Personal development plans supporting employee learning and perceived performance: the moderating role of self-directedness

Abstract

Due to developments in the current dynamic business environment which is more global and competitive than ever, employees’ lifelong learning and the way organizations support their continuous development are pivotal. Many organizations introduce personal development plans (PDPs) to support employees’ learning, however, not always taking into account their personal characteristics. This study had a twofold purpose as it was designed to explore on the one hand the relationship between PDPs in the workplace with employee’s undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance, and on the other hand the possible moderating role of employee self-directedness on this relationship. For this study, data collected by means of a questionnaire at two different organizations were used, one organization foregoing profit and one non-profit activity. The results indicated significant positive relations between the individual supporting factor ‘employee learning and reflection’ and the undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance and between employee self-directedness and the undertaking of learning activities and perceived performance. The same accounted for the moderating effect of employee self-directedness on the interaction between learning and reflection and perceived performance. Some findings were surprising, nevertheless resulted in valuable insights and implications for practice.

Keywords:

• personal development plan (PDP)
• reflection
• feedback
• supervisor
• self-directedness

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participating organizations for their contribution to this research and the reviewers for their objective, constructive advice which has been conducive to writing this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.