Planning your people development

A simple way to plan your people development

1. Start with the work and the risk
What is changing – projects, customers, systems, workforce mix, contractors? Where do mistakes, rework, incidents, or conflict cost you the most?

2. Identify the “moments that matter” for leaders
Think about the situations where your leaders, supervisors and managers need to perform well.
These might include:

• leading safety conversations
• managing employee performance
• running effective pre-starts and toolbox discussions
• coordinating contractors
• managing change and change fatigue
• onboarding new starters
• giving feedback
• handling difficult conversations
• supporting team dynamics
• managing and preventing psychosocial hazards
• responding to conflict
• leading teams through periods of pressure or uncertainty

These moments tell you where leadership training, supervisor training or management development is likely to make the greatest difference.

3. Build three capability lines (and keep them linked)
Rather than choosing individual courses in isolation, look at the broader capabilities your organisation needs.

Safety capability might include practical risk management, WHS training, consultation, contractor management, psychosocial hazards and safety leadership.

Leadership capability might include communication, team dynamics, performance management, difficult conversations, change, diversity and inclusion, and frontline leadership.

Learning capability might include facilitator training, training design, train the trainer programs and improving how learning transfers back to the job.

Keeping these areas connected helps avoid a scattered training calendar full of unrelated programs.

4. Choose a few high-impact priorities
You do not need to solve every capability issue at once. Identify the workplace training programs that address your biggest risks, reach the widest audience or support your most important organisational priorities.

For example, a growing organisation may prioritise supervisor training, onboarding and safety leadership. A project-based workforce may need stronger contractor management, risk management and frontline leadership. Once you know your priorities, schedule training early so you have more flexibility around delivery dates and formats.

5. Gap analysis
Sometimes your priorities are obvious. Other times, the first step should be a structured training needs analysis.

A training needs analysis or capability gap analysis can help identify:

• current workforce skills gaps
• emerging capability requirements
• leadership development needs
• areas of organisational risk
• training priorities
• where existing training is not producing the required result

This can be informed by employee surveys, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, performance data, incident information and feedback from managers and employees.

The aim is not to create a long list of courses. It is to identify where stronger capability will have the greatest impact on performance, safety and the organisation’s ability to deliver its work.

Ready to get started? Use our program snapshots
We’ve pulled together a snapshot of our program suites across Safety Dimensions, Leadership Dimensions, and Workplace Dimensions. Use it to map what your teams need, and what’s likely to deliver the biggest return. We also provide solution options for gap analysis to fit a range of time and budget committments.

Workplace Dimensions provides leaders, trainers, presenters and facilitators with the skills to design and deliver effective learning solutions.