Career Progression Plan Template

A career progression plan is a vital component of an employee’s professional growth. 

It’s a good idea to implement this process as soon as possible. Building a progression plan in tandem with a development plan during onboarding is generally the best time to start. 

This process will walk you through all of the necessary steps to create a career progression plan for your employee that will remain relevant and up-to-date throughout the employee’s time at your company.

A few things to keep in mind before launching the process:

• Not always necessary for an individual employee
• Focuses on experiences and abilities the employee will need in the future
• Largely directed by the employee
• Every plan is unique to that employee
• An employee may need to leave your company in the future to achieve their goals.

Select the employee, mentor, and the employee’s department from the dropdown menus. 

Be sure to include the date you began creating the plan, not the date you intend to first implement it.

This task is to document the employee’s current role within the company. This description should be clear, succinct, and focused on the role, not the employee. 

You may either write the description in the text field below or upload the description as a document. 

Acceptable file types: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf

Common things to include:

• Required skills
• Desirable skills
• Years of experience
• Professional qualifications
• Educational qualifications
• Relevant organization memberships

This section will involve both the employee and the mentor assessing the employee’s skills, abilities, and performance in their current role. 

Ideally, the assessment should be undertaken in different areas or rooms, though it can be completed synchronously.

It’s important to answer the questions as honestly as possible. The aim is to create an accurate description of the employee’s performance. There are no right or wrong answers.

The purpose of this task is to record your perspective of your skills, abilities, and overall performance. 

Please answer the questions honestly. Take time to reflect on your performance and accurately list the areas you feel you excel at as well as any areas you feel could improve. 

Do not simply provide the answers you think are expected. 

Rate the following on a scale of 1-10, which 1 being the lowest. 

The purpose of this task is to record your perspective of  {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s skills, abilities, and overall performance. 

Please answer the questions honestly. Take time to reflect on {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s performance and accurately list the areas you feel they excel at as well as any areas you feel could improve. 

Be as objective and unbiased as possible. This assessment is not about the individual but their performance.

Rate the following on a scale of 1-10, which 1 being the lowest. 

Once {{form.Mentor’s_name.name}} and {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} have completed their respective assessments, a meeting should be held to discuss the results and identify potential action areas.

Employee’s assessment: {{form.Your_overall_performance}}

{{form.Why_have_you_given_yourself_this_rating?}}

Mentor’s assessment: {{form.Employee’s_overall_performance}}

{{form.Why_have_you_given_the_employee_this_rating?}}

After the meeting, {{form.Mentor’s_name.name}} and {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} will both need to approve the final assessment results before moving on to the next section.

The next stage of creating a career progression plan is the development stage. 

By now, you and the employee will have an idea of what they’re doing well currently, what they feel confident about, and what aspects they’re insecure about. 

Using that information, you must now work together to create an outline for the future. 

This requires setting goals from the short-term to the long-term, plus milestones and measurements to track the employee’s progress. 

To make this process easier, this section has been broken into three distinct areas: 

1. Determining the short-term goals
2. Determining the mid-term goals
3. Determining the long-term goals

These goals may – and very likely will – change during future growth meetings, but for now this provides a trajectory that can be acted on immediately. 

What aspects of your current role do you enjoy the most?

{{form.What_aspects_of_your_current_role_do_you_enjoy_most?}}

What are your core strengths?

{{form.What_are_your_core_strengths?}}

What skills/abilities do you feel could use improvement?

{{form.What_skills/abilities_do_you_feel_could_use_improvement?}}

What are your primary weaknesses?

{{form.What_are_your_primary_weaknesses?}}

In identifying {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s short-term goals, concentrate on things that are most critical to their current performance and role. 

Consider the following:

• Are there areas where {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} can take more ownership or responsibility?
• How can {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s skills and interests be better incorporated into the role?
• What unique contributions does {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} bring to the role?
• What opportunities are there to address areas of improvement?
• Are there gaps in {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} knowledge that are vital to their current role?

In identifying {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s mid-term goals, concentrate on what you plan to accomplish over the next 2 years. 

Consider the following:

• What is typically the next stage for {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s role? 
• What skills, experience, or qualifications does {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} need to move into that position?
• What support is the team/department/company able to offer {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} to facilitate growth?
• What are {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s transferrable skills that would be useful in this next role?

In identifying {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s long-term goals, concentrate on what you plan to accomplish over the next 3-5 years. 

Consider the following:

• What is {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s ideal career end goal? 
• What skills, experience, or qualifications does {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} need?
• What support is the team/department/company able to offer {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} to facilitate growth?
• Will {{form.Employee’s_name.name}} be able to achieve that at your company? 
• What are {{form.Employee’s_name.name}}’s transferrable skills that would be useful in this next role?

Verify the objectives and actions for each set of goals and then establish a schedule for all future growth meetings.

