Who can use this feature?
Available on:
All Culture Amp subscriptions that include Develop.
Note: Plans created before June 20, 2023, cannot be viewed by Account or Develop Administrators, as employees agreed to a different privacy statement that indicated their plans would not be visible to Account Administrators.
Overview
The Development Planning Report is a tool designed for Account and Develop Administrators to gain valuable insights into how employees are approaching their growth and development within the organization.
This report gives you a bird’s-eye view (aggregate data) and a close-up (individual plans) of your team's development activities. You can use the insights to:
Boost Participation: See who is actively creating a plan and who might need a gentle nudge.
Inform Decisions: Understand what skills employees want to develop and what motivates them, helping you shape training, hiring, and leadership programs.
Support Managers: Identify managers who are successfully coaching their teams and those who may need extra support with development conversations.
This article will show you exactly how to access this report and how to use its three key sections; Participation, Insights, and Employees, to unlock your organization’s full potential.
How to Access the Development Planning Report
Navigate to the Development tab.
Select the Development Plans page.
Click the ellipsis (...) located on the far right of the page.
Select Reporting from the dropdown menu to open the Development Planning Report.
Deep Dive: The Three Key Report Sections
The report is divided into three distinct sections, each offering a unique perspective on employee development.
1. Participation Report: Tracking Development Activity
This section helps you monitor the status of development plans across your organization. It’s perfect for understanding overall engagement.
Viewing Participation by Status and Groups
You can adjust how the report displays the data to focus on specific areas:
View by Plan Status: See the breakdown of employees based on their plan's current stage (e.g., No Plan Created, Draft, Ready for Review, Active). This helps you see where employees are in the planning process.
View by Demographic: Compare participation rates across different employee groups (like Departments or Locations). This helps you pinpoint areas of high or low engagement, allowing you to focus your support where it's needed most.
Using Filters for Precise Data
Created Time Filter: Use this to exclude older plans and focus only on recent development activity, giving you a truer picture of current participation. Time filtering options include: last 12 months, 6 months, 90 days and 30 days.
Demographic Filters: Apply filters (e.g., Department: Engineering) to zoom in on a specific part of your organization. Once filtered, you can compare participation across different teams within that department.
Exporting Individual Usage
You can export a report that shows individual employee usage statistics. This file will reflect any filters you currently have applied on the screen. Each row represents an employee and clearly shows:
Their current stage in the development plan process.
The Last Activity timestamp, indicating when they last worked on their plan.
2. Insights Report: Understanding Employee Needs and Priorities
The Insights section moves beyond just who is participating to focus on what employees are thinking, feeling, and aiming for. The aggregated data here can directly inform your organization’s strategies.
Development Confidence Score
This score reflects how employees currently feel about their personal growth and future at the company. A higher score suggests your development planning process is effective.
The score is an average of recent responses to these three key questions:
Do I have a clear understanding of my development goals?
Do I see a motivating future for myself at this company?
Do I have a clear understanding of the skills and knowledge I need to develop?
Tip: You can filter this score by Manager or other organizational sections. This can highlight which managers are successfully fostering confidence in their teams and which might need extra coaching support.
Development Focus
This section highlights where employees are directing their development efforts. It helps you understand whether they’re:
Building skills for their current role
Aiming for a promotion within the organization
Preparing for a new type of role or career path
Exploring options to find their next move
Understanding these focus areas is essential for succession planning. By filtering the report to a specific team or part of the organization, you can quickly see how many employees are actively preparing for more senior roles or considering a future move.
Employees focused on their current role may be strengthening core skills, deepening expertise, or staying current with trends in their field.
Those preparing for a promotion are typically building the capabilities needed to take on a more senior position.
Employees looking toward a new opportunity may be developing skills that support a shift in career path or role type.
Development Plan Conversation Status
This feature helps you measure manager involvement. A plan becomes 'Active' when an employee marks it for review and confirms whether they have had a development conversation with their manager.
This status allows you to quickly identify if any managers are not dedicating enough time to reviewing their direct reports' plans.
Strengths and Growth Areas
Top Strengths: See the skills and competencies employees feel they excel at. This data can inform team assignments and help you recognize key talents.
Top Growth Areas: Highlight the specific skills employees are actively focused on developing.
Example: A Sales leader can filter the Insights report by their department to easily see the top growth areas, helping them decide exactly which training programs to implement.
Motivators
The Motivators section reveals which aspects of work employees find most and least enjoyable. Understanding these drivers helps you enhance employee engagement and tailor work experiences to align with what truly motivates your team.
3. Employees Report: Viewing Individual Plans
This section acts as a central dashboard showing the status and last update time for every employee's development plan.
Filter by Plan Status
You can filter the list to view employees based on their plan's status:
Draft: The employee is still working on completing the plan.
Ready for Review: The employee has finished the plan and is waiting for manager feedback.
Active: The plan is complete, and the employee is currently working on it. (Note: While employees are prompted to confirm they've had a conversation with their manager at this stage, having the conversation is not strictly required to set the status to Active).
Closed: The plan is no longer active.
You can also use other filters (like performance outcome) to view specific groups, such as the development plans of all employees who have been identified as high performers.
Viewing Individual Plans and Goals
Once a plan is set to Active, administrators can click on an employee's name to view the full content of their development plan.
Viewing Goals: To see the details of development goals linked to the plan, click on the employee's plan, and then click on the goal listed under the goal section.
Export Development Plan Raw Data
For in-depth analysis, you can export all the raw development plan content.
Click Export Plans at the top-right corner of the Employees section
A CSV file containing the latest development plans for all employees will download.
Tip: For step-by-step instructions, visit our How to Export Development Plan Data article.
Best Practices
✔️ Regularly Review Insights: Check the Insights report monthly to spot emerging trends in employee confidence and development focus, allowing you to proactively adjust resources.
✔️ Use Filters to Support Managers: Apply Manager filters to the Development Confidence and Conversation Status sections to quickly identify managers who are highly effective versus those who might benefit from additional training on coaching and feedback.
✔️ Use Data for Strategic Planning: Use the Top Growth Areas and Development Focus data to directly inform your organization’s Learning & Development budget and succession planning efforts.
Troubleshooting/FAQs
Issue | Solution / Clarification |
Can admin view development goals? | Yes! Go to the Employees report, click on an employee's Active plan, and then click on the specific goal listed in the goal section to view the details. |
Why is the data only showing some employees? | Check the Filters you have applied (Time Period, Demographics, etc.). The report only shows data for employees that match the current filter settings. |
What does 'Active' plan mean? | An Active plan is one that the employee has completed and is currently working on. It means the employee has moved past the drafting and review stage. |
💬 Need help? Just reply with "Ask a Person" in a Support Conversation to speak with a Product Support Specialist.