employee life cycle research paper

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, developing the employee lifecycle to keep top talent.

Strategic HR Review

ISSN : 1475-4398

Article publication date: 11 October 2019

Issue publication date: 16 October 2019

This article aims to set out the best strategies to understand the employee life cycle and how to employ tactics to keep top talent within an organisation.

Design/methodology/approach

This feature explores desktop data and industry research.

This feature demonstrates how an employee’s life cycle can be extended in the workplace and explains the link between the employee value proposition and the employee life cycle to create successful onboarding strategies.

Social implications

This article also looks at how millennials will stay longer in an organisation that has strong environmental policies.

Originality/value

This feature offers fantastic insight into an issue that is currently costing the country millions.

• Employee engagement
• Organization development
• Talent management
• Productivity

Cattermole, G. (2019), "Developing the employee lifecycle to keep top talent", Strategic HR Review , Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 258-262. https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-05-2019-0042

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles

We’re listening — tell us what you think, something didn’t work….

Report bugs here

All feedback is valuable

Please share your general feedback

Join us on our journey

Platform update page.

Visit emeraldpublishing.com/platformupdate to discover the latest news and updates

Questions & More Information

Answers to the most commonly asked questions here

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Managing the Employee Life Cycle

Related Papers

The key to the success of any business is building the right team at the right time, but the process of finding, recruiting and selecting the group who will be with the business through the journey can be one of the least planned out and executed activities, often leaving companies having to rein in headcount, or reduce burn and critical gaps in their team at a later stage. Accomplishing this task requires the ability to identify the various jobs and roles needed within the organization to meet current and future goals related to production and growth. Once identified, clear and concise job descriptions and duties will help ensure that recruitment remains streamlined and targeted. Selecting the right candidate requires identifying the necessary specific skills, knowledge and qualities. Other important parts of the selection process include conducting any necessary aptitude tests and conducting a thorough background check to ensure the potential employee meets the basic qualifications of both the position and the University. Strategicly the HR Office will facilitate various ways to reduce costs while ensuring enough staff is in place to complete all necessary job duties and responsibilities and working with the hiring managers to plan ahead lanning ahead for the loss of essential employees' skills to retirement.

Jon Hairsine

Stavroula Panagiotaropoulou

Human Resource Management Assignment

Cornelius W van der Westhuizen

International. Journal. of HRM & Org. Bev.,

Dr Shaik R E H A N A Banu

Procurement is the first operative function of personnel management, which can be sub divided into various sub functions like human resources planning, recruitment and selection. Management should determine the kind of personnel required for a job and the number of persons to be employed. The organization should also find out the right man for the right job in right time. The main aim of the study is, the satisfaction level of employee regarding the existing job analysis procedure. Data was collected from primary and secondary sources. Collection of the data is of primary importance the research process. Data which is collected for the purpose of research helps in proper analysis, which is helpful to conduct research effectively. Based on the findings and suggestions, we conclude that the job analysis at APSPDCL, is satisfactory. After conclusion a study of job analysis in APSPDCL, I have arrived to the following conclusions. Their skills and qualifications match with job specification company. Their job gives satisfaction and motivation towards the work. They are able to identify the same job in practice what are mentioned in the job description. Their job provides more opportunities for their growth and development. Proportionally equal number of respondents is satisfied and dissatisfied the restructuring of designation in the company.

Dr. Asif Kamran

This research is based on the pure and practical facts which the HR personnel's deal with in their daily work routine, either it is regarding to salary issues, personal issues or regarding any form of change in the staff's own contracts or anything regarding to job and organizations requirements. The purpose of the research was to identify the problems relating to the recruitment and selection methods and sources used in different ways by organizations. The finding of the research was merely or purely based on the opinions and results from the Human Resource Department of English Heritage. To provide the best available information and research materials on the different procedures adopted by organizations on the recruitment and selection methods and analyze their expectations and outcome of the procedures. A design of questionnaire was produced and was given to different executives in this field to provide us with the results based on that questions and a questionnaire was used in it. The feedback from the questionnaire has findings which are based on the primary and secondary researches. This Research study includes the feedback from the HR personnel's from the Organization's and my own research findings from previous and primary reports. This research is very practical study which provides further insights for academics and managers of both large and small organizations.