The length of time between each meeting will depend on your employee’s goals and needs. It should also be flexible. 

For example, growth meetings may initially begin weekly or bi-weekly, but over time move to monthly or bi-monthly as the employee gains more independence and autonomy. 

Set aside time during each growth meeting to determine if the schedule still works or needs to be adjusted to suit the current goals and objectives.

Short-Term Objectives

{{form.What_are_the_short-term_objectives?}}

{{form.What_short-term_actions_will_be_taken?}}

Mid-Term Objectives

{{form.What_are_the_mid-term_objectives?}}

{{form.What_actions_will_be_taken_to_meet_these_mid-term_goals?}}

Long-Term Objectives

{{form.What_role_would_you_like_to_work_towards?}}

{{form.What_are_the_necessary_skills/abilities/qualifications_to_perform_that_role?}}

{{form.What_are_the_necessary_skills/abilities/qualifications_to_perform_that_role?}}

{{form.What_support/resources_will_be_required_to_facilitate_the_progression?}}

The following email should be sent to the employee, the mentor, HR, and the appropriate manager once leadership has given their approval.

Before sending the email, ensure that all information is correct.

At this point, the employee’s career progression plan will be created and documented.

The final step will be to complete this task.

The appendix section below contains tips and information to help you edit and customize this workflow (and others) to best suit your individual needs. 

They’re merely provided as reference material and can be ignored (or removed) if not needed. 

The following features have been used within this workflow:

• Approvals
• Assignments
• Dynamic due dates
• Email widget
• File upload
• Form fields
• Members
• Required fields
• Stop tasks
• Variables

If you want to skip the Appendix section, simply click “Complete Workflow” in the right panel to finish the workflow run. 

The following tasks contain reference material, videos, and related templates you can use to enhance the experience and usability of your workflows. 

Related articles:

• We Need to Talk About Your Employee Onboarding Process (& How to Fix It)

• Why Google’s Onboarding Process Works 25% Better Than Everyone Else’s

• Employee Development Program: The Key to Improving Productivity, Engagement, & Retention

• How to Improve Your Employee Training Process to Reduce Turnover by 40%

• Employee Rewards: How to Evaluate Performance & Encourage Better Work

• HR Best Practices: What They Are and How You Can Implement Them

Related workflows:

• New Hire Onboarding Workflow
• Onboarding Remote Employees Checklist
• Employee Development Plan Template
• Performance Review Template
• Self-Evaluation Performance Review
• Employee Off-Boarding Checklist

Conditional logic is an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to simplifying complex processes and increasing the use cases for your workflows. 

The idea is that you set rules within the workflow that change depending on the user’s actions. This allows you to use the same process or workflow (employee onboarding, for example) for multiple scenarios (onboarding employees in different departments). 

Since conditional logic operates on an if this happens, then do this model, only the tasks relevant to each user will be shown while unnecessary or irrelevant information will remain hidden. 

Check out the full rundown of conditional logic in our knowledge base!

Process Street’s Slack App is the digital version of PB&J – two awesome things made even more awesome combined together.

The Slack App brings your workflow runs, tasks, approvals, and your other Process Street features into Slack, so you can have the same functionality in a single app. 

Whenever you’re assigned to something, a due date is coming up or you’ve been mentioned in a comment, you’ll receive a Process Street notification via Slack – and be able to respond right from Slack.

Very cool, right?

Check out our help docs for a more in-depth breakdown of everything you can do with the Process Street Slack App!

Process Street actually offers two ways to integrate and automate your processes. 

Process Street Automations allow you to connect to work apps like DocuSign, Salesforce, and Google Sheets – not to mention Process Street itself!

Wait: How do you integrate something with itself? 

Using Automations, you can link workflows to individual tasks or runs.

For example, when completing general onboarding for a new employee, you may want to launch an onboarding workflow run specific to their team or department. You can set an Automations to kick off that workflow run as soon as a specified task is checked off – or once the workflow run is fully completed. 

This feature makes it super easy to combine all your important, recurring tasks in a single location so nothing gets forgotten and no mistakes are made. 

Alternatively, using Zapier, Process Street can also integrate with the over 2,000 apps on the platform. 

Straight from your workflow run, you can create cards in AirTable, send messages in Slack, export data to your favorite CRM system, and a whole lot more. 

Pages is the centralized knowledge base every organization needs. 

First of all, Pages is free forever. No matter what, all of your employees will be able to access your Pages documents from wherever they are. Unless you don’t want them to.

Pages is easy to update without all the fuss of missing sections and added appendices. You can even embed workflows right into the page along with videos, pictures, and links. 

This feature is great for storing your SOPs, training documentation, message house, and project briefs. 

Isn’t that so much better than a binder that weighs more than a bowling ball?