Employee Life Cycle

Today I saw a chart of a 12-step Employee Life Cycle. Maybe Human Resources professionals need that much detail, but functional managers don't. Here is a four-step, condensed employee life cycle plan that tells you everything you need to know.

Hire, Inspire, Admire, Retire

An employee life cycle is the steps the employees go through from the time they enter a company until they leave. Often Human Resources professionals focus their attention on the steps in this process in hopes of making an impact on the company's bottom line. That is a good thing for them to do. Their goal is to reduce the company's cost per employee hired.

Unfortunately, they aren't the ones who really make a difference - managers are. People don't really work for companies; they work for a boss. To the extent that you can be a good boss, you can keep employees, keep them happy, and reduce the costs associated with employee turnover.

Hire:

This first step is probably the most important. It is important to hire the best people you can find. This is not a time to be cheap. The cost of replacing a bad hire far exceeds the marginal additional cost of hiring the best person in the first place

Inspire:

Once you have recruited the best employees to come to work on your team, the hard part begins. You have to inspire them to perform to their capabilities. You have to challenge and motivate them. That is where you will get their best effort and their creativity that will help your organization excel.

Admire:

Once you have hired the best employees and have challenged and motivated them, you can not relax. The biggest mistake a manager can make is to ignore employees. The same attention you paid to their work assignments, to their satisfaction levels, to their sense of being part of a great team needs to continue for as long as they are in your group. As soon as you start to slack off, their satisfaction and motivation decreases. If you don't do something, they will become disenchanted and will leave. They will become part of the "employee turnover" statistic you were trying to avoid.

Retire:

This is when you know you have been successful. When employees see your company as the employer of choice, they will join you. When