7 stages of the employee lifecycle

Employer Brand Marketing is not too different from Marketing. In my experience transitioning from Marketing to Employer Branding, the foundation remains the same although you may be working with different stakeholders and technology. HR tech is still catching up with consumer tech but that’s another article.

In my other article on Making Employee Lifecycle Marketing (ELM) part of your Talent Strategy, I have highlighted the key similarities between ELM and Customer Lifecycle Marketing (CLM). To reiterate, the implementation and delivery will require collaboration between key stakeholders from HR, recruitment teams to leadership and hiring managers. Having co-ownership and accountability of organization’s employer brand experience should be an essential part to operationalizing employer brand.?

Looking at the employee lifecycle holistically can boost your employer brand. Employer branding requires the effort of everyone in the organization besides HR and Talent Acquisition and by implementing employee lifecycle marketing as part of your talent strategy, you would have more control and oversight across the recruitment funnel.

Awareness and Attraction

This is when prospective candidates become aware of your company and opportunities. Generate awareness and interest with inbound and outbound marketing tactics. Review your content marketing and messaging strategy here as it will guide your storytelling activities around your employer value proposition.

Having always-on content as part of your content marketing strategy for reach and conversion is important for employer branding. This is often overlooked due to the short-term needs of recruitment and hiring. It often starts from the time when the requisition is opened. A good practice is having a pipeline of candidates before the requisition is opened and internal candidates should be reviewed first before opening the requisition for external candidates. One of the actions here includes driving interest from passive candidates and nurturing those leads in the consideration stage.

Candidates at this stage may seek out more information about the company. This is the ‘research’ phase when they look into your career site, reviews, obtaining feedback from a contact or join recruitment events. In customer lifecycle marketing, this stage includes removing friction and understanding pain points to drive conversions. For employee lifecycle marketing, having a good handle on candidate pain points and communicating these to candidates on relevant touchpoints are key.

Review and optimize experiences across touchpoints. Ensure that there are lead capture opportunities for nurturing passive candidates and to drive conversion.

Recruitment and Interview

Interested candidates apply to relevant positions with the company or submit a general application. Many candidates stop at the application process because of multiple reasons. It may be the job description, the application process, or the interface.

There are some companies which use the job description as the start of the screening process. Including a salary range can provide some insight to the job level and filter candidates who may not be relevant. Additionally, this provides transparency and is the first step towards pay equity. Additionally, many job descriptions provide superficial information about the role which describes all other similar roles in that function, without conveying actual expectations. This lets the candidate know what they are signing up for. Not all applicants may be suitable for the role and good candidate management would allow for candidates here to be segmented in talent pools which can be nurtured for other relevant roles.

During the interview process, depending on the role and seniority, there may be a few rounds of interviews. However, rule of thumb is to keep it within three rounds.

At this stage of the lifecycle, think customer experience POV and your expectations for an online purchase. From process, communication to tracking and post-purchase.

Offer and Onboarding

At this stage of the lifecycle, successful candidates, external or internal, receive job offers and are included as part of the onboarding process.

Some companies structure this so that onboarding of employees is done on certain days of the month to ensure consistency. That also helps with standardizing payroll and benefits. A weak onboarding can result in higher attrition within the first year. Onboarding goes beyond providing a welcome pack. It should set the employee up for success in their new role. For an internal employee, this step is sometimes skipped just for the fact that they have been with the company. However, the role, team and hiring manager might have changed.

Embedding a Right-From-The-Start discussion to set up expectations during onboarding sets the tone for the relationship and provides clarity of expectations.

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Engagement and Wellbeing

In employer branding, engaged employees are the main assets for attracting talent to the organization. Talent attraction aside, engaged employees also deliver better business outcomes and stay longer with the company.

Keeping employees engaged can differ from team to team and person to person. From some of my conversations with peers and research in the past, the work itself matters. Do the scope, responsibilities and challenges support the employee's growth and development plan? How are teams collaborating and leveraging technology?

According to a Gallup study, one of the key drivers include ongoing conversations. That means having a good relationship with the manager, team and peers. The study discovered that the manager or team leader is a major factor in team engagement.

Wellbeing refers to the employee's overall emotional, mental and physical health. There are companies which provide statutory required benefits and some go beyond that. Some companies provide flexible work arrangements which support an employee's mental health. From gym memberships to one Friday off a month, which other innovative benefits have you seen which you would like to share?

Development & Performance

Opportunities for development is often cited as the reason for joining a company and also one of the reasons for leaving a company. Development and progression may look different from employee to employee. Based on some of my discussions with peers, some seek career growth into a managerial role. Whereas there are some who wish to remain as individual contributors and specialists without direct reports but still want to progress into the next band level.

Having a right-from-the-start discussion during onboarding which includes a discussion on career and development goals is a good practice. Have regular check-ins during the cadence meetings with the employee to check if their career and development goals are on-track.

Ensuring that there is a realistic action plan and actionable feedback to support employees in their goals within the organization is one of the important factors for retention.

Retention and Advocacy

Why do some talent stay with the organization for a long period whereas some talent leave within a year or two? Motivating employees and managing expectations can be a challenging task for employers.

Most companies conduct employee surveys or pulse surveys during the year to get feedback. This process is lengthy and not timely. Having an open and transparent culture which allows for feedback with managers and team in addition to the quarterly pulse surveys will shorten the process for improvement.

When employees are engaged and happy, they are your best advocates for the brand. Employee advocacy should be part of the organization’s always-on content strategy. Activate your employees to speak, share and create. Having a guide and handbook for how they conduct themselves online and at events sets the framework. An advocacy platform can help you manage, curate and monitor more efficiently and effectively. However, if you wish to start small with a low budget, you can activate without the licensing of the platform. Lay out the basic policy and framework for your advocacy programme which will outline how you will engage and manage the employee advocate community, and what would success look like.

Exit and Offboarding

This is the formal separation process between the employee and the organization. The experience with the employee leaving and within the team matters. In the event that it is a regrettable departure, proper communication within the team of change helps to manage morale and expectations.

This is also an opportunity for advocates to remain as advocates of your company and brand. Have you seen people on LinkedIn including their previous companies in their header descriptions? Ie. Ex-Airbnb?or Ex-SAP? This is an attestation to your employer brand.

There are employees who have left the company and return to rejoin the company at a later stage perhaps in another role. Also, ex-employees remain as your brand’s unofficial spokesperson even after they’ve left.

Continue to engage with ex-employees by creating alumni networks and organizing occasional events which offer them an opportunity to grow their network and industry knowledge. How many of you have an existing alumni programme?

In summary, making employee lifecycle marketing part of your talent strategy can boost your employer brand. It improves your employer brand by improving the experience and a strategy which helps to optimize your messages and reach with talent segments across touchpoints. Let me know if you have anything to add or if you would like to connect for a chat.?