Navigating the Employee Lifecycle: A 2024 Guide

When modern HR and People Ops teams design the employee experience, they like to borrow a technique from product and customer service teams.

The employee lifecycle, like the customer lifecycle, is used to describe an employee's journey within a company.

It begins in the attraction phase, when someone first becomes aware of a brand, and ends when someone leaves a company.

Below, I'll explain each stage of the employee lifecycle in more detail and how you can create a great experience at each stage.

What is the Employee Life Cycle?

A great way to approach talent management in your organization is to view the employee journey through the lens of the employee lifecycle model.

Sometimes called the employee journey, the employee lifecycle includes six phases of interaction between your employee and your company: recruiting, hiring, onboarding, development, retention, and exit.

It's a useful way to capture the different areas of the employee experience before they've even spoken to HR or a hiring manager.

When you take the time and effort to support your employees in each of the six phases of the employee lifecycle, you will be rewarded in return:

Higher productivity
Lower employee turnover
Reducing hiring costs
A strong employer brand.

As you can imagine, there are many ways to improve the experience throughout the lifecycle.

It's important to note that it's much easier to improve something when you know what you're doing wrong, which is why talking to your employees and getting feedback is so important.

In conjunction with HR metrics such as fluctuation and promotion opportunities, this creates a picture of what life is like for employees in your company.

You can then use this data together with employee experience software to develop new initiatives that improve the employee experience and increase business performance.

The phases of the employee life cycle

The life cycle of an employee can be divided into six phases:

Attractiveness - how you are perceived as an employer
Recruitment - your recruitment process, e.g. Applicant search and interviews
Onboarding - how to give a new team member the best possible start
Development - growth, advancement and development opportunities that you offer
Retention - how you care for your employees and recognize them for their work
Offboarding - saying goodbye.

Of course, there is some overlap between each phase. For example, good onboarding helps to increase employee retention and put new team members on the right development path.

Below I'd like to go into a little more detail about the different phases of the employee lifecycle and some focus areas for each phase.

Phase 1: Attractiveness - how are you perceived as an employer?

You probably know a few companies that people say are great places to work. They treat their employees well and their Glassdoor reviews reflect this.

If an interesting position opens up at such a company, you should seriously consider applying!

Even though this is the first step in a potential new team member's journey to you, you've put a lot of work into designing your employee experience so that your employer brand is strong.

But maybe you're new and still building that reputation, or you've already carefully built it and want to show it to the world. This means that you need to present yourself to the public and get on the radar of potential employees, which is also known as recruitment marketing.

In some ways, everything your company does publicly is a form of recruitment marketing, but there are certain channels aimed specifically at job seekers that you can leverage - think job descriptions, careers pages, hiring platforms and industry events.

These are opportunities to showcase your culture and what you offer as an employer, also known as an employer proposition.

If your current employees think your company is a great place to work, you already have the advantage of good word-of-mouth marketing as they will recommend your company to friends and family.

Not sure if they would do that? Ask her.

Send out an employee survey asking employees how likely they are to recommend your company to a friend or relative, what challenges they face, and where you are successful or could improve.

KPIs to help you achieve your goals in the attractiveness phase:

Employee Net Promoter Score
Number of applicants
Pipeline diversity
Employee recommendations.

Phase 2: Recruitment - are we a good fit?

In the recruiting phase, you actively search for talent on the market and guide them through your recruiting process with the help of your reliable ATS.

This is about identifying talent, connecting with them and overall creating an excellent candidate experience.

There is a lot to consider at this stage, but one of the most important topics is interviews and how to conduct an interview in an efficient and engaging manner.

Some hiring metrics to focus on here:

Recruiter Effectiveness: Recruiter Effectiveness Metrics - Screens, Outreach
Net Promoter Score of the applicants
Conversion rate
Recruitment funnel speed.

Phase 3: Onboarding - where are we going and how do we get there?

Studies show that companies with a strong onboarding process increase new employee retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.

Companies that take the time to create a proper onboarding experience using a 30, 60, and 90 day plan and onboarding software will benefit from new employees becoming productive faster and being more successful in the long term.

Some KPIs to track for onboarding:

Training completion rate
Fluctuation of new employees
Satisfaction with onboarding.

Phase 4: Development - help them help you

In the development phase, you support your team member in their professional training and development. This will help them be successful in their current role and open the doors for professional development within your company.

Many companies only pay lip service to learning and development without developing a proper L&D strategy or providing the necessary resources, but the investment is worth it.

It almost goes without saying that creating the right conditions for professional development increases employee engagement and retention with the company. You'll also help your employees do their jobs better, which in turn leads to better results.

Some key learning and development metrics to align your learning and development programs with:

Business results, e.g. higher sales
Learner behavior, e.g. lower use of the helpdesk
Knowledge of the learners, e.g. Assessment results.

Level 5: Employee Retention - Keeping employees healthy and engaged

It is estimated that turnover can cost between 30% and 150% of an employee's salary, and research presented in intelliHR's State of HR 2022 report shows that "36% of HR leaders rate employee engagement and performance as top priority."

There are several ways to improve employee retention, and it's not just about salary!

Our research found that employee recognition, wellness and well-being, supervisors and growth opportunities rank higher than inadequate salary when it comes to employees leaving their jobs.

Some important KPIs to track here:

Employee turnover (can be viewed per team, manager or demographic)
Employee engagement
Average length of service of employees.

Stage 6: Offboarding - it doesn't have to be a farewell

Whether someone is retiring, has found a new job, or has personal reasons, the layoff period is a good opportunity to get honest feedback about how the company can improve the employee experience for existing and future employees.

You can send out surveys or, better yet, conduct exit interviews to better understand the reasons for an employee's departure and identify opportunities for improvement in the previous stages.

A certain amount of turnover is healthy, and not everything is permanent. Like universities, some companies even invest in alumni networks to support their employees throughout their careers.

The life cycle of an employee

I hope that if you've gotten this far, you're now thinking a little differently about what goes into a great employee experience.

Chances are, your business excels in some areas, while there's inevitably room for improvement in others.

A next step could be to get feedback from employees on how they feel about the implementation process or development opportunities.

Collecting and acting on regular feedback is key to improving the employee experience and is closely related to the People Operations mindset (introduced by Google and other forward-thinking companies).

IceHrm empowers HR teams to optimize every stage of the employee lifecycle. Elevate your workforce experience with IceHrm today!