Maria Aleem

bornwell mutsambiwa Mfpst

RELATED PAPERS

The American Journal of Medicine

Nicolas Pascal

Tropical Animal Health and Production

Enoch Owusu-Sekyere

Random Operators and Stochastic Equations

Igor Pikovsky

Open House International

Mahmud mohd jusan

The Semantic Web

thanh phong tran

Revista Amauta

Erika Bermudez

Brazilian Journal of Botany

Angelita Bernal

European Heart Journal - Cardiovascular Imaging

Araceli Boraita

ELETRORRESISTIVIDADE APLICADA À CARACTERIZAÇÃO DO SUBSOLO E DAS POSSÍVEIS FEIÇÕES DE ACÚMULO DE CULTURA MATERIAL NO SÍTIO ARQUEOLÓGICO SERRA DO MIMO, BARREIRAS-BA

Fernanda Leão

Annals of Saudi Medicine

Abdulrahman Ishaq

Yurdagül Kılıç

Annals of Diagnostic Pathology

Etienne Mahe

Molecular Ecology

Kermit Ritland

DAVIDRAJ JOHNRAVINDAR

Arthritis & Rheumatism

Graciela Alarcon

Chris Flanders

Shock Waves

Namık Kılıç

Journal of the Chemical Society, Faraday Transactions 1: Physical Chemistry in Condensed Phases

Amar Sharma

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Login To RMS System
• About JETIR URP
• About All Approval and Licence
• Conference/Special Issue Proposal
• Book and Dissertation/Thesis Publication
• How start New Journal & Software
• Best Papers Award
• Mission and Vision
• Reviewer Board
• Join JETIR URP
• Call For Paper
• Research Areas
• Publication Guidelines
• Sample Paper Format
• Submit Paper Online
• Processing Charges
• Hard Copy and DOI Charges
• Check Your Paper Status
• Current Issue
• Past Issues
• Special Issues
• Conference Proposal
• Recent Conference
• Published Thesis

Contact Us Click Here

Whatsapp contact click here, published in:.

Volume 7 Issue 8 August-2020 eISSN: 2349-5162

UGC and ISSN approved 7.95 impact factor UGC Approved Journal no 63975

Unique identifier.

Published Paper ID: JETIRED06058

Registration ID: 300107

Page Number

Post-publication.

• Downlaod eCertificate, Confirmation Letter
• editor board member
• JETIR front page
• Journal Back Page
• UGC Approval 14 June W.e.f of CARE List UGC Approved Journal no 63975

Share This Article

Important links:.

• Call for Paper
• Submit Manuscript online

• Biandla Murali

Cite This Article

2349-5162 | Impact Factor 7.95 Calculate by Google Scholar An International Scholarly Open Access Journal, Peer-Reviewed, Refereed Journal Impact Factor 7.95 Calculate by Google Scholar and Semantic Scholar | AI-Powered Research Tool, Multidisciplinary, Monthly, Multilanguage Journal Indexing in All Major Database & Metadata, Citation Generator

Publication Details

Download paper / preview article.

Download Paper

Preview this article, download pdf, print this page.

Impact Factor:

Impact factor calculation click here current call for paper, call for paper cilck here for more info important links:.

• Follow Us on

• Developed by JETIR

This time it’s personal: Shaping the ‘new possible’ through employee experience

As anyone who has led an organization since 2020 knows, assumptions about the nature of work and how it is organized  have gone out the window. Employees have shared this sense of disruption: McKinsey research shows that while most people have felt supported by their organizations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many have struggled . And while some companies are exploring hybrid working models, many are expecting a full return to the office, setting employee concerns and employer expectations further apart .

