Improve your employer brand, boost recruitment, and double down on staff retention. Discover strategies to enhance every stage of the employee lifecycle.
Relationships can be complicated.
And just like any other relationship, the employee/employer relationship can be supportive, affirming, and memorable...or short, toxic, and something you want to move on from as quickly as possible.
For those of us who work in HR or resource management, we aspire to nurture more of these positive experiences than negative ones. But we also know that keeping people happy isn't easy.
This where the employee lifecycle model can help.
By providing a more structured way of thinking about how employees relate to your organization, improving the employee lifecycle can create outcomes that work towards the mutual benefit of your workforce and the company.
But what exactly makes up the employee lifecycle, and how can you use this model to set candidates up for success from the moment they hear about you?
In this article, we set out to explain the importance of the employee lifecycle, walk you through the stages that define it, and share some ways you can improve it to retain employees and attract the best talent.
The employee lifecycle encapsulates all the stages a person goes through when engaging with an organization.
The cycle starts as soon as you learn about a company, progresses as your interaction and engagement with it grows, and ends at the point where you separate (although the word-of-mouth testimonies from ex-employees may also be thought of as part of the employee lifecycle).
There are generally 7 stages that go into the employee lifecycle.
Taking control of your employee life cycle model brings both financial and non-financial benefits to the company. It helps enhance the overall employee experience and empowers the workforce to perform at their full potential.
Understanding where the employee experience is lagging, through employee feedback, also enables you to take action to improve organizational performance and boost overall workplace satisfaction. Not to mention the massive impact employee engagement can have on retention rates.
Additionally, employee lifecycle management helps you analyze the needs and motivations of your workforce - such as the demand for upskilling programs, flexible working initiatives, or a competitive benefits package. In turn, this will help you see which interventions and improvements will deliver the greatest impact for your employees.
Employee lifecycle strategy revolves around everything from the recruitment process to meaningful interactions with existing employees and from improving the company culture to making former employees into true advocates.
Here are the main goals you can expect to hit with a good employee lifecycle strategy on the table:
The exact details of your employee lifecycle model depends on the goals you are pursuing, but these are the bases that you should cover as a starting point:
Strong employer branding is crucial for attracting the best talent. Where people hear about your company, what they manage to find out, and what they learn from advocates or detractors will be decisive.
Getting the basics right by offering flexible and competitive benefits packages is key, so that potential candidates can see that you're serious about creating a good work environment.
On top of this, people will want to know your company culture, mission, vision, and values - because they want to see if you're a good fit for them. In fact, recent research has found that 58% of workers will not join a company that doesn't share the same values as them.
Communicating what you stand for as a brand is, therefore, paramount for attracting like-minded experts who will all come together to fight for the common cause.
Among other things, it's also a good idea to highlight your commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and providing everyone with equal opportunities.
Have you ever applied for a job only to never hear from the company again? Or participated in a recruitment process that felt like you're talking to a wall whenever you tried to get some feedback or clarifications?
The experience people get during the recruitment process sets the tone for their further relationship with the company. It gives them an idea of just how structured or chaotic things can get there.
To make sure you always provide a positive selection experience, you need to define clear job roles and expectations, utilize relevant recruitment tools, be open to transparent communication, conduct thorough assessment, and promote a fair recruitment process.
Don't forget that on sites like Glassdoor, candidates will review your recruitment and selection process - and warn other potential applicants if they've had a poor experience. Ghosting your candidates is generally considered to be bad form 👻
New hires are sometimes expected to jump in and hit the ground running, but you're setting them up for failure if there is no proper onboarding process in place.
If you want onboarding to be a success, don't leave individual team managers to create their own ad-hoc process. You need to build a structured program that outlines key stages and timelines new employees will follow as they integrate into their new position.
At this initial stage, it's also valuable to introduce your company’s core values, mission, and vision, helping new employees understand the bigger picture and their place within it. This is also an ideal time to discuss any specific preferences or needs they might have, which could shape their experience and help them feel more comfortable in the workplace.
As the onboarding process progresses, consider exploring each employee’s goals and aspirations within the company. Understanding their ambitions allows you to identify potential opportunities for growth and internal mobility, setting the stage for a career path that aligns with both their interests and the organization’s needs.
