The Best Practices for Lifecycle Management

With SHRM’s study revealing that employers spend six to nine months of an employee’s salary replacing them, ensuring a good experience for everyone is crucial. 

This is easier said than done because for several years now, most industries have been troubled by supply chain issues, inconsistent vendors, and shipping disasters. 

And while so much of that is out of your control, one thing is in your hands: expecting the unexpected. Along every step of an employee’s journey — from onboarding to offboarding and the work between — there can and should be a strategy in place. 

So, what are the best practices for lifecycle management?

1) Build an efficient procurement strategy 

The catch-22 that many organizations face is this: HR, who hires, isn’t always technologically informed. IT, who is technologically informed, isn’t always aware of new hires. When you throw procurement into the mix, getting equipment to the new hire is a job that unfortunately falls into the gray area between the two departments.

The three keys to procurement:

• Buy-and-hold: Build a workflow that allows you to always have inventory on hand. Don’t get caught with more new hires than devices. With the current state of the supply chain, you can’t rely on replenishing stock quickly. 
• Timeliness: Ensure your devices are shipping and arriving when you say they will.
• Maximize your ROI: Redeploy devices as frequently as possible in order to save on cost.

2) Update identity management systems frequently

One way to immediately remedy the lack of organization between IT and HR is to keep all the identity management systems up to date. Before equipment is even in question, the employee must receive their corporate digital identity. This should be IT’s first item when it comes to new hires. Is your workflow not prepared for this step either? There are many complementary services we recommend like BetterCloud and Okta Workflows that can step in and create no-code solutions.

3) Emphasize the importance of the employee-manager relationship

Now that you’ve onboarded, your lifecycle management isn’t on pause until departure. The middle is arguably the most essential part; it’s the time the employee is performing for the company, after all. That employee’s continued experience is essential. The buzzword “engagement” has trended for a long time now and for a reason: replacing an employee costs about 20% of their salary.  On top of that, did you know that the manager accounts for 70% of the variance in team engagement? This means the manager-employee relationship = money. And the manager sets the tone from the beginning of the employee’s journey to the end.

A great manager:

• Asks unintrusive, but thoughtful questions
• Creates motivation by illuminating work through the lens of everyone’s distinct personality; they emphasize and celebrate individual differences in the team
• Recognizes good work and effort generously
• Considers themself a coach, not just someone who supervises

4) Prioritize the “human” in Human-Centered Offboarding 

Offboarding compassionately is as essential as onboarding smoothly. Not only is departure often uncomfortable for everyone involved, but it sets the tone for how the employee thinks and refers to you for their whole career to come. For these reasons, establishing respect as the core focus of offboarding is necessary. 

Pillars of successful human-centered offboarding: 

• Preparation: how and when is this decision being announced, what happens to the role, what other answers can we prepare for what will be an inquisitive team
• Communication is clear both in receiving the news and about next steps; communication is also clear with their departing employee’s team
• Logistics are in order; termination of systems access, exit email with benefits/pay covered, and a plan in place for retrieval of assets

How to know when your hardware is ready for an upgrade  

It’s important to have a game plan in place for equipment upgrades to ensure your team’s workflow is never disturbed. 

Tell-tale signs that it’s time for an upgrade:

• Scalability: Have you hit a development plateau? As in, does your business foresee keeping practices the same for a while? You’ll want to invest during a time in which the change will age well
• Market timing: Demand is low and supply is high
• IT is receiving increased complaints of slow performance, incompatibility with software, and overworked equipment

Only 1 in 3 employees strongly agree that they are given the best materials and equipment for their job– are your employees part of the 33%? For more information on how to create the ideal full lifecycle, download our free guide here.

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With allwhere, HR and IT managers get the help they need to streamline onboarding, full lifecycle asset management (deployment, replacement, retrieval, storage, disposal, and redeployment), and more for hybrid teams. To learn more, book a demo with us here.