How do leaders satisfy all parties in trying to remake the mission? In our view, they have a unique opportunity to listen to their employees and engage them on what matters—now and into the future. Since the pandemic began, McKinsey has surveyed almost 1,000 individuals to assess their views on work and how it has changed . While each respondent’s experience is personal and specific to them, common threads have emerged about their career paths.

Workers are hungry for trust, social cohesion, and purpose. They want to feel that their contributions are recognized and that their team is truly collaborative. They desire clear responsibilities and opportunities to learn and grow. They expect their personal sense of purpose to align with that of their organization. And they want an appropriate physical and digital environment that gives them the flexibility to achieve that elusive work–life balance.

Companies are facing an exodus of employees who are exhausted and overwhelmed, questioning what work means, and thinking through their options. Organizations can offer an excellent employee experience (EX) by taking these needs and feelings seriously at such a crucial time.

Providing top-notch EX is not just lip service; it requires a profound reorientation away from a traditional top-down model to one based on the fundamentals of design thinking. This shift allows a company to put its workers first by exploring and responding to how they view their employee journeys, then delivering tailored interventions that focus on critical moments that matter to maximize satisfaction, performance, and productivity. In doing so, companies can become more inspiring, collaborative, and centered on creating an experience that is meaningful and enjoyable .

Research shows that people who report having a positive employee experience have 16 times the engagement level of employees with a negative experience, and that they are eight times more likely to want to stay at a company. 1 McKinsey Employee Experience survey, 2020. In this article, we look at how companies can focus on employee experience to help retain and excite the best people, creating value and maintaining a competitive edge as they do so.

How employee experience can shape the ‘new possible’

A recent  McKinsey Global Institute report notes that the future of work  will bring more remote work, an acceleration of e-commerce and digital payments, and the continuing rollout of automation and artificial intelligence (AI). There will be major workforce transitions for millions across the globe, many of whom face a widening skills gap  and other challenges. And because more and more roles are becoming disaggregated and fluid, work will increasingly be defined in terms of skills.

At the same time, the pandemic has opened the door wider to a range of workplace changes we call the “ new possible .” 2 We spoke with 350 human-resources leaders about the role of uncertainty in their function. They told us that over the next two years they want to prioritize initiatives that strengthen their organizations’ ability to drive change in leadership, culture, and employee experience. Taking the place of a traditional workplace hierarchy is a model that is more flexible and responsive, built on higher levels of connection. In this approach, organizations work together with their people to create personalized, authentic, and motivating experiences that strengthen individual, team, and company performance .

Employee experience takes into account what people value in the broadest sense, acknowledging how life stage, personal circumstances, and even personality type make different propositions attractive for different people (Exhibit 1). Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most motivating answer is rarely just to be paid more. Rather, employees want to feel a powerful sense of agency—being able to influence outcomes that matter to them—allied with a strong sense of identity and belonging. That means agency in work and agency about work.

Our research shows that different experiences in the three core areas of EX—social, work, and organization—explain most of the variation in how positively or negatively employees view their journey with their company. 3 McKinsey Employee Experience survey, 2020; WorkTrends 2016, IBM/Globoforce Employee Experience Index Study (n = 23,070). Before the pandemic began, a majority of employees—particularly Gen Z workers, surveys indicate—already felt disengaged from their jobs and were placing more emphasis on workplace well-being. 4 The employee expectations report 2020 , Peakon, 2020, peakon.com.

Organizations that design an EX model that is both personalized and supported by digital experiences that augment flexibility create an enduring opportunity to attract, inspire, and keep the best talent. In a world in which so many people are reassessing why and where they work, EX is at the heart of how organizations set themselves apart. Indeed, McKinsey research shows that employees at leading EX companies are more inclined to surpass work expectations, having a 40 percent higher level of discretionary effort.

