A training plan is the document that lists all the training actions, skills assessments and recognition of prior learning that a company plans for its employees over a given fiscal year. Though less visible since its regulatory merger into the skills development plan in 2019, the term remains widely used by HR professionals to describe this planning tool. This guide covers its definition, the link to its official new name, its content, the steps to build one, and how HRIS software can make it easier to track.
What is a training plan
A training plan brings together, for a given period, all the training actions a company decides to fund and organize for its employees. It covers three types of actions: standard training courses, skills assessments, and recognition of prior learning processes.
It pursues three complementary goals. First, adapting employees to their role and maintaining their employability as tools and methods evolve. Second, developing teams’ skills in line with the company’s strategy, whether that means a technology shift, a new offering, or a reorganization. Third, covering the mandatory training required by industry regulations, such as safety certifications or regulatory updates specific to certain occupations.
The plan is not a simple list of courses: it is a planning document that commits a budget, a schedule and a set of priorities, and that must be presentable to employee representatives in companies that have them.
Training plan or skills development plan: what is the difference
None in substance. The 2018 French law on the freedom to choose one’s professional future renamed the training plan as the skills development plan, effective January 1, 2019, without changing its purpose or content. The tool stays the same: a document that lists the training actions, skills assessments and recognition of prior learning planned for employees.
This name change was part of a broader reform that also redefined the very notion of a training action, now understood more broadly to include formats delivered on the job. In the daily practice of HR departments, the term “training plan” nonetheless continues to be widely used out of habit, including in tools, templates and internal communications, while “skills development plan” is the name that has appeared in legal texts and the French Labor Code since 2019.
For a company, choosing one term over the other internally has no legal consequence: what matters is the actual content of the document and compliance with the training obligations that surround it.
Why a training plan matters to the company
French labor law places on the employer a general obligation to adapt employees to their role and maintain their ability to hold a job, particularly with regard to technological change. This obligation does not translate into a mandated plan format, but it does require the company to actually organize training actions and be able to document them, particularly at the six-year review carried out as part of the professional interview.
Beyond this regulatory dimension, a structured training plan delivers a direct strategic benefit. It allows the company to anticipate skills needs rather than react to them, to limit costly external hiring for skills that can be developed in-house, and to strengthen retention among employees who see concrete development prospects. It also serves as a basis for dialogue with employee representatives, who are consulted on the company’s training policy direction.
What a training plan should contain
A complete training plan goes beyond a simple list of course titles. The table below summarizes the elements it should include to be genuinely usable for planning.
| Element | Status | Expected content |
|---|---|---|
| Training actions selected | Required | Title, learning objective and skill targeted by each action |
| Employees or groups concerned | Required | List by name or by department, role, or seniority level |
| Delivery format | Required | Internal or external training, in-person, remote or on-the-job |
| Projected schedule | Required | Dates or periods planned for each action, spread across the fiscal year |
| Allocated budget | Required | Course cost, additional expenses and total budget reconciled with the available training budget |
| Tracking indicators | Recommended | Completion rate, satisfaction rate, indicators of impact on skills |
A plan that leaves out the schedule or the budget remains an intention rather than a planning tool: these two elements are what make it possible to check, during the year, that the planned actions are actually being carried out.
How to build your training plan: the steps
Building a training plan follows a sequence of five steps, repeatable from one fiscal year to the next.
Gather training needs. The main sources are professional interviews and annual reviews, which surface development wishes and skills to develop, supplemented by direct requests from managers and needs identified at the organizational level (a new tool, a new regulation, a strategic project).
Prioritize actions based on strategy and budget. Not all identified needs can be funded in the same year. Prioritization weighs regulatory urgency, alignment with the company’s strategic projects, and the budget actually available.
Choose the formats and providers. For each selected action, the company decides between internal or external training, in-person or remote delivery, and selects the providers or internal resources that will deliver it.
Formalize the schedule and budget. Selected actions are spread across the fiscal year with a target date or period, and the total budget is reconciled with the available envelope before approval.
Track delivery and adjust the plan. The plan is not fixed once approved: its execution is tracked throughout the year, with adjustments possible in case of delays, cancellations, or emerging needs during the year.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of a training plan
Evaluating a training plan combines two families of indicators. Delivery indicators measure whether the plan was carried out as planned: participation rate, schedule compliance, and budget compliance against actual spending.
Impact indicators, which are harder to measure, assess whether the training actually produced the intended effect. They rely on a follow-up evaluation carried out several weeks or months after the training: does the manager observe real skills progress, has the employee gained autonomy on the targeted tasks, and have business indicators directly tied to the skill developed (quality, turnaround time, error rate) moved in the expected direction. This last category of indicators is what makes it possible to justify, to management, continuing or adjusting the training budget from one fiscal year to the next.
The role of HRIS software in managing the training plan
A dedicated module centralizes needs gathered from professional interview campaigns, automates the consolidation of training requests by department or role, and tracks in real time how the committed budget compares with the approved envelope. This centralization avoids manually re-entering needs into a separate spreadsheet and makes it easier to produce the indicators expected when discussing training policy with employee representatives.
Choosing such a module most often ties into the rest of the HR information system. Companies that already run their review campaigns with talent management software see a direct benefit in connecting that module to training plan tracking, since development wishes expressed during reviews automatically feed the needs to be processed. Empowill, a French HRIS focused on talent, reviews and training, offers exactly this: training plan management built into review campaigns, designed for SMBs and mid-sized companies that want to avoid scattering data across several tools.
For training delivered as online courses, connecting to a dedicated LMS platform for content delivery usefully complements the HRIS, which remains the entry point for budget management and compliance tracking. This connection between HR tools fits into a broader HR digitalization effort that is gradually reaching every process, from payroll to recruitment.
Frequently asked questions
What is a training plan?
A training plan is the document that lists all the training actions, skills assessments and recognition of prior learning that a company plans for its employees over a given period. It is used to adapt employees to their role, develop their skills in line with the company’s strategy, and cover mandatory training.
What is the difference between a training plan and a skills development plan?
None in substance: the 2018 French law on the freedom to choose one’s professional future renamed the training plan as the skills development plan from 2019 onward, without changing its purpose. The term training plan is still widely used in HR practice, but the skills development plan has been the official name since that date.
How do you build a training plan?
Building one follows five steps: gather training needs from managers and professional interviews, prioritize actions based on strategy and available budget, choose the formats and training providers, formalize the schedule and budget, then track delivery and adjust the plan during the year.
What should a training plan contain?
A complete training plan specifies the training actions selected, the employees or groups concerned, the delivery format (internal or external, in-person or remote), the projected schedule, the allocated budget, and the indicators used to measure delivery and the impact of the actions.
How do you evaluate the effectiveness of a training plan?
Evaluation combines delivery indicators (participation rate, schedule and budget compliance) with impact indicators measured after training: skills progress observed by the manager, autonomy on new tasks, and changes in business indicators directly tied to the skills developed.