The real employee lifecycle
There are six stages of the traditional #employeelifecycle: Attract, Hire, Onboard, Develop, Retain, and Offboard. This is the framework people leaders and HR use to build programs and processes for interacting with employees from the time they apply to a job, through to the time they hand in their badge.
I first started researching the employee lifecycle back in 2017 when I was building an employee experience framework for a global team. I still have the photo of the prototype I drew in colored sharpies. It is *chef's kiss*
At that point, I'd participated in each stage as both a people leader with HR responsibilities, and as an employee. And still! I had to dig pretty deep into back issues of Gallup to understand this cycle we all experience.
I'd say about half of the lifecycle stages are pretty intuitive for employees. For example, you probably know what's likely to happen on your end during Onboarding. However, because this traditional employee lifecycle is always presented from the employer and HR perspective, the other half can be a bit obscure. Why should you care about the Attract stage? What's in it for you?
Fast-forward to today. I translated the six traditional employee lifecycle stages to make it easier to pinpoint exactly where you are right now in your job cycle. As employees, we've got our own corresponding job stages, goals, and expectations. When you know where you are, you can plan where you're going.
Stage 1: Job Search
At this point, you're open to work. You could be actively hunting for a new role, researching industries, companies, new teams and leaders. You're tailoring your resume and cover letters and submitting applications with fingers crossed for a response. Or you could be passively open to work. Your resume is up to date(ish), you engage your network on LinkedIn, and you chat with recruiters who come to you with interesting opportunities, even if you're 95% sure you won't take them.
Employers refer to this stage as the Attract stage - they're building an employer brand that will bring in top talent who see them as a great place to work. They want to find talent. They post on their social accounts, host and attend recruiting events, engage with talent pipelines (e.g., college campuses), and reach out to folks like you on LinkedIn to try to woo you over to their company. They craft and share job descriptions and benefits packages that will convince you to come onboard.
Stage 2: Interviews
Your goal here is to get hired. You've engaged with recruiters and submitted applications on promising leads. Now you're finding time to schedule and prepare for likely multiple rounds of interviews, sometimes with multiple companies at once. After those interviews, you're waiting to hear back from your recruiter with news (sometimes you don't, and that sucks). And if things go well, you're negotiating an offer to maximize your total compensation.
Organizations want to fill roles at the Hire stage. You want to be the one to fill their role, and you're likely not the only one. At this point, the hiring manager and talent acquisition team are filtering and reviewing promising resumes (sometimes using an Applicant Tracking System or ATS), and screening candidates. When they find folks who meet all the requirements, they coordinate interview panels and make a final hiring decision.
Stage 3: First 90 Days
During the First 90 Days, your goal is to settle in to your new role. You've got your start date in hand, a daunting few days of getting IT systems set up, sign a bunch of paperwork with HR, and sit through new hire orientation. You're working through requesting any accommodations you need, meeting your new manager and team, and taking what probably seems like endless hours of compliance training. Your biggest tasks in settling in are adjusting to the culture of your new workplace and wrapping your head around your role enough to tackle your first big deliverables.
Your goal and your future employer's goals here are fairly well-aligned. At the Onboard stage, your employer's goal is for you to ramp up and start contributing at your peak. They build welcome packages and orientation to get you set up logistically. Hopefully, they've got manager learning programs to enable your new leader to support you through this stage.
Stage 4: Engage
Your goal during this stage is to build roots with your team and company. You have regular 1:1s with your manager. You're finding a mentor (or mentors) to help you build skills or guide your career. You're participating in team-building events and finding community with peers through Employee Resource Groups or volunteering initiatives.
At the Develop stage, employers want to grow their talent. They accomplish this through learning and development programs, performance management, annual reviews, and succession planning. Likely, they've invested in building mentoring programs to pair employees with more senior managers and leaders. Hopefully, they've also invested in developing people leaders early-on.
Stage 5: Grow
At the stage where you feel like you've finally hit your stride, you're excelling both personally and professionally. You're building confidence, you've got a sponsor who sings your praise when you're not in the room. Your job scope has likely increased in direct proportion to your growing capabilities. I'd like to say you're getting recognized and appreciated on the regular, because you deserve it.
Employers refer to this as the Retain stage; they want to keep top talent. They want to retain high performers because they are 400% more productive than average employees. That has real implications for the bottom line. And so, companies invest in top talent with perks, rewards programs, with promotions, and with competitive compensation.
Stage 6: Transition
In the end, and often in the middle of our roles, we experience transitions. Our goals are to prepare for and move toward a new journey. This could be becoming a parent or a primary caretaker and taking an extended leave of absence. It could be taking on a new role within the same company. It could retirement or resignation. It could be a layoff. During this period, employees are focused on tying up loose ends, building transition plans, and admin items such as maintaining insurance, and saving work examples and 401K account passwords. We're writing farewell notes and connecting with colleagues on the outside.
Employers call this stage Offboarding. In my experience, this stage often lacks empathy and attention to the human impact deserving a significant life transition like a career change. The goals here are to release talent in an amicable (if standoffish) and secure way. Typical actions include access management to email, data, and systems, putting together a leverage package if applicable, and terminating an employee in internal people systems. Forward-leaning people leaders will implement exit surveys to understand areas they can improve to prevent losing top talent in the future. Great managers will genuinely recognize their team member's contributions.
Chutes and ladders
When you call something a lifecycle, you expect it to reference something that is generally cyclical, linear even. But when we stop to think about our career paths, and even the flow of the job cycle within a given role - it's neither linear or cyclical. It's more Chutes and Ladders than Monopoly.
In my nearly seven years at Amazon, I've changed roles and teams many times. I've been promoted, increased my scope, and regularly worked to build new skills. Just within this leg of my career, my job lifecycle resembles one of my toddler's crayon masterpieces. Back and forth, around and around. I'm currently in the Growth and Transition stages. I think most people experience multiple stages simultaneously. I think everyone should always be in the passive Job Search stage - keep your resume up to date and nurture your networks, friends!
The Job Cycle Series
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to use this flipped framework to dive into particular employee opportunities and challenges. The series will include concrete steps to take at each stage to grow your career, and the red and green flags to watch for at every stage: are you walking into a #toxicculture or a culture of belonging?
Based on this breakdown, where are you right now in your job cycle?
Job Search
Interviews
First 90 Days
Engage
Grow
Transition
Add your stage(s) to the comments!
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