Employee Lifecycle

What is the Employee Lifecycle?

Simply stated, the employee lifecycle is an individual’s journey throughout his/her employment with your organization. It starts with the recruitment and hiring process and ends with their exit as an alumnus of your company. The typical employee lifecycle includes hiring, onboarding, development, promotion, retention, and exit, as well as other moments that matter.

Why is Examining the Employee Lifecycle Important?

The only way to truly understand your workforce and their needs is to ask – and then keep asking at the moments that matter most to your people. Employee lifecycle surveys can help you measure, understand, and improve each stage of the employer-employee relationship, and, in turn, maximize the full potential of your workforce to become a stronger organization.

Additionally, as sourcing and retaining top talent becomes more and more competitive, your organization needs to have a deep understanding of its complete employee experience and how to showcase that to the outside world, including high-performers. Employee lifecycle surveys are a critical tool to help you understand what sets your organization apart, and glean insights for action planning that will help you become more competitive in the market by improving sourcing and recruitment processes, reducing turnover, and driving employee engagement.

How Does Perceptyx Measure the Employee Lifecycle?

At Perceptyx, we promote a continuous listening strategy that helps your organization design and conduct distinct surveys at unique points during the employee lifecycle, particularly times of change and transition. Our well-crafted surveys, powerful technology, and intuitive analytics provide your company the data needed to:

• Become more competitive in the market
• Establish lower voluntary turnover rates by taking preventive action to continually improve the employee experience
• Reduce costs of recruitment and training by retaining talent
• Create an engaged and motivated workforce who are highly productive
• Identify the ”point of no return” for disengaged employees

To establish the best datasets for creating action plans, Perceptyx recommends conducting surveys during all employee lifecycle phases, including candidacy, onboarding, development (promotions, training, career advancement, role clarity), retention (engagement, culture of inclusion, alignment with career goals/values), and exit.

Recruitment/candidate surveys will be your first chance to ask for feedback. Therefore, we recommend these be kept short, confidential, and timely. Successful candidate surveys should be broken out by three groups of respondents: those who received and accepted an offer, those who received and rejected an offer, and those who did not receive an offer of employment. Candidate experience surveys might include questions about the ease of application, the applicant’s understanding of the organization and job position, the overall interview process, and the likelihood of recommending the company to others. From this feedback, your company will identify new advocates as well as ways to improve your hiring process.

Onboarding surveys help your company uncover insights about the new hire experience and how new employees are feeling. From conducting onboarding surveys throughout the new-hire process, around 14 days, 3 months and up to 1 year, your organization will learn if new employees are set up for success through proper training, resources, information, and helping develop manager/team member relationships. These surveys can also identify possible triggers of early turnover and help you develop mitigation strategies. Onboarding survey questions should include items on expectation management, inclusion, the overall onboarding process, and how employees are feeling about the company/role/coworkers, etc.

Surveys in the Development stage might include performance reviews, training, and career development. These allow employees to give honest feedback about their employment journey thus far. For instance, they can help determine how employees feel about the review process, training, ability to advance their career, and internal mobility opportunities.

Exit surveys are vital. Because exiting employees are often unusually candid, these surveys can provide valuable insights about the organization, specific job roles, departments, and/or managers. Exit survey questions should include specifics about the employee’s experience, why they are leaving, and what, if anything, could have been done differently. Asking the right questions and comparing exit survey results to data aggregated from other surveys can help you determine the difference in experience between those who elect to leave versus those who stay – improving the employee experience for others and reducing the likelihood of further resignations.

Discover the 8 lifecycle moments that matter most for a great employee experience.

By conducting these types of continuous listening surveys, you will get to know your employees better, what drives them, what they are looking for in an employer, and how they feel about important moments. Your company can then use those insights to take targeted action and improve the employee experience. Perceptyx has tailored survey solutions to help you get the sense of what employees want so you can drive engagement, recruitment, and retention.

What Should a Company Look for When Selecting an Employee Lifecycle Survey Partner?

Because an employee lifecycle survey program is continuous, the right provider must have the technology, flexibility, and expertise to help your organization successfully run and manage the process as well as analyze and react to the results. The vendor should work with you to tailor a comprehensive solution that works for your organization’s needs, goals, and business strategy.

At Perceptyx, we want to help you uncover valuable insights from employees throughout their journey with your organization. We do that by helping develop a better employee lifecycle survey experience, channeling continuous insights, and identifying engagement drivers or barriers across the lifecycle.