Training needs and learning plan

Purpose

Translate evidence about required capabilities and current performance into specific learning needs, ranked priorities, and executable learning plans. Separate a genuine skill or knowledge gap from a process problem, missing resource, unclear expectation, or performance issue that training cannot solve.

Scope

Cover employees or roles named by the run scope, their role profiles, competency requirements, performance evidence, manager and employee inputs, completed learning, available courses, and planned development actions. Produce a gap diagnosis before selecting learning activities, then connect each activity to an observable outcome, owner, timing, and evidence of transfer.

Excluded: selecting a vendor, enrolling a person, approving a budget, making a promotion or employment decision, diagnosing health or protected characteristics, and inventing a competency requirement that is absent from the reference material.

Data basis

• Employee roster with employee_id, role_id, team, manager_id, status, and target planning period.
• Role profiles and competency framework with competency_id, proficiency level, behaviour or knowledge anchor, and required-by date.
• Performance records with goal, result, metric, feedback date, competency_id, observed behaviour, and evidence locator.
• Employee self-assessments and manager assessments with current level, desired level, confidence, and stated development need.
• Learning history with course_id, employee_id, completion date, attendance status, assessment score, and follow-up result.
• Learning catalogue with course_id, format, duration, prerequisites, capacity, cost, competency_id, and learning outcome.

Result

Create a learning-needs matrix with one row per employee-competency gap and a learning-plan document containing ranked actions, owners, target dates, success measures, dependencies, and evidence checkpoints. Include a team-level summary of repeated gaps and a limitations section for unsupported recommendations.

Quality criteria

• Every gap names employee_id or role_id, competency_id, required level, current level, and cited evidence.
• Gap size is calculated as required proficiency minus current proficiency using the supplied scale; incomparable scales remain unscored.
• Priority uses the supplied criticality, performance impact, and time-to-required weighting, never an invented score.
• Each recommended activity has a catalogue outcome, format, duration, prerequisite check, and transfer measure.
• Completed learning is not treated as capability without post-learning evidence.
• Counts of employees, gaps, and proposed actions reconcile between the matrix and plan.

Instructions

Use the planning period and population in the run scope. Treat a missing competency requirement as an evidence gap, not as a zero requirement. Prefer direct work evidence and dated assessment observations over aspirations when establishing current level, while retaining the employee’s stated goal as a separate input. Do not recommend a course when the cause is access, tooling, workload, policy, or unclear ownership; record the non-training intervention instead. Use the catalogue’s stated outcome and prerequisite verbatim in the matrix, and mark a course as unavailable when capacity or timing conflicts with the target date. Keep personal data limited to the identifiers required for plan ownership.

Adapt before use

• Add the company competency framework, proficiency scale, role profiles, and definitions of criticality and performance impact.
• Map employee, assessment, performance, learning-history, and catalogue columns to the workspace tables.
• Define the planning period, priority formula, target-date rules, and acceptable evidence of learning transfer.
• Add the approved learning catalogue and identify who owns team actions versus individual actions.