Employees are arguably one of the most valuable resources to any company and creating a meaningful experience for them from recruitment through their tenure at your company is important to the reputation of your business. It also helps to drive more effective, productive work and help you see more success.
All processes, including an employee’s time with an employer, can be considered a lifecycle, as it often has a beginning, middle, and end. The employee lifecycle is an important thing for HR professionals to consider in their strategy.
What is the employee life cycle in an organization?
The employee life cycle usually consists of six parts, depending on the business. It refers to all parts of employee communication and contributions to an organization. Most of these major touchpoints have a name and are managed to some degree by HR.
- Outreach: An employee’s lifecycle begins when they first find an open position, whether it’s through a recruiter, social media post, or online job boards.
- Recruitment: Recruitment refers to the first interaction between a business’s HR professionals and the applicant. It includes the application and interview process that an employee walks through when seeking a job.
- Onboarding: After a job is accepted by a candidate, new hires go through a process of training for their position, learning company policies, and going through all necessary new hire paperwork.
- Performance: In a perfect world, performance standards would be set at the beginning of employment. Processes like annual reviews and recognition programs help to evaluate and recognize employees for their work, and these are an important part of an employee’s experience with an employer, but it’s important to set the expectations early on.
- Development: When an employee a little more established, development is usually the next step. Managers and leaders should work with their team members to help them establish a goal, both personal and professional, and help to establish a path forward, identify opportunities for advancement, provide resources and connect them with the necessary training.
- Off-boarding: This refers to an employee’s exit from the company. When the separation is voluntary, this can often include an exit interview that gives an employee a chance to share their thoughts about the employee experience with HR and the employer.
So how can technology help HR teams better manage these steps?
- Automated recruiting: There are tons of new recruitment programs being developed that help you find the best talent faster. These programs can often be seamlessly integrated into your existing HR support systems and will help you source candidates, scan resumes, and compile a database of qualified candidates for you to move through the recruitment process with. They usually also feature a collaboration feature that allows HR and hiring managers to communicate more effectively about candidates.
- Consider one system: HR management systems are becoming more popular and bringing together formerly disparate systems of recruiting, payroll, recruitment, development, engagement, and more. If you are considering automated recruitment, it might make sense to take a look at your existing HR technology framework and see if one integrated system would help you manage your employee life cycle more effective and create a more meaningful, positive experience for employee across the organization.
While employee life cycle management is only one factor in a host of HR responsibilities, it is an important thing to pay attention to. In addition, the compliance, payroll, and benefits responsibilities, having a solid employee life cycle plan assisted by technology can help strengthen your teams and even positively impact your overall business. Investing in your employees often translate to your employees investing more into your business through productivity, engagement, and longer tenure.