Taking a systematic approach to EX

Design thinking , which uses both data and empathy to put employees at the center of the problem-solving equation, is a useful model for leaders to use to help them understand what matters most to their employees. It’s the same thinking that has transformed customer experience  over the past decade, turning the lens internally to ask the same questions about employees.

There are several factors for success in an EX intervention or transformation, starting with a clear North Star, or measure for success. Also crucial is a commitment to understanding current employee pain points and talent needs, as well as the emotional context of life and work journeys. Finally, these journeys should be enabled by digital tools that free people up to focus on the more creative and engaging aspects of their work.

Three steps can help leaders—and their organization—develop new ways of working, including establishing a cross-functional capability to implement successful EX (Exhibit 2).

Step 1: Establish a baseline and build on it

This first step is a collective exercise that requires the alignment of senior leaders of all functions, as well as the engagement of the wider organization. It starts with a clear, honest appraisal of current employee needs, supported by data as well as by tools and assessments grounded in organizational science.

An honest appraisal of employee needs, supported by data, helps to ensure that a company has a clear-eyed view of the core theme it is driving.

More broadly, it requires leaders to articulate the direction and scale of ambition for EX and define the value at stake. This helps ensure that a company has a clear-eyed view of the core theme it is driving, rather than just a vague idea of how to improve performance with a one-and-done response.

For example, one company wanted to focus on financial performance and customer impact. Looking across all levels of the organization, the company identified leaders in both functions and developed an EX plan to transform how these individuals experienced key moments in their journeys, such as onboarding and their first few months as leaders. This exercise helped the company attract and keep more people who thrived in these roles.

Another organization’s North Star was to become the best place to work in a digital age, so it developed a tailored EX with a focus on digital and AI talent.

Step 2: Identify and transform employee journeys

Design thinking involves a “discover, design, deliver” cycle that involves a deep understanding of a particular employee journey over a relevant stretch of time. For most product- and customer-service journeys, that cycle is shorter than those of employee journeys—and often only applicable to their main components. For instance, the onboarding journey in a role may take as long as a year to play out completely, longer than a typical product journey. But the process is otherwise remarkably similar.

To implement a successful EX model, companies need to get the following two design elements right:

EX designers, like their product and service equivalents, analyze employee journeys by building clearly defined archetypes—what we call personas—to plot out important moments.

Based on data- and empathy-driven descriptions of hypothetical people, personas can be used as tools to redesign the experience in areas that employees find lacking. They reflect who employees are—background, age, level, and tenure—and where they sit in the organization, as well as what their particular needs, behaviors, and attitudes are.

For example, a persona could be based on a role such as a nurse practitioner in a healthcare system. This person exhibits a strong work ethic but has been working nonstop since the pandemic began and is burned out. Despite trying her best, she can’t support her team the way she would like to and needs time to reenergize so she can coach and support the people she works with, who are similarly exhausted.

EX designers, working hand in hand with employees, can build these insights into a persona and, in turn, design “edge cases”—that is, places where redesigning employee journeys has the most value. Support for employees in roles such as nurse practitioner could include flexible paid time off, well-being support, and more opportunities for team engagement.

A global technology leader wanted to emphasize inclusivity, so it developed personas based on observed behaviors and the personality types represented among its workforce. By mapping personas, it found that introverts were often booking meeting rooms just to have lunch in peace and to have a chance to recharge. This exercise set a number of priorities for reimagining the workplace, from the canteen to the conference room, and led to a dramatically different new headquarters design. Performance and satisfaction measures improved in parallel, with some tasks being completed 30 percent more quickly.

‘Moments that matter’

Once EX designers, working closely with employees, create personas, they can then define “moments that matter.” These steps in an employee life cycle are inflection points that, if designed well, can create a disproportionate uplift in experience. They also map pain points that can then be addressed (Exhibit 3). Moments that matter will vary by company, but they also fit within the same relatively consistent set of employee journeys in most organizations.

