Throughout an employee’s journey, there are a lot of things that can happen.

While you may not have a process for everything, you should have a good way of handling the most common scenarios.

This guide will walk you through the most common scenarios and how to handle them. (Quick tip: lifecycle events are different than programs, which you can read about here).

What are the common lifecycle events?

<aside> 🧑‍🚒 Tip: you don’t want to ‘throw process’ at your company off the bat. If you do, the organization may throw it back at you. Make sure that the organization understands the why. More on that here.

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When you’re setting your foundations for scale, I recommend developing a playbook for each of the following areas.

Your playbook should give enough context so that a manager could reasonably explain what will happen to / with a member of their team. (For more on how to write playbooks, see here).

What this doesn’t cover:

• Recruiting process / candidate lifecycle.
• Programs / Programatic Events (ex. Performance Management Review Cycles) which are things that happen across many employees at once.

Common Events

Which playbooks should you prioritize?

If you’re just starting in a new role or looking to embark on building structure, you should start by doing an inventory of all of the above.

The goal isn’t to have a built out playbook right away for everything. But you want to start gathering the ‘how it’s done’. This will help you have a good pulse of the organization’s culture and systematic weak points. (Ie. are gaps a result of systems issues, gaps in leadership, etc).

The playbooks you should prioritize are Offer Extension, Preboarding Process and Onboarding & Orientation.

The answer is pretty straightforward: these are amongst the first touch points that a future employee & their manager have with People processes. By having well-established processes here, you help to set the tone for the rest of the programs to come. (Ie. if you get buy in on these, everything else is that much easier).

Who should playbooks be visible to?

In an ideal world, all of your playbooks should be visible to everyone in the company. (There may be content you want to sequester - ex. how you calculate amounts for severance).

Transparency - in written form - enables stakeholders throughout the organization to know how to engage with your team or to encourage adjustments.

If you are uncomfortable with making something visible to a wider audience, consider making an ‘abbreviated’ version of the playbook that gives the high-level notes.