Written by Peter Wilde
To provide the best employee experience, employers have to understand the employee lifecycle. This is the journey employees go through from considering an employer, to joining and then eventually leaving.
Here we discuss the employee lifecycle and how to measure it. We also look at mapping the employee journey. Afterward, you can carry out the exercises in full with our toolkits.
What is the employee lifecycle?
The employee lifecycle is the employee’s journey with an organization. It encompasses all the different stages someone will advance through an organization.
Employees will have different experiences as they move through the organization. Understanding this journey will help you to optimize the employee experience.
Why is it important to understand it?
Feedback from employees along different stages of the lifecycle will help you to optimize your employee experience. For instance, job seekers’ feedback will help you improve your recruitment process. Input from new employees can improve your onboarding process. Plus, feedback from leavers will help you improve the overall employee experience for other employees.
What are the key stages of the employee lifecycle?
Before thinking about measurement you need to understand the six stages of the employee lifecycle.
These are:
- Attraction – the degree to which job seekers are attracted to your organization
- Application – the experience of candidates during the recruitment phase
- Onboarding – the induction experience of employees into the organization
- Development – the experience as employees progress within the organization
- Exit – the experience as employees leave
- Alumni – ex-employees and whether they remain ambassadors for the company
To measure the employee lifecycle, an organization obtains feedback at these key moments.
What is employee journey mapping?
Employee journey mapping is one way of identifying and understanding critical points and experiences in an employee’s journey. When done right, journey mapping can help leaders improve an employee’s time in their company.
Why is it important?
Employee journey mapping is essential for two main reasons – improving the employee experience and improving employee retention.
Learn how to feed employee journey mapping into your listening strategy with our strategy sessions.
How to map the employee journey
Put simply, the steps are:
- Identify where on the employee lifecycle you need to improve
- Consider what your goals and intentions are for each phase of this stage of the employee lifecycle.
- Get employee feedback to understand whether there is a gap between the organization’s goals and the actual experience
- Take action to reduce the gap
- Continue to get feedback to check whether the employee experience is improving
Getting feedback is useless if you don’t act on the information provided. You need to identify opportunities for improvement based on the gap between company goals and the employee experience and work towards improvement.
Take the induction process as an example. employees must be set up for success and are made a part of the team and organization. Conversely, a negative onboarding process can impact your employees’ productivity and enjoyment of their given tasks, leading to annoyance and frustration.
On the other hand, working on feedback collected during the induction phase can lead to happier employees who are engaged and more productive — which is excellent for the organization.
Conclusion
Understanding the employee lifecycle can help you to capture the correct events that occur in the employee experience.
Book a product tor today to see how Tivian’s Feedback Platform can help you map the employee journey to know what matters most to your employees.