In our current context, people working from home for more than a year may find themselves isolated, so companies can use surveys or other data to find ways that would allow employees to gather safely more often. Or, for example, employees might fear that they are missing out on career advancement because they haven’t been in the office. In response, companies can increase the cadence of interactions that employees have with their boss and set up a chat channel to alert workers of new opportunities company-wide.

Journeys, and moments that matter in particular, vary significantly based on personas and company context. It is therefore crucial to work with employees to identify these moments and their related pain points. Having employees help define personas reinforces the “human touch” aspects of the work and helps create meaningful impact.

Colleagues who have experienced these moments can be enlisted to help develop prototype solutions in focused design sprints, along with piloting in a single business area or function for rapid feedback and modification. A key part of designing these prototype solutions is to consider the role that digitization and digital tools play in fundamentally changing what work means for people. Digital portals instead of paper filing, virtual focus groups, rapid prototyping—these measures allow people to focus on more engaging work activities.

Companies can then create a series of key performance indicators to measure and track satisfaction over time, gauging impact and driving continual improvement. Part of this shift includes augmenting the capabilities of HR teams , whose mandate already emphasizes employee-centric policies. In essence, the process of listening to employees  and monitoring progress should be a seamless digital experience guided by a human touch.

A commitment to fact-based analysis also distinguishes EX excellence from good intentions. For instance, one global software company used its impressive technology capacity to enhance EX digitally. It identified behavioral employee personas and prioritized a number of critical moments that matter for performance and satisfaction. Using context-specific personalization, employees are guided and supported in real time as they experience annual performance reviews and significant role changes or life events. The company not only leveraged digital tools, such as a virtual avatar, to give personalized, real-time feedback to employees but also used virtual-reality technology to strengthen immersion and empathy during annual performance reviews.

Step 3: Equip the full organization for an EX transformation

After identifying personas and moments that matter, the final step involves implementing systems that let the organization scale EX—through better data, measurement, systems, and capabilities. While HR is a central partner here, tools and resources are put in the hands of employees and managers to transform their experience. The changes to operating models and performance-management systems are linked to business performance so that organizations can assess financial impact.

One major European agrichemicals player accelerated its EX journey in just three weeks with a series of three sprints, engaging employees to help identify and map priority journeys and moments. In addition to a complete redesign of two moments that matter, the team was able to create a full road map for improved EX across the organization, along with resource requirements and measures for financial impact.

In another example, a global heavy-vehicle OEM reimagined its digital dealership through a global employee-experience transformation. The new cocreation approach was adopted across markets by a record 90 percent of dealers. The redesign took ten minutes off the average work order and helped employees to deliver truly proactive customer service.

Success factors: The big picture

Regardless of industry or geography, an organization can create a distinctive EX strategy by first defining what its goals are and how EX supports business impact for the company. It should also avoid a cookie-cutter approach to employee journeys by marrying rigorous analytics with personalization, developing appropriate personas, and focusing on moments that matter that resonate with the workforce.

In addition to these fundamentals, successful EX also creates a balance between top-down guidance and letting employees create their own destinies. Everyone is in on the journey, including a coalition made up of finance, operations, and IT, among other functions; these groups are partners in change management and implementation from the start. Finally, data is at the center of how organizations can continually measure impact and course correct as needed.

Now more than ever, people are thinking hard about where and why they work. The best employee experience is not meant to be yet another organizational process. EX means pinpointing important moments in an employee’s journey and making them more positive, fulfilling, even joyful. Doing so can help companies attract the best people, motivate them to perform, and augment feelings of loyalty. A successful EX culture, in turn, accelerates growth and creates competitive advantages.

Focusing on employees is long overdue. Organizations can seize this moment to do and be more for their people, as well as for their shareholders and customers. How each company manages this opportunity may shape its perception as an employer—both internally and externally—for years to come.

