Process family
Employee lifecycle process: recruitment, onboarding, review and offboarding
Four swimlane templates that follow one employee from approved vacancy to archived record: recruitment, onboarding, performance review and offboarding, plus the IT provisioning, access removal and payroll runs each step triggers.
The employee lifecycle is the chain of HR-owned processes one person passes through: a vacancy is filled, the new hire is brought in and provisioned, performance is reviewed each cycle, and on leaving, access, assets and final pay are closed out. The four templates are drawn as a sequence because each ends where the next begins; the three beside them are the IT and payroll runs the HR steps set off.
A vacancy enters recruitment: applications screened, competency interviews, reference and right-to-work checks, an offer within the band. It ends at an accepted offer with a start date, and onboarding opens there: contract, background checks, laptop and accounts are its pre-boarding stage, so the hire step needs no separate template; then day one, the first week and the day-90 probation decision. The review runs each cycle, self-assessment, calibration, an agreed rating, until a departure notice starts offboarding: handover, exit interview, access revocation, final pay.
The handoffs that fail are the ones that cross a lane. Onboarding and offboarding both depend on IT: the identity, credentials, MFA and entitlement bundle a joiner needs is its own map, user provisioning, and revocation on exit is user access removal, the step where a leaver keeps a live account because nobody told IT the date. Payroll is the other dependency: a starter, a leaver and a review-driven pay change each have to land before the cut-off of one pay period, and a missed one becomes an off-cycle correction. Both are listed beside the sequence rather than inside it because the HR step triggers them; they are not steps of it.
What happens between the review and the exit is where this family hands over to employee relations: a poor rating opens the performance improvement plan decision tree, a strong one a promotion case, and a conduct concern runs through the disciplinary procedure, whose dismissal branch is one of the triggers for offboarding. Leave requests, training assignments and training records sit on the same employee file but follow their own procedures, listed under employee relations and training and competence. The IT side of joiner, mover and leaver, including access requests and recertification, is the access governance family.
The sequence
Step 1: Recruitment process flowchart: vacancy to offer accepted
A swimlane recruitment process flowchart from approved headcount to accepted offer, covering screening, shortlisting, interviews, checks and offer approval.
Step 2: Employee onboarding process flowchart
A cross-functional employee onboarding process template covering pre-boarding checks, IT provisioning, day one, first week and the day-90 probation review.
Step 3: Employee performance review process flowchart template
A swimlane flowchart of the employee performance review process, from cycle launch through self-assessment and calibration to rating, appeal and outcome.
Step 4: Employee offboarding process flowchart
A cross-functional offboarding flowchart with HR, manager, IT, payroll and facilities lanes: notice, handover, exit interview, access revocation, final pay.
Also part of this family
- User provisioning process flowchart (joiner, mover, leaver) — User provisioning process flowchart: HR event, identity created in the directory, credentials and MFA, role entitlement bundle, owner approval for privileged access, downstream accounts, verification and recertification.
- User access removal process flowchart (deprovisioning) — User access removal process flowchart: leaver and role-change triggers, immediate revocation branch, shared accounts, licence reclaim and audit evidence.
- Payroll process flowchart (cut-off to payment and filing) — Payroll process flowchart from cut-off to payment: starters and leavers, approved hours, variance checks, gross-to-net, an independent pre-payment review, funding, the bank file, statutory filing, payslips and the journal.
Related guides
- How to create a flowchart with AI — How to create a flowchart with AI: describe the process in plain language, let the model draft the steps and branches, then correct what it invented. With a live recruitment example.
- How to create a recruitment process flowchart — How to draw a recruitment process flowchart that predicts time-to-hire: the two gates that close before any interview, the reopen loop, and a proper ending on every rejection route.
- How to create a swimlane diagram — How to create a swimlane diagram: choose lanes by who owns the work, put each step in the lane that does it, and make every lane change a visible handoff. Includes a live example you can step through.
- How to create an employee onboarding process — How to design an employee onboarding process: work backwards from day one, put the lead times where they belong, name the owner of each provisioning step, and end at a probation decision.
- How to map process handoffs — How to map the handoffs in a process: find every point where work changes hands, record how the receiver is told, and measure the wait. With a live employee offboarding example.
- How to create an employee offboarding process — How to design an employee offboarding process: date every step from the last working day, draw access revocation twice, and give the involuntary exit (the case with no lead time at all) a route of its own.