Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) is a framework for understanding the value associated with hiring and talent throughout an employee's entire time at your organization.

It can be represented by a curve with milestones for when the role was opened, when the employee was fully onboarded, the point at which the employee decides to leave, and their last day.

The true value of great talent is often vast, and the costs of getting it wrong are severe. Luckily, there are a number of things that any leader can do to help bend the curve in your favor.

If your goal is to shorten the time that it takes to find and onboard a person to full productivity, then focus on better sourcing, a more effective hiring process, and better onboarding.

If instead your goal is to maximize productivity, then your focus should be on finding more productive people, improving management, and having people work on higher-yield activities

Finally, if your goal is to increase the length of time someone is productive in the organization, then the solution is to improve the organizational culture.

Use the ELTV Template to situate the business case for HR activities in business terms:

• Situation Analysis. What's the current state of things? Use data and information from your company and supporting data from external studies.
• Proposed Solution. How do you address the problem or leverage the opportunity?
• Return on Investment (ROI). What is the required investment and the business impact? Describe this in terms of increased ELTV to showcase the value to the business.
• Obstacles, Challenges, and Open Questions. No plan is free from obstacles. Be up front about what those are.