Jonathan Emmett is an associate partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Asmus Komm is a partner in the Hamburg office, Stefan Moritz is a senior expert in the Stockholm office, and Friederike Schultz is an associate partner in the Berlin office.

The authors wish to thank Ela Chodyniecka, Florian Pollner, James Rappaport, Eike Reus, Kira Rupietta, and Bill Schaninger for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barbara Tierney, a senior editor in the New York office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

The new possible: How HR can help build the organization of the future

COVID-19 and the employee experience: How leaders can seize the moment

‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? The choice is yours

11 Stages in the Employee Life Cycle: How to Measure & Optimize

Business owners and leaders know a strong team is the backbone of their company’s success. While they may talk about their team as extended family, in reality, nearly all businesses will see employees come and go over time. That makes evaluating and improving each step of the employee life cycle vital.

The employee life cycle extends from the moment a potential employee first learns about the company until the time they exit. While some models focus on five or six life cycle stages, we’re going to take a deeper look at 11 stages in the employee life cycle, with a keen focus on how to measure and optimize the employee experience along the way. Keep reading to learn more about the employee life cycle and why it matters to your business.

What Is the Employee Life Cycle?

The employee life cycle is a model that works to explain the various stages most employees will experience with their employer.

The life cycle begins when an employee learns about a company or job opportunity, continues on through their recruitment, hiring and onboarding into their time working for the company, and finally extends to their exit and post-employment experience.

Depending on your company’s size, the type of workers you employ and your industry, the steps in your employee life cycle will vary. However, the overall path from hiring to exit is often similar, regardless of the work being done.

Key Takeaways

• Measuring employee life cycle metrics can help you understand if your business is moving in the right direction.
• Examining the intricacies of each stage, like the candidate experience, onboarding and engagement, can lead to more productive, happier employees.
• Low turnover can save on hiring expenses while helping to retain top performers and their expertise.

Employee Life Cycle Explained

Monitoring the employee life cycle can help business owners and managers better understand and predict what employees will go through during their employment. A particularly positive or negative experience during any stage could affect the entire organization.

For example, once new employees sign on to start work, a smooth and low-stress onboarding process can help them get up to speed quickly so they can start contributing. However, if you don’t have an onboarding plan, those new workers may find themselves bored, frustrated and lost in their new role.

From there, an employee’s experiences can influence how long they stay with the company and may inspire others either to stay longer or start hunting for a new job elsewhere. The moment an employee leaves the company, the exit interview, can itself affect the employee experience.

Monitoring and improving upon the employee life cycle can be crucial to the long-term success of the company and its profitability.

Why Is the Employee Life Cycle Important?

Reviewing and planning around life cycle stages can help your business improve the overall employee experience, which benefits the business in many ways from more productive employees to improved customer loyalty.

Two of the employee life cycle stages that are most clearly tied to bottom-line success are recruitment and retention. The average U.S. employer spends about $4,000 and takes 24 days to hire a new worker. If you can keep employees around longer, you’ll have fewer positions to fill over time.

Better management of that recruitment process can help you save as well. Depending on how you measure and manage the process, the cost of recruitment can be much higher, with another study putting the average cost of a new hire at $6,110.

Once an employee finishes training—which can be quite expensive in its own right once you factor in their pay, plus the pay of any other staffers involved in training—they may develop business-specific expertise that makes them even more valuable. As an employee’s knowledge and skills grow, keeping them may be a challenge, but it should still be the goal and something you work toward.

However you measure it, bringing in new employees is expensive. Keeping employees happy and engaged can help extend the average time employees stay at your company. That’s why improving employee life cycle management could have a lasting impact on a company’s future.

What Are the Stages of the Employee Life Cycle?

While many companies follow a simple five- or six-stage life cycle, considering this expanded list of 11 stages that can help you better understand and optimize your employee experience.

