Human resource flow describes the ‘journey’ of an employee through a company or organisation, beginning with their initial recruitment and ending in their redundancy or retirement. It follows each employee throughout their entire time with the company, similar to how a life cycle works.
There are three main parts of human resource flow; inflow, throughflow and outflow. Following the way former employees flowed through the business helps to identify their experience, whether that was a positive or negative one, and make improvements wherever necessary. Using the information gained by looking at human resource flow, an organisation can better attract new talent and assist employees through their career.
Inflow: Recruitment
The first stage of human resource flow is recruitment, which looks at the selection process and hiring of new employees. This stage is focused on helping HR to implement recruitment methods that will aid the business to recruit the best candidates for various roles. Inflow looks at the way employees ‘flow’ into the company to begin with, such as how well the application process works and what could be done to make it more seamless for candidates.
Throughflow: Onboarding
Once a candidate has been selected, the onboarding stage of human resource flow begins. This centres around making sure that new employees understand the ins and outs of the company, and what is expected of them in their role. Successful onboarding requires a lot of guidance at the beginning, to ensure that new employees learn and quickly become a valued member of the team.
Career Development and Promotions
Throughout an employee’s time at a company, they will likely seek out training and promotion opportunities, which is part of the career development part of human resource flow. Though this is considered to be part of the throughflow stage, it’s centred on developing skills and growing as a professional during their time at a company. This is an important part of human resource flow, as it keeps employees motivated to develop their careers and push themselves as employees.
Outflow: Redundancy or Retirement
The final stage of human resource flow is redundancy or retirement, which looks at how employees exit a company. They might choose to retire or they might be made redundant, and some employees might be redeployed into another team or section of the business. How an employee exits a company is important, as this is the lasting impression that they will have of their time there.
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