The HR Life Cycle: Improve Your Employee Experiences

The Human Resources Life Cycle (or HR life cycle) refers to the stages of your employment in a particular organisation. It also refers to the relevant roles the HR personnel plays in each of the hr life stages along your employee journey map.

This article will discuss the importance of HR life cycle management (hrm life cycle). We address its role in ensuring engagement and employee satisfaction at various stages of the employee life cycle.

You can access supplementary resources on the value of positive onboarding experiences on our Blog HR.

HR Life Cycle Insights

Through the HR life cycle, HR can push for creating an environment where you feel like your efforts and contributions matter. It will make you perceive an overall psychological safety.

The Human Resources Life Cycle: Key to Engagement

In a highly competitive fight for talent attraction, the cost of losing highly skilled employees becomes substantially higher. When using an HR life cycle, effective people managers will make the difference between retaining employees and losing them.

Thus, HR has a central role in the task of creating an employee journey that is both rewarding and that maintains high engagement and productivity levels. Moreover, especially at the beginning of your journey, minimising time to full performance is essential and HR can help you achieve it. Furthermore, even when participating in onboarding in very large enterprises, HR can still make you feel at home.

This means that regardless if the company’s economy fluctuates, business driven HR will ensure that employees generate value to their corporations.

Keeping new employees engaged is critical to ensuring a productive long-term employment relationship. It also ensures lower costs associated with employee turnover. However, globally, only 20% of employees declare themselves as engaged at work, according to Gallup. 71% more American employees are disengaged in 2021 than in 2020, according to the Achievers Workforce Institute.

Engagement and talent retention are extremely important for any company. The longer the employee lifecycle, the more productive and valuable the employee is as an asset to the organisation. Recognising an employee’s accomplishments is key for companies for demonstrating how much they value their employee’s commitment to the company.

The Employee Life Cycle in HR Practice

The term employee life cycle refers to an employee’s journey with the company. It starts the moment of applying for a job position through employment and the termination process. Thus, this employee journey is composed of multiple stages with specific elements and objectives.

As you pass through the various phases of your employee life cycle, in HR practice, different activities and techniques apply. Their overall objective is retaining your talent and skills within the organisation.

Strong employee life cycle HR management processes at your company are key to attracting and retaining top talent. They will differentiate your company from the competition.

In order to better understand how HR professionals manage your total employee experience at the company, we will distinguish between the main stages of the employee life cycle in HR.

The 5 Main Stages of the Human Resource Life Cycle

A well designed, executed and managed life cycle of HR can ensure that the right employees are in the right roles. Moreover, it ensures that you feel engaged with the company, satisfied with your work and productive. All 5 stages of the Human Resource Life Cycle play an important role in the overall employee experience.

Thus, we need to pay attention to each of the 5 stages of the human resource life cycle.  As such, we have highlighted below the five core hr life cycle stages. We have included key data illustrating why each stage is important for the overall employee experience.

Stage 1: Talent Attraction & Recruitment

Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) of companies have reported talent shortages and difficulty hiring. This is a 15-year high, according to a ManpowerGroup survey carried across all industry sectors.

Hence, given that it is becoming more and more difficult to hire the right employee for the job, talent attraction is a key element in any HR life cycle journey.

Talent retention starts with how the company presents itself in its official communication and job postings. Moreover, the interactions between potential candidates and talent acquisition staff are crucial.

The recruitment phase starts the moment the candidate submits a job application. If it is successful, it concludes with an employment offer and a signed employment contract.

Recruitment is crucial for setting the right tone for the employment. It is really important for the future employee to fully grasp the details and requirements of the job. This will ensure a running start at the job.

Stage 2: Pre & Onboarding Processes

The Pre and Onboarding stages of an employee cycle can often be a make-or-break moment. It can affect the future possibilities of the employer-employee relationship.

A successful and long term HR life cycle must start with an effective HR onboarding. Pre & Onboarding processes offer an imprinting window for employees. They provide the perfect opportunities for creating a positive first impression that stays with you for your entire career within that particular company.

A survey carried out by The Wynhurst Group found that 58% of employees are more likely to stay for more than three years in a job when experiencing good Pre & Onboarding processes.

For the overwhelming majority of surveyed employees, 90%, it only takes 6 months on the job in order to if to stay with that employer.

Thus, we can safely conclude that Pre & Onboarding lay the foundation for a long fruitful relationship. These processes should have both a formal and an informal dimension. The focus is not exclusively on gaining productivity, but also ensuring you of a human connection with your team. Moreover, gaining an understanding of the company culture and values is also key.

If onboarding has been effectively implemented, you will feel like you have undergone a smooth transition. You will also feel that you have been supported along the way and that your needs and expectations have been properly accommodated. Effective onboarding will lay the foundation for employee engagement.

Stage 3: Development and Training

There are multiple reasons for why talent development and training are beneficial for both the employee and the organisation.

Many employees expect their employers to provide training and development opportunities. But only 52% of employees think their employer provides the right amount of training. This has been revealed by a study published by Survey Monkey.

Upskilling makes you both motivated and encouraged to possibly move up the career ladder within the same organisation. At the same time, as you become better skilled you will be more productive and bring a more valuable contribution to the organisation.

Stage 4: Engagement, Retention and Recognition

Engagement efforts are not only linked to the post-onboarding phases of the employee experience journey.

When companies make an effort in engaging you from the moment of signing the contract, you will become  connected to the organisation and its mission. Early efforts aimed at talent retention can ensure a faster and deeper connection.

It is generally accepted that engaged employees are more productive. Moreover, they are more likely to have a longer employee cycle within the same organisation. Yet, globally, only 20% of employees declare themselves as being engaged at work. This is highlighted by a Gallup study.

Additionally, 66% of employees would be more engaged at work if employers improved company culture. This was the conclusion of the Achievers Workforce Institute’s 2021 study focusing on the US market.

Through the retention and recognition employee lifecycle phase, the organisation focuses on further building and developing the employee’s commitment to their role, team and the overall organisation.

Stage 5: Termination – Offboarding

Offboarding is the final stage of the employee lifecycle. Regardless of the reasoning behind the termination – voluntary (quitting, retiring) or involuntary (being laid off) offboarding’s meaning is high. Simply because the employee life cycle has arrived at its very end, it does not mean that the employer should be hostile towards the employee and vice-versa.

On the contrary, when the departure is positive for both parts involved, it can provide benefits. Some of the benefits of positive offboarding are: a professional network for the employee, and positive employer branding for the employer.

The HR Life cycle: A Strategic Tool. Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, the HR life cycle framework has evolved into becoming a strategic tool for any organisation’s management of human capital.

Each stage of the employee lifecycle management has a specific significance. They can engage employees and keep them in the job for the long term. In turn, this will increases the employee’s value for the company.

Investing in software solutions will enhance your employee experience from the very first stages of the HR life cycle. You will feel engaged as soon as you sign your contract.

An employee onboarding software, such as introdus, can ease your journey into your new company. It fosters your excitement when starting and calming any doubts, stress or anxiety. This is due to you having access to a clear and structured journey timeline. Additionally, you get multiple possibilities to make your opinions heard, and opportunities for establishing meaningful connections.