• Interviewing

Development

• Recognition
• Offboarding

11 Stages of the Employee Life Cycle Strategy

Developing a complete understanding of the employee life cycle stages can help your business improve its workforce management , in turn positioning the company for future success.

1. Attraction

The employee life cycle begins before you’ve even made any contact with the person in many cases. Employees start their journey with a company in the attraction phase. While attraction may be easier for well-known national brands, prominent local businesses or industry-leading organizations, you can’t hire anyone unless they’ve heard of your business—whether through a job posting or elsewhere—and have some interest in what you do.

2. Recruiting

Recruiting is where you interact with a prospective employee for the first time. During the recruitment stage, a prospective worker will become more familiar with your company culture and what the job entails. Consider the benefits of using current employees and your own network when seeking qualified candidates over outside firms.

3. Interviewing

Interviewing is a critical phase of the employee life cycle. During the interview, both the employer and the candidate should ask questions and get a feel for whether or not the position is a good fit. While most employers look at interviews primarily as a step in qualifying employees, it’s just as important for the interviewee to determine if the job and company culture is right for what they want in a job or career and the employer must be able to help communicate that in the interview.

4. Onboarding

Think back to your first day at work. It can be exciting, overwhelming and stressful all at once. Ensuring employees get off to a successful start is a team effort. Hiring managers, human resources (HR) and IT often need to collaborate to get an employee onboarded and trained as efficiently as possible while also instilling company values and connecting them with colleagues.

5. Engagement

Once the new job’s initial excitement wears off and workers settle into a routine, they may become complacent. Strong company culture and a focus on employee engagement can help keep your employees excited about what they do when starting work every day. Engaged employees are generally more productive and likely to stay in their position longer.

6. Development

While some workers are happy to stay in the same role for many years, others are motivated to improve their skills and move up within the organization. Even if you have a small business where there are few opportunities for promotions, you can give staffers new responsibilities and projects to help them grow within their roles. Regular pay raises go a long way as well.

7. Retention

Employee attrition is a natural part of running a business. But you can take steps to retain your best performers. That means listening to their suggestions, empowering them to improve how they do their work, keeping them engaged and ensuring they are comfortable in their daily routine.

8. Recognition

A steady paycheck and strong benefits are most likely the main reasons someone goes to work every day but going a step further with regular employee recognition can boost employee happiness and dedication to the team. Encouraging managers to recognize a job well done and offering workers a way to acknowledge their peers can be beneficial for everyone involved.

9. Offboarding

When an employee leaves, they hopefully do so on good terms. Instead of escorting someone out of the building when they give two weeks’ notice, it’s best to plan for a smooth transition of duties, cross-training for anyone who may need to temporarily take over a project or task and preparation of final payroll and benefits.

10. Separation

In an ideal situation, employees leave your company with fond memories and well wishes for their peers. To improve your future results, make sure you take the time to understand why the employee is leaving and get honest feedback on what you can do to make the company a better place to work in the future. Once you’ve taken care of things like network account access, keys and company assets, you may want to host a friendly goodbye lunch or happy hour to celebrate their time at the company.

After an employee leaves and any final paperwork is done, they may not disappear from the company’s orbit forever. In addition to ongoing friendships with current employees, company alumni may still be a source of future referrals. You may even find you’ll work with them again at some point in the future. Doing your best to not burn bridges is the best strategy for everyone involved.

