The employee life cycle is a term that refers to the stages a person goes through when they join your company, work for you for a certain period of time, and then leave. The employee life cycle includes recruitment, onboarding, development and training (including personal growth), performance management, retention, and exit.

This article will look at each stage in detail and see how they can be optimized to make your employees happier and more productive.

What Is the Employee Life Cycle?

The employee life cycle is the process that an employee goes through during their time at a company. It’s a bit like a game of hopscotch: the employee starts out as a new hire, then they progress through stages of growth and development (for example, becoming more experienced or taking on more responsibility). Eventually, they’ll reach the end of their career stage, when they retire or leave the company.

The employee life cycle is essential to HR because it helps them understand how well employees are doing in their roles, and where they need help. For example, if an employee has been promoted several times over a short period of time then it would be useful for HR to find out whether this is because they’re performing well or whether they’re being given opportunities that they don’t have enough experience for yet.

Learn: How to Conduct an Employee Performance Appraisal

The organization needs to focus on each stage of this cycle, as different employees will be in different stages at any given point in time. The employee life cycle includes five stages: recruitment, orientation, onboarding, development, and retention.

Why is the Employee Life Cycle Important?

The employee life cycle is a way to describe the process of hiring, managing, and transitioning employees through their careers. The goal of an effective employee life cycle is to maximize the value of each employee’s tenure with your company by building training and development opportunities into their career path.

The employee life cycle is important for a number of reasons:

1. It gives you an opportunity to identify and address problems before they become larger issues that require more effort to fix.
2. It allows you to plan ahead for future needs, such as succession planning or hiring new employees.
3. It gives you an opportunity to create a structured framework for employee growth within your organization that increases efficiency while also helping people grow personally and professionally.

Try for free: Employee Hiring Form Template

What Are the Stages of the Employee Life Cycle?

1. Attraction: This is where your company gets to know the candidate, and the candidate gets to know your company. It’s a mutual exchange of information, and it can be done virtually or in person, depending on your needs.

2. Recruiting: Once you’ve found someone who seems like they’d be a great fit for your company, you’ll need to recruit them into your organization. That means getting them to sign on with your firm

3. Interviewing: This stage involves interviewing potential employees in order to assess their suitability for the position. After they’ve signed on, you’ll need to interview them or at least some of them to make sure they’re still interested in joining your organization and that they’re right for what you have in mind.

4. Onboarding: This stage involves introducing new employees to your company’s policies and procedures so that they can start working productively as soon as possible. This is when they get oriented into their new position and learn how things work

5. Engagement: Engagement means making sure employees feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves and that they have a purpose at work beyond just getting paid (though that’s important too). Engagement helps create a sense of community within teams where everyone feels connected because they know what’s going on with each other’s lives outside of work hours too

6. Development: This is where employees learn new skills and grow as people, which helps them become more effective in their roles. It also improves their chances of staying with your company longer.

7. Retention: This is when you want to retain your best talent by offering them better compensation packages or promotions within the organization. It’s also helpful if you have an established mentorship program where senior employees can help newer ones succeed at their jobs by giving them advice or guidance on how best to do everything from interviewing candidates right to building relationships with clients/customers/vendors etc

8. Recognition: this stage is about recognizing employees’ contributions, which can be done through praise and encouragement. It also includes occasional rewards like spot bonuses or promotions.

9. Offboarding: this stage is about helping employees transition out of your company in an effective way so they can find new opportunities elsewhere. This can include offering references, showing them how to write their resume, providing resources for job hunting, etc.

10. Separation: It involves all activities related to terminating an employment contract (i.e., termination, layoffs). You may want to offer severance packages or other incentives for employees who are being laid off because of financial difficulties at your company (or if there aren’t enough positions available). You should also let departing employees know about any benefits that expire after a certain period of time

11. Alumni: Alumni are former employees who have left your company but still want to stay connected with you through social media or other means. You can use alumni programs to help keep those connections alive by sending out periodic updates about what’s going on at your business and offering special discounts for alumni only

Use this: Free Employee Training Form Template

What are Employee Life Cycle Metrics

Employee life cycle metrics are the benchmarks that organizations use to measure employee performance, motivation, and engagement. They are often used by HR departments to help companies optimize their hiring, training, and retention strategies.

There are two main types of employee life cycle metrics:

1. Time-based metrics measure how long an employee stays with a company, or how long it takes them to complete a specific task.
2. Performance-based metrics measure the quality of work done by employees, or how well they’re performing their job duties.

Both types of metrics can be used together to improve your company’s hiring process and retention strategy. Other metrics include;

• Time to fill open positions – This is an important stage because it determines how long it takes to fill an open position, but it also determines how much time your company will spend looking for new hires. It’s important to set up a process that helps you find the right candidates quickly so that you don’t waste any more time than necessary on this step in the process.
• Regretted and un-regretted turnover – What percentage of employees leave your company voluntarily or involuntarily? The answer to this question will help determine if there are any issues with retention that need attention, such as low pay or a lack of training opportunities.
• Total payroll and payroll growth over time – The amount of money spent on payroll is one indicator of how well things are going for your company.
• Employee productivity rates: The employee productivity rate measures the amount of work done by each person over a given period of time. This can be measured based on hours worked, the number of tasks completed, or other metrics relevant to your industry. Regardless of how you measure it, this data can provide insight into whether you’re retaining good employees or not.
• Rate of employee promotions: The rate of employee promotions tells you how many employees were promoted during a given period (e.g., one year). This information can help you determine whether your company promotes from within or hires new people from outside sources and whether either approach is effective at keeping your best employees around long-term.
• Training hours and cost per employee: Training hours tell you how much time your company spends training each new hire

Test this: Employee Satisfaction Survey Template 

How to Optimize the Employee Life Cycle

The employee life cycle is the process that all employees go through, from the time they are hired to the time they leave. It’s important for HR departments to understand this process so that they can optimize it, which will result in better retention rates, lower turnover costs, and improved employee engagement.

HR professionals need to understand the employee life cycle in order to:

1. Focus on the right activities at each stage of employment
2. Spend their time on activities that have the greatest impact on improving employee retention rates and reducing turnover costs 
3. Identify opportunities for improvement in key performance measures like employee engagement and retention

Have this: Free Employee Grievance Form Template

How Formplus can Help with Employee Management

Formplus is a software solution that helps you with your employee management life cycle. With Formplus, you will be able to automatically generate employee forms based on your company needs as well as set up notifications when certain actions occur within your company (such as an employee being hired). You can also use this tool to build out custom forms that meet any specific requirements you may have so you can get everything done quickly and efficiently

You may need this: Employee Evaluation Form Template

Formplus helps companies optimize their employee life cycle by offering tools for every stage of this process:

• Hiring: Manage candidates throughout the entire hiring process with its online application form.
• Onboarding: Streamline onboarding using the customizable checklists and guides.
• Development: Provide ongoing support for your team members by integrating Formplus into your employee management tools or other internal systems so they can access it from any device at any time

Create forms for each stage of the life cycle. These forms will be automatically populated with information from your database when an employee moves to a new stage in their life cycle.

Conclusion

The employee life cycle is the progression of an employee through their career. It begins with the hiring and onboarding process, continues through training and development, and ends with the exit process. 

Each of these stages has unique challenges that must be addressed in order to ensure that employees are getting the best experience possible from their time at your company