By Emily Murton
I’m sure most of you have heard of the ‘employee life cycle’, otherwise known as the ELC. Every interaction, every touch point, and every stage of this cycle contributes to an employee’s perception of the organisation, and as leaders, we must consider how to humanise each stage to ensure continued motivation, performance and commitment from your people.
But how can we humanise the employee life cycle? Here are just a few top tips for some of the key ELC stages to get you started…
- Attraction
The employee experience starts before a person even applies for a role, and first impressions really count. In order to attract those who align with your organisation’s purpose, vision and values, it’s important to be clear on what these are and ensure all aspects of the business are displaying these in an authentic way. For example, strengths, values and other intrinsic attractors could be highlighted in job advertisements or career pages. - Development
Aside from performance plans, appraisals and fixed targets, how can we encourage personal and professional development in a more ‘human’ way? Use strengths-based feedback into development discussions to enhance intrinsic motivation for staff. These conversations should also be regular and part of everyday discussions, rather than the typical ‘scheduled process’ of appraisal review. This positively impacts circumstances where constructive feedback is required, and will increase performance, wellbeing and productivity. - Separation
You may be thinking, why would you invest in humanising this phase of the cycle, when employees are already on their way out? Ensuring that people leave the organisation in a positive way, in which they feel listened to, cared for and safe to raise useful feedback is a crucial element to future improvements of the employee experience. This not only increases the likelihood of candidates returning to the organisation in the future or becoming advocates for your workplace if not, but it also mitigates potential negative influence on those who remain.
This is a mere snapshot of some of the things we can do, as organisations and employers, to ensure our people are looked after at all stages of their employee experience. Of course, there are other stages in between – such as recruitment, selection, onboarding and retention. It’s vital to attend to all stages of the employee life cycle and continually encourage our people to feel safe, take risks, balance performance and wellbeing and leverage their unique strengths. So, in other words, be more human.
What are you doing to humanise the employee life cycle? Contact us and let us know!