What is an evergreen EVP?

How data intelligence and recognising employee trends can help your employee value proposition (EVP) evolve consistently to meet changing workforce demands.

As Chief Commercial Officer for Aon’s Human Capital Solutions business in Europe, my role is to help organisations make better people decisions. Having worked in five countries, across four continents, I have a good deal of experience of seeing what works and what doesn’t when it comes to developing a compelling employee experience.

Understanding the differing needs and motivations of employees at stages through their careers and adapting and communicating strategies to reflect these needs is critical. My belief is that we are now at a turning point in terms of using data to make an evergreen EVP a reality.

Most organisations are groaning with data, but what they’re lacking is how to bring together biographical, engagement, performance measures, pay, location and wellbeing data to inform strategy and communicate what’s most appropriate at a moment’s notice. Data models and benchmarks now exist to look at the whole employee experience as lives change.

Take for example, becoming a parent for the first time. Traditionally there will be communication around maternity / paternity leave and pay. But the birth of a child offers the opportunity to change the way you communicate your EVP. It’s about building the connection of the company at a key moment of an employee’s life. When it matters, you’re there, cementing that sense of belonging.

It’s about using engagement data and combining it, e.g., which benefits are selected and used, to make smarter decisions. With this kind of intelligence, your EVP is able to respond to the changing requirements of say an older person looking to retirement or a single person looking to get a first step on the housing ladder. This means that organisations can move away from broad brush approaches and rethink EVP, including reward, completely. This is particularly important for global organisations with multiple locations, working with a certain level of complexity.

Using data well is one side of the coin. The other facet is to recognise the trends which are shaping employee expectations.

?Market trends and EVP

With a tight labour market, there’s a dash to attract new, diverse talent. What I’m seeing a lot of at the moment is organisations over-promising to entice good talent, only to find people becoming disillusioned and leaving around the six-month mark as they discover that the organisation does not live up to the values they signed up for. This leads not only to crazy turnover, but also a mismatch in how incoming employees are treated versus existing employees.

What people are looking for right now, post-pandemic, is a sense of purpose and belonging. They want to work for organisations who reflect and champion their own values, whether it’s around work-life balance, mental health or ESG. The organisation’s culture starts at the top, with leaders championing change and values, and we’re seeing more organisations where ESG goals are tied to executive pay decisions.

Now more than ever, if you want to recruit and retain talent, wellbeing needs to be at the top of the agenda, as employees seek organisations who will safeguard their wellbeing and optimise their mental health. This is at the heart of a resilient, agile, and sustainable workforce and should evolve, based on life stage and circumstances.

Closely aligned is the issue of flexibility. For many in the workforce, after two and a half years working from home, they want to hold on to the flexibility that this has given them to better balance work with their home, family, and social lives. On the financial side, they’re asking how can they cover travel costs as the cost-of-living crisis takes hold?

This calls for a 180 degree turn in the rewards and incentives employers offer. Smart employers are asking themselves whether to pay people more to come into the office to build on the cultural benefits of interconnectedness. They are looking at office time more in terms of creativity and collaboration, and the benefit this brings in building higher productivity when working from home. Hybrid working models which embrace technology seamlessly are perceived as having a lot to offer.

Upskilling and reskilling are key parts of an attractive EVP. In a world where skills are becoming outdated in a 3-5-year period, employers need to regularly assess the skills they have available, where the gaps exist and what future skills requirements look like. This is a win-win for employers, as career development is what employees are looking for too. It’s particularly critical for digital transformation, where employers have to ask themselves why an employee would join them rather a competitor with a much higher profile.

In Aon’s recent Rising Resilient white paper, we looked at the needs of the energy sector in particular, and the motivations of employees at different stages of their careers. For STEM millennials, they were attracted by a wide range of employee benefits, including investment in training and development. In contrast, the sector’s workforce is predominately aged 45+. For a sustainable workforce, the learning and development strategies are quite different. But all pivot around greater inclusivity, with wider gender, ethnicity and age representation and more transferable skills and diversity of thinking.

EVP is a lot more than just reward, which can’t deal with fast changing market demands.

To get your EVP right, I’d recommend re-examining your existing benefits strategies through the lens of belonging, flexibility, and skills. Data models and benchmarks can help with this re-evaluation.

Look to how you can strengthen the communication of what you already offer to increase engagement and widen your appeal to prospective employees.

Finally, and most importantly, listen to your employees. What they’re talking about, and your ability to capture this thinking, particularly around wellbeing, flexibility.

I’d welcome your comments on this topic.

What do you think Alessandro Linari Suzanne Courtney Pete Bentley Alexander Krasavin Rachel Fellowes?

#betterdecisions #evp #dataintelligence