Plan Purpose Field for Development Plans
Development plans now begin with an optional Plan Purpose dropdown that prompts employees to define their underlying motivation before building a plan. This anchors each plan to a clear intention—growing in the current role, preparing for an aspirational role, performance improvement, or skill building—reducing vague, unfocused planning. The field also lays the foundation for upcoming AI-powered recommendations.
What's New
- Optional Plan Purpose dropdown as the first field on create, edit, and review pages
- Four fixed purpose options: Grow in Current Role, Prepare for Aspirational Role, Performance Improvement, and Build Skills
- Aspirational Role option surfaces additional role-selection fields when Talent Marketplace is enabled
- Plans can be saved or published without selecting a purpose, with a 'Select Purpose' placeholder shown when none is chosen
- Alignment notification warns when an updated purpose conflicts with existing objectives and learnings
- Foundation for future AI-powered recommendations, reporting, and succession plan integration
Details
Description
The Plan Purpose Field introduces an optional dropdown that appears as the first field when employees create, edit, or review a development plan in the redesigned Development Plans UI. It prompts users to define the underlying motivation behind their plan, anchoring it to a clear direction such as growing in a current role, preparing for an aspirational role, improving performance, or building skills.
Managers can add context and purpose to the field for a team or an individual assignee, and the captured purpose establishes a critical foundation for AI-powered recommendations and future reporting capabilities. When the Aspirational Role option is selected and Talent Marketplace is enabled, additional fields for selecting the focus role become available.
Business Need
Employees frequently struggle to articulate what they actually want to achieve when creating a development plan—whether better performance, a promotion, or new skills—resulting in generic, unfocused plans with no clear structure or direction.
By prompting users to define a purpose at the very start, the field gives every plan a clear starting point and an intentional direction. This reduces vague planning, ensures each plan is meaningfully aligned with individual career goals, and enables faster, more personalized guidance through downstream recommendations.
Key Features
- An optional Plan Purpose dropdown appears as the first field on the create, edit, and review pages of a development plan.
- The dropdown offers four fixed options: Grow in Current Role, Prepare for Aspirational Role, Performance Improvement, and Build Skills.
- Selecting Aspirational Role surfaces additional fields for choosing the aspirational and focus role details, available only when Talent Marketplace is enabled.
- Users can save or publish a development plan without selecting a purpose, and a Select Purpose placeholder is displayed when no value is chosen or when a selection is made without saving.
- When a user updates the purpose on a plan that already contains objectives and learnings, a notification warns that the objectives are aligned with the previous purpose and prompts a review before saving.
- The captured purpose lays the foundation for upcoming AI-powered recommendations, reporting, and integration with succession plans and goals.
Deployment & Considerations
This feature is available by default on the redesigned (new) Development Plans UI, with no new permissions required. It releases to Stage on 11 June and to Production on 10 July, and is available across all regions and languages with no specific regulatory restrictions.
Administrators should note several limitations: the four plan purpose options are fixed and cannot be edited or configured; the field is not visible on the old UI, so organizations must switch to the new Development Plans experience to use it. Reporting on the plan purpose will not be available in July and is planned for subsequent releases (targeted for November), and historic development plans will display an empty plan purpose field on the new UI. Plan purpose support for goals and reviews, along with succession plan integration, is planned for future releases.