Employee lifecycle

/hcm/lifecycle is the HR-admin surface for everything that happens to an employee's record outside of self-service: onboarding a new hire, position changes (promotion, transfer, manager change), leaves of absence, offboarding, and the rehire path. Every transition flows through the workspace's workflow engine + signing templates so the artefacts (offer letter, NDA, I-9, COBRA notice) ride along automatically.

TL;DR — Open HCM → Lifecycle. The dashboard shows in-flight onboardings, pending offboardings, and active leaves. Use + Onboard new hire to start a new employee; Offboard employee to terminate. Position changes and leaves have their own modals on each employee's record.

Before you start

• Decide your onboarding template for the role — the workspace may have several (engineering, sales, contractor, intern). The template wires up which documents, training, and equipment apply.
• For offboarding, you'll need the last day and the reason category (voluntary, involuntary, end-of-contract, retirement, reduction-in-force). Reason categories drive COBRA notice obligation + unemployment-claim posture.
• For position changes, decide whether to back-date (effective on a past date) or set a future effective date.

Onboarding a new hire

1. 1

   Click "+ Onboard new hire"

   Opens the onboarding wizard.

2. 2

   Personal info

   Legal name, preferred name, contact, citizenship (for I-9 pre-fill), date of birth (encrypted at rest).

3. 3

   Position + comp

   Title, level (from the career framework), pay band, base salary, bonus eligibility, equity grant (links to Equity for grant agreement).

4. 4

   Manager + organizational unit

   Reporting manager + business unit. Reporting relationship emits HCM_ORG_REPORTING_RELATIONSHIP_UPDATED once committed.

5. 5

   Pick the onboarding template

   Drives downstream documents, training enrollments, and the welcome workflow.

6. 6

   Benefits class

   Full-time / part-time / temp / contractor. Drives eligibility in Benefits administration.

7. 7

   State of employment

   Drives Multi-state payroll routing + the right state W-4.

8. 8

   Save + send invite

   Audit log records HCM_EMPLOYEE_ONBOARDED. The hire receives a welcome message with their sign-in link. The onboarding workflow begins:

   • I-9 Section 1 task (employee fills, Section 2 follow-up to HR)
   • Document signing chain (offer, NDA, equity, policy acks)
   • Required training enrollment
   • Direct-deposit + W-4 prompts
   • Benefits-enrollment window (first 30 days for new-hire)

Position changes

1. 1

   Open the employee's profile

   Click their name from the directory or your manager dashboard.

2. 2

   Click "Change position"

   A modal collects the change.

3. 3

   Pick change type

   Promotion, transfer, manager change, title-only, FLSA classification change.

4. 4

   Set effective date

   Today / future / back-date. Back-dates require an HR rationale and trigger payroll-side retro-adjustment for any pay periods affected.

5. 5

   Comp implications

   If the change adjusts comp (promotion typically), the form routes through the comp-band check + 4-eyes if needed (see Compensation bands).

6. 6

   Submit

   Audit log records HCM_EMPLOYEE_POSITION_CHANGED. If the reporting line changed, HCM_ORG_REPORTING_RELATIONSHIP_UPDATED also fires.

Leaves of absence

The leave-of-absence flow:

• Open: HCM_EMPLOYEE_LEAVE_OF_ABSENCE_OPENED
• Close: HCM_EMPLOYEE_LEAVE_OF_ABSENCE_CLOSED

During leave, the employee's status flips to On leave; payroll treatment, benefits continuation, and equity vesting follow the leave-type policy.

Offboarding

1. 1

   Open the employee's profile

   Click their name.

2. 2

   Click "Offboard"

   Opens the offboarding wizard.

3. 3

   Pick reason category

   Voluntary / involuntary / end-of-contract / retirement / reduction-in-force.

4. 4

   Pick last working day + termination date

   Final pay run picks these up to compute final pay.

5. 5

   Equity treatment

   Per the grant agreement: unvested forfeit; vested ISOs typically have 90-day exercise window. Detail surfaced for review.

6. 6

   Benefits + COBRA

   Health / dental / vision end per workspace policy (often end of month). COBRA notice auto-prepares for delivery on the qualifying event. HCM_BENEFITS_COBRA_NOTICE_SENT recorded.

7. 7

   Final-pay calculations

   Accrued PTO payout (per state law + workspace policy), unused sabbatical, bonus accrual all considered.

8. 8

   Equipment + access checklist

   The offboarding workflow opens tasks to recover equipment + revoke access (SSO, SCIM-driven directory deactivation, workspace + module access).

9. 9

   Submit

   Audit log records HCM_EMPLOYEE_OFFBOARDED. Workflow proceeds through the checklist tasks.

Rehire

1. 1

   Search for the previous record

   From the onboarding wizard, the email-domain check surfaces a rehire suggestion if the address matches a prior employee.

2. 2

   Decide history treatment

   Workspace policy: preserve continuous-service date (tenure accrual / sabbatical eligibility carry over), OR treat as new hire with fresh service-start.

3. 3

   Re-onboard

   Same wizard as a new hire; pre-fills from the prior record where appropriate.

4. 4

   Audit

   HCM_EMPLOYEE_REHIRED is recorded alongside the HCM_EMPLOYEE_ONBOARDED event for the new active period.

Every field, explained

Audit codes

For SIEM ingestion + compliance review, this surface emits:

See Reference → Audit codes for the canonical description of each.

Common gotchas

• "I onboarded but the welcome message didn't go out." The onboarding workflow is async; allow a few minutes. If the workflow failed, the run history shows the error.
• "Position change is back-dated but payroll didn't retro." Retro adjustment runs on the next payroll cycle following the back-dated change; check the run's prepare log for the retro-line summary.
• "I see two FMLA leaves for the same employee." Intermittent FMLA can produce multiple open leave segments by design; both count against the same rolling 12-month window.
• "Equity didn't vest during the leave." Default policy pauses vesting during unpaid leave; the grant agreement governs.
• "Rehire kept the wrong service date." Workspace policy determines treatment; if you need to override, an HR admin can edit the service-start date with a logged rationale.

Troubleshooting