and orchestrating plays without engineering dependencies. APIs and MCP open the same data layer to custom tools and AI agents, so organizations can embed ZoomInfo intelligence wherever their workflows live.

See how ZoomInfo's all-in-one AI GTM Platform helps revenue teams find, win, and grow customers, request a demo.

Frequently asked questions about employee development

What does employee development mean?

Employee development is the ongoing process of helping employees build new skills, expand their knowledge, and grow their careers, benefiting both individual performance and organizational outcomes. Unlike one-time training, development is a long-term investment in an employee's full career trajectory. Companies with strong development programs see measurably higher retention, engagement, and productivity.

What are the 4 types of employee development?

The four commonly cited types are: (1) formal education and training, including courses, certifications, and workshops; (2) assessment-based development, including skills gap analysis, 360-degree feedback, and performance reviews; (3) job experiences, including stretch assignments, job rotation, and cross-functional projects; and (4) interpersonal relationships, including mentoring, coaching, and peer learning circles. Most effective programs combine all four, weighted toward experiential learning per the 70-20-10 model.

What is the 70-20-10 rule for employee development?

The 70-20-10 model holds that 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experiences, 20% from social interactions and feedback such as mentoring and peer coaching, and 10% from formal training programs. It guides how organizations should allocate development resources, prioritizing stretch assignments and mentoring over classroom courses, which are the most expensive and least retained form of learning.

How do you create an employee development plan?

An effective employee development plan follows six steps: conduct a skills gap assessment, set SMART development goals, select methods using the 70-20-10 framework, build a timeline with quarterly manager check-ins, identify resources and budget, and define KPIs to measure progress. The plan should be co-created with the employee rather than imposed top-down, and reviewed at least quarterly. For organizations mapping development to career progression, integrating the talent mapping process into skills gap assessment helps connect individual plans to organizational succession needs.

How do you measure the effectiveness of employee development programs?

Use the Kirkpatrick Model's four levels: reaction (did employees find it useful?), learning (did skills improve?), behavior (are new skills applied on the job?), and results (did business outcomes improve?). Key KPIs include internal promotion rate, voluntary turnover rate for program participants versus non-participants, engagement survey scores, and 90-day post-training performance assessments. Completion rates alone are insufficient.