Talent Development Powers Up the Employee Lifecycle

First, What is an Employee Lifecycle?

The employee lifecycle is a simple model that outlines the stages of a person's employment.  In general, employees are attracted to a company, hired, onboarded and hopefully perform work well.  They want to develop and grow, and companies want to retain them and keep them humming at top speed.  Employees continue in the perform, develop & grow, engage & retain cycle until at some point, they depart.

I like the the big picture that the employee lifecycle provides to Talent Development. It helps us engage design thinking.  We are solving talent challenges for the business and keeping the employee's perspective in mind.  We do not create talent programs and interventions in a vacuum.  We must consider that each employee is on a different step of the employee lifecycle and maybe in multiple steps at one time.

We might be tempted to go big on the develop & grow step or big on onboarding within the attract phase.  Yes, do that! Also go big on the engage & retain step, work with Talent Acquisition on the attract phase and support employees with a dignified departure. 

Talent Development should be in effect at each step of the employee lifecycle.  Here's a starting list of talent activities reflected in each step of the lifecycle.  I'm sure you have others.

Attract & Onboard

• Introduce the company to new and prospective employees

• Provide employees an early look at career development options

• Partner with Talent Acquisition on critical roles and filling talent gaps

Perform

• Develop a clear performance management process easy for managers and employees to engage

• Provide skill building for employees' current roles

• Provide skill building to shore up performance or knowledge gaps

Engage & Retain

• Offer career pathing, reskilling and upskilling

• Teach managers how to have effective career development conversations

• Invest in leadership skills, such as having 1:1s, coaching, emotional intelligence, difficult conversations, etc.

Develop & Grow

• Provide skill building for an employee's next role

• Develop a mentoring program

• Facilitate succession planning

Offboarding

• Plan for knowledge transfer before employees retire

 

An Employee's View of the Employee Lifecycle

Let's take it one step further - let's revert to our employee selves.  Take off that heavy HR hat and don your employee cap.  Is it seated squarely on your head?

Now then, what would you like to see from the Training / Learning / Career Development department (*see note at the end) to support your experience at the company?

Here are a few things I'd appreciate as an employee from my company's "training" department:

Attract & Onboard

Help me start strong before I even accept an offer by supporting me in deciding if this is the role for me. Take me through a day in the life.  Let me learn about what you do to see if I want to do that, too. Also, what about your values? Bring those to life for me.  What behaviors underscore the values? What do they look like played out well at your company?  Perspectives on both of these will help me determine if I can see myself working there.

Talent Dev's point-of-view: By embedding onboarding into pre-boarding, you've already introduced the values to employees. They are aligning to them early and you can focus on reinforcement.

Perform

You know what I'd really like?  A supervisor who thinks I can be successful and has honest, encouraging conversations with me.  If I'm not doing something well, tell me and offer coaching so that I can perform better.  I want to fix it.  If this is not the right role for me, let's talk about it.  Maybe know-how and training will help.

Engage & Retain

What about asking me what I'd like to learn or what I'm worried about upskilling or reskilling?  I take the engagement survey every year;  I'd be happy to tell you.  Or I'd take a survey through the LMS.  Career growth is important to me.

Talent Dev's point-of-view: We tend to have assessment strategies to collect data from leadership teams on what skills and capabilities are missing. Let's ask employees, too.  They are, after all, doing the work everyday.

Develop & Grow

Provide tools for me to discover and navigate my own career journey.  I love to diy (do-it-yourself), and I'd like to do the same with my career, alongside coaching from my boss.  If you highlight others who have been successful in the role I have my eye on, I can learn from them and their journey.

Offboarding

I'm interested in an alumni program.  I like to keep up with companies I've worked for in the past.  It would be interesting to consider working part time to ease into retirement.  Or what about a program that helps young tenured workers in my craft develop their skills?  I'd like to pay it forward and develop the next generation - that would be fun.

Now then, you get the idea.  Switch back to your savvy Talent Development Hat.

How can Talent Development Shore up the Employee Lifecyle in Your Organization?

How would you like to see your organization supporting the employee lifecycle?  What opportunities are there to shore up a step or two?  Check engagement surveys, retention data or other listening strategies HR has in play.  Prioritize ideas that will solve for employee engagement issues.  And don't forget, bring your business customers along with you.  Show them how this investment in the employee lifecycle will show returns in lower attrition, higher performance or increased engagement.

✨ I'd love to hear what innovative ideas you introduce to support the employee lifecycle.  Post a comment below!

Interested in other ideas to power up the employee lifecycle? How about:

💡 6 Onboarding Practices that Will Set Your Company Apart

💡 10 Things You Can Do Now to Stop Attrition

End note:

*I know Talent Development can encompass most of those things, but have you tried explaining what we do to others?  Exactly.  Employees don't understand it either.  They just know they need to perform well and grow a career.  We can keep it simple.