Hire-to-Retire(H2R)
From a planned position to the last working day: how the hire-to-retire process runs, how it is measured and where hiring, payroll and offboarding stall.
Also known as: H2R · Hire to Retire · Recruit-to-Retire · Employee lifecycle
What is Hire-to-Retire?
Hire-to-retire (H2R) is the end-to-end process of the employee lifecycle, from planning a position to an employee leaving or retiring. It covers workforce planning, recruiting, onboarding, development and performance management, time management and payroll, transfers and contract changes, and offboarding. Because almost every step involves several functions – the hiring department, HR, IT and payroll – H2R decides how quickly new employees can actually work and how cleanly changes and departures are carried out.
Starts with
A position is planned or a staffing need is raised.
Ends with
The departure is fully processed: final payroll run, access revoked, records archived.
Typical phases
- 1
Workforce planning & demand
Budget and the headcount plan turn into a job requisition that is approved by the department, HR and, where required, controlling.
- Position created in headcount plan
- Job requisition raised
- Requisition approved
- 2
Recruiting & hiring
The position is advertised, applications are screened, interviews held and an offer made – up to the signed employment contract.
- Job posted
- Application received
- Interview held
- Offer sent
- Contract signed
- 3
Onboarding
Before the first working day, master data, workplace, access and induction have to be ready; several departments work on this in parallel.
- Employee record created
- Hardware & access provided
- First working day
- Probation review
- 4
Development, time & payroll
During employment, time recording, absences, payroll and performance reviews recur; transfers, promotions and contract changes come on top.
- Time recorded & approved
- Payroll run
- Performance review held
- Contract change applied
- 5
Offboarding & leaving
A resignation or retirement triggers a set of tasks: handover, return of equipment, revoking access, reference letter and final payroll.
- Resignation recorded
- Handover & equipment return
- Access revoked
- Final payroll run
Business objects and systems
These are the objects the process leaves in the source systems – with timestamps, owners and relationships to each other.
- Position
- Planned position in the organisational model, with cost centre, budget and staffing status.
- Application
- A candidate in a selection process, with status, interviews and decision.
- Employee
- Employee record with contract, organisational assignment and every change over time.
- Personnel action
- Hire, transfer, promotion or termination – each with a request, an approval and an effective date.
- Access & equipment
- User accounts, permissions and hardware that are provided or withdrawn on joining and leaving.
- Payroll run
- Payroll per period, including corrections and retroactive recalculations.
Typical source systems
- Core HR systems (e.g. SAP SuccessFactors, Workday, SAP HCM)
- Applicant tracking (e.g. Greenhouse, Personio, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting)
- Time management and payroll (e.g. ADP, DATEV)
- IT service management and identity management (e.g. ServiceNow, Microsoft Entra ID)
KPIs that can be measured
- Time to hire
- Time from the approved job requisition to the signed contract.
- Time to productivity
- Time from the first working day until access, equipment and induction are complete.
- Day-one readiness
- Share of new joiners whose workplace and access are ready on their start date.
- Payroll corrections
- Retroactive recalculations and manual corrections, for example caused by late personnel actions.
- Early attrition
- Leavers within the probation period or the first year.
- Access revocation on leaving
- Time between the last working day and all permissions being withdrawn.
Typical problems
The first day without a laptop
HR, IT and the department work in parallel but without a shared schedule. Whether a new joiner is properly prepared often only becomes clear on day one.
Approval loops in recruiting
Job requisitions and offers pass through several approvals. Every query lengthens time to fill – and strong candidates drop out.
Late personnel actions in payroll
Transfers, salary changes or terminations are recorded after the payroll cut-off and force retroactive recalculations in the following period.
Open access after leaving
If offboarding is not handed over to IT, accounts and permissions remain active – a risk for data protection and information security.
How Noreja analyses Hire-to-Retire
The employee lifecycle is spread across many objects and systems: one position leads to several applications, a hire to an employee record, which in turn triggers IT tickets, permissions and payroll runs. A flat event log has to pick one case notion and loses the rest. Noreja connects these objects in the event knowledge graph, so that a late laptop, for example, can be traced back to the personnel action that triggered it.
Onboarding and offboarding are modelled as the expected order: access before the first working day, permissions withdrawn by the last one at the latest. This shows which step is missing, comes too late or was triggered twice – even when it lives in a different system from the personnel action itself.
Questions Noreja answers
- In which step does recruiting lose the most time?
- Which approvals delay job requisitions and offers the most?
- Which new joiners lack access or equipment on their first day?
- Which personnel actions regularly cause payroll corrections?
- Where do permissions remain active after an employee has left?
- Does the onboarding flow differ between sites or legal entities?
Matching agents from the Minerva Agent Library
Frequently asked questions about Hire-to-Retire
What is the hire-to-retire process?
Hire-to-retire (H2R) is the end-to-end process of the employee lifecycle, from planning a position through recruiting, onboarding, development, time management and payroll to an employee leaving or retiring.
What is the difference between hire-to-retire and recruit-to-retire?
Both terms usually describe the same process. Recruit-to-retire puts more emphasis on the fact that the process already starts with workforce planning and recruiting, not only with the hire.
Which KPIs matter in hire-to-retire?
Typical KPIs are time to hire, time to productivity, day-one readiness, payroll corrections, early attrition and the time it takes to revoke access after an employee leaves.
Can process mining be used in HR?
Yes. Job requisitions, applications, personnel actions, IT tickets and payroll runs leave timestamps and status changes in HR and IT systems. Process mining shows the actual flow, waiting times between departments and deviations from the intended sequence. Personal data can be pseudonymised for the analysis.
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