As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly create an employee development plan.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the employee's job description, current objectives and recent review notes, then remove unrelated personal or sensitive information.
   2. Gather evidence of strengths and development needs, including agreed feedback, work examples and the employee's own career interests.
   3. Ask the employee which skills they want to build, how they prefer to learn and what support or access needs they want discussed.
   4. Paste the role details, evidence, employee input, available training and review dates into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to produce the plan.
   5. Compare every stated fact, deadline and suggested learning activity against the source documents and your organisation's actual training options.
   6. Discuss the draft with the employee, replace assumptions with agreed priorities, and record any support or access arrangements through your normal HR process.
   7. Ask a manager or HR colleague to check that the objectives are relevant, measurable, consistently applied and not being used to make an undisclosed employment decision.
   8. Send the agreed plan to the employee and schedule the 30, 60 and 90 day reviews in the systems your organisation uses.

   Prompt

   Create an employee development plan for the role and person described below. Use only the information I provide and clearly label any assumption. Do not diagnose the employee, make decisions about promotion or dismissal, or present employment-law conclusions. Make the plan practical, fair and measurable.
   
   Include:
   1. The employee's current role and strengths.
   2. Three to five development priorities, each linked to a specific gap or career aim.
   3. A SMART objective for each priority, with a clear outcome and review date.
   4. Learning activities that can be completed through work, coaching, practice, reading or formal training.
   5. The support the manager should provide.
   6. Evidence that would show progress without relying on personality judgements.
   7. Risks, dependencies and reasonable adjustments or access needs that the manager should discuss with the employee rather than assume.
   8. A 30, 60 and 90 day review structure, using dates only where supplied.
   9. Questions the manager should ask the employee before agreeing the plan.
   
   Separate facts from suggestions. Avoid invented qualifications, performance claims, training providers, costs or deadlines. Flag anything that needs confirmation from the employee, manager or HR. Write in plain UK English.
   
   Role and responsibilities:
   [PASTE ROLE DETAILS]
   
   Employee's strengths and achievements, based on evidence:
   [PASTE EVIDENCE]
   
   Development needs or feedback already discussed:
   [PASTE AGREED FEEDBACK]
   
   Employee's career interests and preferred learning methods:
   [PASTE EMPLOYEE INPUT]
   
   Available support, training and time:
   [PASTE AVAILABLE RESOURCES]
   
   Relevant review period and dates:
   [PASTE DATES]

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.