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When managing experts from different walks of life and with various skill sets, having a skills management system is a must. This system will help you easily identify skill gaps, do skills mapping, skills tracking, and help people build a plan on how they will expand their skills and expertise further.
The skills inventory above (built in Runn 👋) shows you not only the skills that these team members have, but their level of competency. This can help you, for instance, identify who may need additional training, who might be a suitable mentor for a junior staff member, who has a particular area of expertise, and who is a good all-round generalist.
Investing in skills management and professional development of your workforce is also a matter of staying dynamic and resilient. Offering personalized mentorship programs, establishing an annual learning budget, and giving access to upskilling and reskilling opportunities can all help you stand above your competitors in this regard.
Keeping up with recent research and employee retention statistics when building your employee lifecycle model can help you understand why people leave their company...and what could make them stay.
In 2023, Gallup conducted a survey which helped them find the main reasons people left their jobs that year:
With such stats in mind, you can make informed decisions and design strategies that could make people retain their interest and commitment to the company.
Offer growth opportunities or recognition programs that meet employee expectations, and implement strategies to gather feedback regularly to identify if you need to course-correct. Conducting stay interviews, for instance, can help you understand why your employees choose to stay working for your company.
Deciding how you are going to set goals and measure progress is yet another pillar of a good employee lifecycle strategy. Ideally, you want to make sure that all employees are developing both personally and professionally, while moving closer towards company objectives.
But performance management shouldn't be about micromanaging and hovering over them like an anxious parent. Instead, it is about empowering them to perform to the best of their ability.
Here, it's good to look into individual KPIs and OKRs and align those with larger business objectives. In addition, you need to provide people with regular feedback, performance reviews, and expectations management - so everyone agrees on the company's definition of success.
Despite its value to a positive employee lifecycle, this stage often goes overlooked.
Transition or offboarding can happen for a number of reasons, like retirement, resignation, or employment termination. But "goodbye" doesn't always have to be negative.
Having a structured exit helps both parties end their relationship on good terms and maintain contact further on, which can later convert into referrals and positive reviews of the company.
Ideally, your offboarding process should include:
Employee life cycle management comes with a suite of challenges, from recruitment bottlenecks, to PR damage to your employer brand.
What's more, issues like skill gaps, low employee engagement, or even burnout will always need to be kept in review to prevent them from causing problems.
Here's what you can do to minimize these risks:
The first question to answer here is why you are taking the time to look into the employee life cycle stages and build a system around it.
Is about improving the employee's journey? Is it about improving the hiring process and building an outstanding team? Is it about reinventing that employer brand and setting some big, aspirational goals about meaningful work and employee happiness?
Having a shared vision and aligned expectations means you will build a custom strategy that caters to the specific needs of the business.
For example, in the professional services sector, one of the biggest sources of employee dissatisfaction can be workload and poor work-life balance. You might have some people doing regular bench time, while others keep canceling their PTO because their project deadlines keep getting pushed out. This can easily create a discontent workforce and push people to leave.
You lifecycle strategy will, therefore, have to focus on ensuring people always have just the right amount of work on their plate.
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A resource management tool lies at the core of positive employee experience. With software like Runn, you can block out time for onboarding, provide new employees with suitable workload and assignments, and ensure they get the right opportunities to develop their skills and proficiencies.
Proper resource management is the ace in the hole for any HR department as it helps you upgrade all the stages of the employee experience:
People appreciate feeling heard and understood. In fact, companies that regularly gather and implement feedback from their employees experience 14.9% lower turnover rates. And because companies evolve so much, making that feedback loop into a regular activity is a must.
Recent work-life balance statistics, for example, show that people are now more confident than ever about the type of company they will commit to or the kind of environment they want to join. Flexible hours, remote or hybrid work, development programs, and internal mobility opportunities are turning into the basic pack top employers will be expected to provide.
It's never enough to develop a one-off strategy and reuse it year after year. As the needs of the global workforce evolve, so should the systems designed to meet their expectations.
If you are looking for the right place to start with improving your employee lifecycle model or building one from scratch, finding the right tool to gather and track all the your resource data should be at the top of the list.
Runn is an all-in-one system built to make human resource management a breeze. It makes it easy to sketch the profile of your perfect potential candidates, helps you keep current employees happy, and takes you through the key stages of building a reliable, skilled, and engaged workforce.
No matter how large your teams get, Runn keeps your data structured and surfaces the details that require your attention.
