The five elements of the human resource flow describe the journey an employee takes within an organization:

• Attraction: This involves attracting the right candidates through job postings, social media, and recruitment events.

• Selection: This involves assessing the candidates' skills, qualifications, and cultural fit through interviews, assessments, and reference checks.

• Integration: This involves welcoming new employees, introducing them to the organization, and providing them with the necessary resources to succeed.

• Development: This involves supporting employees' growth and development through training and career planning.

• Separation: This involves the exit of employees from the organization through resignation, retirement, or termination.

Overall, the human resource flow describes the journey of employees from the time they enter the organisation until they leave, and the various stages in between.

What are the benefits of identifying your human resource flow? 

1.     Strategic Workforce Planning

By analysing human resource flow, you can strategically plan for current and future workforce needs. For example, by knowing the typical length of an employee’s tenure, or the average retirement age, you can predict when you may need to start recruitment activities in advance of notice being given.

2.     Cost Savings

Efficient human resource flow management helps reduce costs associated with recruitment, onboarding, and training. Understanding the patterns of employee movement allows you to optimise resources and allocate budgets more effectively.

3.     Improved Recruitment and Hiring Processes

Identifying trends in the human resource flow enables you to refine your recruitment strategy. This includes targeting specific talent pools, streamlining the hiring process, and improving the overall candidate experience.

4.     Enhanced Employee Engagement and Retention

Recognising the stages of human resource flow allows you to proactively address factors that influence employee engagement and satisfaction. For example, when an employee typically should start advanced training or leadership development.

5.     Tailored Training and Development Programs

Understanding the skills and competencies required at different stages of the human resource flow enables you to tailor training and development programs to meet their needs. This personalised approach enhances employee performance and fosters professional growth.

6.     Agile Succession Planning

Identifying potential future leaders within the organisation becomes more manageable with insights into human resource flow. This allows for effective succession planning, ensuring a smooth transition for the key roles at your business.

7.     Adaptation to Changing Market Conditions

If your business operates in a dynamic environment, this process can help you adapt more effectively to market changes by understanding how your workforce evolves. This is crucial for staying competitive and agile in response to shifting industry trends.

5 ways you might improve your organisation's flow

1.     Invest in employee training and development

This provides improvement to both your throughflow (as a method to aid retention and also improve the performance of your staff) and to outflow, by reducing the frequency of staff moving on.

2.     Develop clear job descriptions and roles

Job descriptions should be written to fill the need for your organisation, not the skillset of an individual. This means that when an employee is promoted, moves laterally or leaves the business, it is quicker and easier to recruit.

3.     Implement an effective performance management system

It is important that your workforce knows what their goals are, whether they are achieving them, the rewards for success and that this data is recorded consistently across the organisation. This helps employees feel confident in being assessed and rewarded transparently – resulting in job satisfaction and retention.

4.     Streamline your HR processes

As in the above two tips, if your roles are well defined and your performance management is effective, it becomes much easier to streamline your HR processes which will lead to quicker decision-making and ultimately cost-saving for the business.

5.     Emphasise leadership development

The best way to retain your staff and improve your business’ performance is to grow from within by providing leadership development. Let staff take responsibility for their work and guide them towards growing within your organisational structure.

If you need any help identifying your human resource flow or simply want to work out why your staff turnover is harming your business growth, you can always get in touch with dolen HR to receive professional HR support.