12 Employee Life Cycle Metrics

Here are some metrics that can help business track and improve the various employee life cycle stages:

Recruitment

• Time to hire: The number of days from the time a job is posted until a candidate is hired. The lower this number, the better.
• Offer acceptance rate: A higher offer acceptance rate means you are doing a good job vetting, interviewing and finding the right fit for openings, and that your pay and benefits are competitive.
• Quality of hire: This is a score that explains how well a new hire fits the job requirements. Measuring this may require collaborating with the manager.
• Cost to hire: It’s reasonable to spend a significant amount on hiring but overspending on recruitment cuts into your bottom line.
• Ramp time: When your new employees start, how long does it take them to get up to speed? A shorter ramp time indicates that your training is efficient and effective.
• New hire engagement: Getting new hires engaged with the company and its culture is critical. A 90-day survey or other feedback can help you assess the success of new hire engagement.
• Training effectiveness: Training an employee quickly isn’t worth much if they don’t know how to do their job well. In addition to ramp time, it’s also wise to measure training effectiveness through a survey or conversations with their manager.
• Productivity: Productivity is one of the most important HR metrics in any business. Employee output is a core metric to use to determine it.
• Regular feedback: Managers and employees should provide feedback on a regular schedule. Many companies employ quarterly check-ins and an annual review, though some managers also like to have weekly one-on-one meetings to discuss priorities, address challenges and further develop the employee.
• Promotion rates: A high promotion rate indicates you are doing a good job hiring for both the position and the company and that workers succeed in their roles. It’s also a sign you are rewarding top performers, which encourages them to stay.
• Employee engagement: Employee engagement is a strong indicator of an individual’s likelihood of staying at the company. This is one of the most common and critical human resources metrics. It is often measured through employee surveys, among other inputs.
• Attrition rate: A high rate of workers leaving the company is an expensive problem and will hurt your organization long term. Low attrition is a signal that employees are happy, fairly compensated and engaged.

Employee Life Cycle Trends

When considering the stages of the employee life cycle at your company, it’s easy to get caught up in the metrics. But don’t just look at those metrics in isolation. It’s also a good idea to look outside of your organization for new employee life cycle trends.

To keep employees around longer and minimize attrition, modern employers are looking to innovative HR policies such as unlimited paid vacation, flexible work hours, student loan repayment assistance, wellness programs and education assistance. What works best for your workforce may be unique, so get to know your employees to custom tailor any industry trend to your business.

Once you adopt a new HR policy aimed at improving your employee life cycle, follow related reports in your company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) and HR systems to measure their effectiveness.

Simplify HR and Payroll

Managing the Employee Life Cycle With HR Technology

Technology is taking on a bigger role in nearly every profession, and that includes human resources. With leading HR systems in place, you can easily view dashboards that give you a holistic perspective on employee life cycle metrics. Company dashboards and team scorecards can give you insights on your employee life cycle in just a few clicks.

A human resources management system (HRMS) can provide many of these insights in one place. Using key performance indicators (KPIs) and dashboards, HR leaders can spot any signs of trouble and then come up with ways to address them quickly, and managers can publicly recognize members of their team for exceptional work. The best HR systems store detailed employee records, performance reviews including any role changes and raises, and allow managers to create employee onboarding and offboarding checklists. They also let employees view time-off balances, compensation, benefits and enable them to update any personal information as necessary. Each of these features can contribute to a better employee experience.

By taking the time to evaluate your employee life cycle, understand your current metrics and continuously improve, you are creating a workplace that’s more enjoyable, engaging and productive. A positive employee experience often translates to a bigger bottom line, so if you’re not already doing so, you should start building a plan to assess and improve your employee life cycle today.

Human Resources

25 Employee Retention Strategies & Tactics to Keep Your Employees

When consultancy KPMG asked more than 300 CEOs about the greatest threat to their companies’ growth through 2023, the No. 1 response — from among a dozen options — was “talent risk.”…

More On This

Trending Articles

Learn How NetSuite Can Streamline Your Business

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there’s continuity from sales to services to support.

Before you go...

Discover the products that 37,000+ customers depend on to fuel their growth.

Before you go. Talk with our team or check out these resources.

Want to set up a chat later? Let us do the lifting.

NetSuite ERP

Explore what NetSuite ERP can do for you.

Business Guide

Complete Guide to Cloud ERP Implementation