Building a healthy Employee Value Proposition

An employee value proposition (EVP) is basically a set of reasons or benefits as to why someone would work for one company over another or perhaps work for a company that aligns more with their values and motivations.

It usually combines benefits, ways the company works and characteristics of a company and is ‘on offer’ in return for an employee’s contribution. It can help to make one company look more attractive over another.

Many companies struggle to differentiate themselves, often having the same or similar EVP’s to other companies and therefore building a healthy and unique EVP can help pull a company out in front of a competitor. A healthy EVP can also help to reflect the branding the company is undertaking and it is important that these two things align. You cannot brand a company as one thing and when the employee joins, they see a different organisation to what they were ‘sold’ leading to higher turnover, loss of intellect and increased costs related to staff replacement.

When it works, you become a magnet for the best of the best, staff turnover reduces and current employees are engaged and motivated. Often new talent joining are not necessarily looking for high salaries but the experience of becoming part of the brand and as well as the opportunity for growth, personal and professional development they are also looking for a sweetener on their resume, to say they worked at XYZ, it lifts their status and their desirability relating to future employment should they leave, however with a healthy EVP, why would they want to?

Developing an EVP helps a company to develop their HR priorities which can help with the development of policies and strategies. It is about understanding what is important to the current employees and what attracts new employees. By understanding this, it can help you understand what you need to do to attract, engage, retain and develop the people that you want, where improvements need to be made and the issues that will most likely make people leave if they are not changed.

A healthy EVP should be built around attributes that attract, engaged and retain the type of talent you want, not just talent. It must align with strategic objectives and be real now as well as having goals that you are aiming to achieve. This helps to drive progress and change and shows employees that the organisation is working at developing and improving, not just continuing on the same path. Wording should be every day speak, not corporate jargon. A company may feel corporate speak helps to convey it’s professionalism but it does not appeal to the everyday person. The EVP should also be linked to the corporate brand, the employer brand, internal communications, recruitment, engagement and the HR strategy and not be a standalone strategy.

To create a healthy EVP, you need to first gain an understanding of what you already have. A starting point is to conduct an employee opinion survey. This will help highlight what is working well and what is not working, however this information may not be the best representation of the different types of personnel you would like to attract to your organisation so this could be extended out to potential employees as well, perhaps conduct an EVP opinion survey as part of your interview process. This information together with the information from current employees will help a company understand what needs to be turned up or turned down to attract a certain type of employee.

The EVP should be revisited and tested regularly as the company, market at type of employees change. Final EVP design should then be incorporated into developing strategic HR priorities, an employee handbook, practitioner handbook and into the employer branding.