HR Life Cycle: Key Stages Explained

HR life cycle covers all key stages, from company strategy to employee exit, ensuring smooth HR operations. This comprehensive process integrates recruitment, onboarding, performance management, and career development.

By Brad Nakase, Attorney

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Table of Contents

1. What is the HR life cycle?

2. The HR life cycle’s thirteen phases

3. Recap

What is the HR life cycle?

All HR-related tasks are part of the HR life cycle. What follows is an explanation of the HR life cycle, along with a detailed breakdown of its thirteen stages. Alright, let’s get started!

An HR cycle, or HR life cycle, is an ongoing series of HR-related tasks. The HR life cycle incorporates the employee life cycle and the formulation and execution of HR strategies.

Thus, the cycle begins with company strategy, moves on to HR strategy and organizational design, and finally ends with the employee’s departure. HR activities encompass everything from recruiting and training and development to overall HR operations.

The HR life cycle includes the integration of HR functions both horizontally and vertically.

“Vertical integration” refers to the merging of human resources (HR) strategy and business objectives, as well as the merging of HR operations with HR strategy.

When HR tasks are combined with each other, they have a bigger effect. This is called horizontal integration. Such approaches are known as integrated HR practices, HR bundles, or high performance work systems.

Let’s get right to it and talk about the HR cycle. Next, we’ll break down the HR life cycle into its component parts.

The HR life cycle’s thirteen phases

Now, we will review each step, summarize each phase, and explain how it fits into the overall process.

Company plan

Anything having to do with human resources should begin with the company’s business plan. The modern business model canvas, as well as the more traditional SWOT and Porter’s Five Forces analyses, are popular tools for defining company strategy.

The strategic objectives that come from the business strategy are then used to make the HR strategy.

HR strategy

This phase entails transforming the company’s strategy into an HR plan. In order to establish HR’s direction and priorities, the HR strategy may make use of the same instruments as the previous stage.

For this reason, HR strategy must be in sync with company strategy. Put another way, the HR strategy will help the company achieve its objectives if it is implemented well.

Structure of the organization

The next step is to construct a successful organization based on the organizational strategy and HR strategy.

There are several ways this could happen. The simplest approach is to first determine organizational design criteria based on the organization’s purpose, objectives, and competitive strategies.

Team and job design

Next, teams and jobs need to be designed.

The goal of job design is to create work that both motivates employees and helps the business reach its objectives. A competency study, a job redesign, and an examination of the work itself are all parts of this approach.

Team design follows. When people work together effectively, they form a team. The many roles (or units) as specified in the organizational design are able to operate effectively thanks to good team design. The accomplishment of the organizational strategy’s goals is at the center of this.

Planning for HR

Predicting future demand and supply for employees is the backbone of human resource planning. Organizational strategy, technology investments, and future workforce supply and composition will all have an impact on demand.

Both internal and external sources of supply, as well as retention capabilities and shared employee traits, impact supply as well.

The creation of a personnel action plan will depend on supply and demand. A hiring freeze, early retirement, and severance compensation are among possible outcomes, as are internal transfers, reskilling, and an emphasis on automation.

Culture and vision

The following phase of our HR life cycle is culture building. The foundation of any successful culture is an ambitious goal for the future of the organization. Culture is the less theoretical and more practical implementation of that goal.

A company’s culture can influence its direction. As an excellent case in point, consider Netflix. They have established a culture of excellence based on what they term “real values” rather than hollow ideals.

Continuous reinforcement of culture is essential. It also gives managers a guideline to follow when having conversations with workers whose actions contradict the company’s principles.

When it comes to the HR cycle, culture is king. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, says business consultant Peter Drucker. The expression stresses how important culture is for achieving shared goals.

The hiring process

The employee life cycle begins at this point. The process starts with finding and hiring new employees. Recruiting top people and choosing them wisely is the focus here. Talent acquisition, evaluations, the selection process, and employer branding are common themes.

Welcome and orientation

The primary goals of employee induction, sometimes called orientation, are familiarizing new hires with the company and its operations and providing them with the knowledge and tools they need to do a good job.

In a similar vein, training new hires is all about getting them up to speed. From the time an employee starts working for the company until they reach their full productivity potential, this is their path. The employee has completed all aspects of onboarding and is now operating at peak efficiency. The time required for this task can range from three to nine months, depending upon its complexity.

Evaluating and reviewing

Performance evaluation is a component of HRM at this stage. Workers get their performance reviews and suggestions on how to do better.

Establishing objectives and tracking development toward them are the backbone of the performance management cycle. When objectives are not met or when personnel require additional training, they will be provided with it. On the other hand, when objectives are met, they will be compensated for their efforts.

Development and training

Employee development is the focus of this HR cycle stage. The goal of this training can be to hone their existing abilities, provide them with the knowledge to advance in their current position, or just to keep up with the times and acquire new capabilities.

Motivating and supporting

Human resources plays a pivotal role in establishing the environment that motivate employees to be actively involved in their work, in addition to fostering a culture that propels the organization forward. A highly engaged workforce is one that is enthusiastic about their job and completely absorbed in what they are doing.

Engaged workers are more likely to stay than those who receive a large bonus, yet competitive pay is essential for keeping good people around.

Management of one’s career

A good approach to assisting an employee’s professional growth is career pathing and career management. A sales manager is someone who has worked their way up through the ranks of the company’s commercial functions. They will be more motivated, learn more quickly, and perform better if they plan their professional path in advance of when they want to work.

Exit

The exit is the last phase of the HR cycle. This occurs when a worker leaves the company.

The ideal situation is for the employee to start promoting the company. They have the ability to attract new clients and fill open jobs. Consider the leading strategy consulting firms as an example. It is not uncommon for former employees to take on top positions in global corporations after working as consultants. When they’re in that situation, they’re more likely to connect with their old boss again.

Recap

Human resource life cycles are continuous, just like any other kind of cycle. In other words, the workforce’s makeup (including things like employee turnover, skill sets, and present performance) and the company’s makeup (including things like organizational culture, job descriptions, and team structures) inform the business strategy.

You may recall that the business plan is based on an evaluation of the company’s capabilities, and that the workforce and company’s makeup significantly impact this strategy. For this reason, the HR life cycle model depicts not only horizontally integrated (HR practices are aligned with each other) but also vertically integrated (business strategy leads to HR strategy, which leads to HR practices), HR activities, and therefore completes the HR cycle.

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