Employee life cycle stages and best practices for HR professionals

The employee life cycle is an employee’s complete journey with your organisation. It covers all their experiences with your company — from the moment they first become aware of your organisation, all the way up to their emotional last day on the job.

Optimising your employee life cycle is a great way to improve their engagement, reduce turnover and keep your people motivated to deliver their best. Let’s go over some of the best practices for each stage of that journey, and find out how HR solutions can help you create a more productive and positive workplace.

Stages of the employee life cycle

The employee life cycle model has 10 key stages:

1. Attraction
2. Recruitment
3. Onboarding
4. Development
5. Engagement
6. Retention
7. Recognition
8. Offboarding
9. Exit
10. Advocacy

Attraction and recruitment

Attracting and recruiting employees is all about finding the right fit for your company. Although often used interchangeably, talent acquisition and recruitment are different. While recruitment aims to fill open positions now, talent acquisition builds a longer term relationship to give you a pipeline of skilled candidates for the future.

Best practices

Cliché or not, they say you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. So, HR professionals should put themselves in the applicant’s shoes and aim to make this opening stage a great experience for them, from job listing to interviewing and final selection. Bear in mind that how your company presents itself and interacts with potential employees can make the difference between attracting top talent and losing them to competitors. Recruitment best practices include:

• Refine job descriptions to attract the right applicants
• Communicate clearly and provide timely updates
• Ensure the application process is straightforward and inclusive
• Use a Recruitment Management System (RMS) to support the process
• Provide feedback to unsuccessful applicants

Onboarding

Onboarding aims to make the transition from hiring to first day seamless. In this way, your newcomers feel welcome, confident and ready to start their new job. A comprehensive onboarding process also saves managers time getting new starters up to speed.

Onboarding best practices

Your should pre-empt whatever new hires might need, whether that’s clarifying job expectations or organising training. Keep in mind, however, that onboarding can take time — often up to three months. Onboarding best practices include:

• Set up accounts, permissions, tools and so on before day one
• Schedule check-ins during the first 90 days
• Provide training and orientation sessions
• Assign a mentor or buddy for support
• Utilise self-service portals and digital forms

Development and engagement

You’ve worked hard to attract the best people, this stage is all about keeping them happy by investing in their growth, creating a positive culture and keeping staff motivated. Whether it’s offering training courses or listening to employee feedback, developing and engaging with staff is a proactive process — it won’t happen by itself.

Development and engagement best practices

The aim of this stage is to make employees feel valued, productive and on track with their career goals. As we’ve said, HR leaders should be proactive, so, for example, a mentoring scheme can help win back any disillusioned employees. Here are five development and performance management best practices:

• Create training, upskilling and reskilling programmes
• Conduct regular performance reviews and develop career paths
• Provide employee training and development opportunities
• Promote people to leadership from within
• Ask employees for feedback and implement their suggestions

Retention and recognition

Employee retention is about keeping your best people on board for the long term. Overlooking this stage of the employee life cycle can cause top performers to jump ship to competitors. That’s why continuing to support and show appreciation for staff is key to business success.

Retention and recognition best practices

Your HR retention strategy should focus on highlighting employee value and promoting inclusion, flexibility and employee well-being. The goal is to keep your team happy and committed because high staff turnover is both costly and disruptive. Here are six retention best practices:

• Regularly review and adjust pay packages
• Offer flexible work options for better work-life balance
• Recognise achievements both within the company and publicly
• Create competitive benefits and rewards programmes
• Use HR analytics for retention to spot trends

Offboarding and exit

A good offboarding and exit process helps protect your employer brand, keeps the door open for people to rejoin you in the future and ensures valuable knowledge doesn’t walk out with whoever’s leaving.

Offboarding and exit best practices

The goal of this stage is to make the transition as straightforward as possible. Ideally, you want people to leave on good terms and continue advocating for your company. So, don’t forget to organise a farewell event to celebrate their time with you. Offboarding best practices include:

• Organise a handover and any necessary training for other staff
• Conduct a detailed exit interview to gather feedback
• Set up a knowledge transfer processes
• Issue any necessary documents, including P45 and final payslip
• Schedule equipment returns and revoke system access

Optimise your employee life cycle with ADP

From even before the day a worker joins your organisation to beyond the day they leave, optimising their lifecycle at your company helps your business in a variety of ways. These range from recruiting and retaining top talent to driving business success by boosting productivity, strengthening company culture and increasing both employee satisfaction and engagement.

ADP support every stage of an employee’s journey — from talent acquisition and seamless onboarding to automated payroll and compliant offboarding — to help your HR team perfect their employee life cycle.

Frequently asked questions about the employee life cycle

ADP Editorial Team The ADP editorial team is comprised of human resource professionals with extensive experience solving complex HR challenges for businesses of all sizes.