To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace

The case for the customer journey has never been stronger.

By customer journey mapping, organizations create and retain a deep understanding of the customer’s experiences and then use that feedback to craft or re-craft processes and encounters in order to become more customer-centric.

Well the same goes for the employee experience…

If you want to drive your growth, you should Fuse Customer Experience And Employee Experience

Why?

Because engaged employees lead to happy customers.

There is a undeniable link between employee experience and customer experience.

Companies that lead in customer experience have 60% more engaged employees, and study after study has shown that investing in employee experience impacts the customer experience and can generate a high ROI for the company.

So,  in order to win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace…

A strong employee experience drives a strong customer experience...

Given the importance of your workforce, the same concept applies to their journey: the employee lifecycle. Mapping the employee journey and focusing on the employee lifecycle will help companies to attract the talent they need and to deliver a more sustainable customer experience. That’s why, for this week's #ConnectWithContent, I decided to dive into the phases of the employee lifecycle. Enjoy the read!

The employee lifecycle: hire - inspire - retire

All employees interact with an organization through a cyclical process: from the time they start thinking about a company as a potential employer to when they become an employee up through when they leave.

The employee lifecycle is a fantastic way to visualise how people engage with an organization. The employee lifecycle is also the foundation for balancing business needs with the needs of your employees. Organizations tend to focus on the needs of the business first and the needs of employees second. By using the employee lifecycle as a roadmap, focus will be on the holistic needs of employees making sure that HR programs and communications can be modified accordingly. Via this link you can download a really nice roadmap (thx Elizabeth Lupfer, The Social Workplace).

By reading lots of articles about this topic, I came to these 7 stages of the employee lifecycle:

1. Attraction
2. Recruitment
3. Preboarding & Onboarding
4. Development
5. Retention
6. Separation
7. Alumni

(1) The attraction stage happens before you even have an open position. It’s often referred to, as the employer brand or the image of your organisation as a ‘great place to work’ in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders).

Competition for talent is fierce and the workforce increasingly demanding. At the very start of the employee lifecycle, attracting the right talent is critical. Organizations need to develop a strong employer brand that reinforces their vision, mission, and values.

TIP: It is key to constantly listen (online) and act on feedback in order to manage your online reputation actively.

(2) The second stage of the employee lifecycle is the employee recruitment stage: the active phase of finding great talent to join your organisation. You don’t want to force your customers through a complicated process when they are buying from you (online), right? Well, the same applies to the employee lifecycle: the application process should be simple and straightforward, in which all candidates, also those that don’t make it to the interview stage get a response. Managing experience of those who aren’t hired is just as essential as those that you do hire.

TIP: So keep people informed, listen to their feedback and use that feedback to improve this stage of the employee lifecycle.

(3) The third stage of the employee lifecycle is the employee onboarding stage and this is the very critical stage of getting new hires adjusted to the performance aspects of their new job within the company quickly and smoothly. In this stage new hires learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to function effectively within an organisation.

And because a lot can happen between the time a new hire accepts a job offer and the actual first day, it also is key to install a pre-boarding process. Pre-boarding is the stage of engaging with a new hire between the time they accepted your offer and their actual first day.

There are many viable reasons why a new hire abruptly decides not to join the company after all but the long lapse in communication between a candidate accepting the job and their actual start date doesn’t help. I found some great tips in this article. And this article shares some cool strategies how to boost new hires’ confidence, speed and competence: tone of voice matters, people matter, personalization matters and clarity is key.

(4) During the 4th stage , the stage of development, employees operate at their full capacity. By consistently encouraging development, you are helping skill your workforce up, and help provide them with a future career path. This stage is about updating existing knowledge and developing new skills and abilities, because both are required to keep pace with the VUCA world. Traditional training and development programs will always be an essential component of the employee lifecycle. That’s why - in order to prolong the employee lifecycle in general and the development stage in particular - it is important to establish an adequate talent development and management program.

For organizations to win in the market, they must help their employees stay relevant in their skills. They also need to prepare the workforce to be agile and to adapt quickly to changes in the market.

TIP: As a leader, when you’re hiring, look for lifelong learners. Provide access to relevant, up-to-date learning for your employees.

(5) In the fifth stage - the employee retention stage - focus is on keeping your top employees, and ensure that they are both happy and challenged in their role within the team. According to this article one third of employees knew whether they would stay with their company long-term after their first week.

(6) Replacing an employee is extremely costly and depending on the level of seniority of the employee being replaced this can increase even more. no wonder that employee retention is listed as a Top Priority. The sixth stage of the employee lifecycle is the employee separation stage. And this is where lots of companies fail to listen: when their employees leave. Yet, this is an opportunity to gather honest feedback from employee exit interviews. That’s why it is key to manage exit interviews properly and professionally, analyzing the insights gained because these insights can help make improvements to increase employee retention and improve an organization’s employer brand. Showing that you are still listening at this final stage in the employee lifecycle shows your commitment to employee engagement across the whole journey.

It’s important that your separation process is just as strategic as your onboarding process.

When a team member leaves, this can also affect other members of the team and it’s the manager or HR professionals job to make sure the employee who is exiting, leaves in a way that doesn’t disrupt the entire company.

(7) Even after the exit phase opportunities for feedback remain because we are all interconnected. An employee leaving doesn’t have to mean the end of engagement. What to think about boomerang employees that rejoin your business, and what if your former employee starts working for one of your customers? There are lots tools, such as social media and online communities where you can stay connected with alumni and continue to listen to their feedback.

Organizations need to ensure they are focusing on the employee lifecycle, mapping and understanding the employee journey. Employees provide different types of feedback depending on their stage in the employee lifecycle, so be ready to listen to them. Create an employee lifecycle roadmap, ask for their feedback and use these insights to improve how you operate. Invest in employee lifecycle management technology to help you collect and act on feedback. You’ll be able to better engage with your people and retain them for the long-term.

Hope you enjoyed this week’s #ConnectWithContent. Feel free to share your comments or give me feedback or inspiration on other topics to blog about...

Next week I’ll be sharing my main take aways from HR CoreLab ‘Revolutionising the investigation of Next-Gen HR’ featuring 3 streams: the Future of Recruitment, Leading with Talent Analytics' and HR Agility. It’s the 3rd time in a row that I’ll be attending this conference, the 2nd time together with the HRbuilders #dreamteam. Stay tuned next week if you want to learn more about shaping and challenging the creation of the Future of Work.