Try to visualise a situation where you have to sell jobs for your organisation to individuals who have a lot of lucrative job opportunities in hand. In such a situation, what would you sell the job for or would you be able to attract the right talent towards a certain position? It is a fact that every organisation wants the best talent on board, but how many of them succeed in acquiring such talent? This question presents itself to most of the organisations in today’s job scenario!

Businesses can no longer afford to think only of existence; they need the excellence for survival as well. When we look at closely at great organisations, we ask ourselves, do they owe their excellence to fixed assets, technology, or plant and machinery? While these factors are certainly significant and contribute in their way towards an organisation’s success, there is more to it that makes these organisations great – the employees!

What is Employee Value Proposition?

An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is an amalgamation of characteristics, ways of working in an organisation, and the associated benefits. It strikes a deal between an organisation and employees instead of their contribution and performance. This “deal” defines an employer while differentiating it from its competition.

Why Employee Value Proposition?

A lot of organisations have been advised to build unique brands of themselves in the eyes of its prospective employees. What this means is developing a statement of why the total work experience at their organisation is superior compared to other organisations. Employee Value proposition outlines the unique employee policies, rewards, programs, and benefits programs that establish an organisation’s commitment to people and management development. Precisely, it answers an employee’s key question as to why should he or she join an organisation. In fact, employee value proposition should ideally be communicated in all the hiring efforts of the organisation. It can be projected on the company’s website, letters extending employment opportunities, and job advertisements. Talent War emphasises the fact that great managerial talent has always been vital and critical for many companies. Hence formulating an Employee Value Proposition leads to engagement of the employees and it satisfies their expectations in their workplace.

The Employee Value Proposition

A lot of organisations stumble upon the following two main problems when it comes to their EVP:

  • They struggle to distinguish themselves from their competitors. This distinction is vital if an organisation needs to stand out from the “crowd of sameness” that characterises some of these sectors.
  • Although their branding is attractive, it does not precisely reflect the reality.

An effective EVP facilitates an organisation to stand out as unique, but it also ensures that the ‘contents’ reflect the ‘packaging’. It has been observed that quite often people join organisations lured by the ‘branding’ but end up being disappointed when they face reality.  You know you have hit the bull’s eye when – you become a magnet for drawing talent, and have been able to successfully engage and motivate employees.

The Benefits of an EVP

Listed below are some of the benefits of an Employee Value Proposition:

1. Helps to attract and retain talent
An Employee Value Proposition which is clear and unique ensures that it helps you to draw and retain people that you would otherwise lose to other organisations which offer relatively more attractive EVPs.

2. Helps to attract different types of markets and tough to hire talent groups
In the case of organisations which operate in some countries, the Employee Value Proposition will need to change its perspective of “one size fits all”. A good Employee Value Proposition entails elements that appeal to various groups of employees about different cultures, functions, and age groups. Some of the most successful EVPs are derived by combining the requirements of the key segments of the workforce to formulate a universal brand which is communicated via the best channel about each segment.

3. Helps to boost a disenchanted workforce
The process of creating an Employee Value Proposition entails talking and surveying the existing employees of an organisation. This is quite a powerful engagement tool, and employees are usually seen to appreciate and enjoy when the organisation takes constructive steps towards this direction. This process also helps to enhance, rebuild trust and boosts employee motivation.

4. Helps to prioritise your HR agenda
Eliciting an organisation’s EVP helps you to understand what your HR priorities should ideally be. To create an Employee Value Proposition, you need to comprehend from the perspective of your employees what is important to them as well as the potential hires for your organisation. Possessing this insight indicates that you understand what specifically needs to be done to lure, engage, and retain the employees. It also helps you gauge the areas of improvements and to analyse what is likely to make employees leave your organisation.

5. Creates a strong ‘people’ brand
Organisations with robust and credible EVPs become renowned owing to the fact as to how they treat their employees and the quality of their workforce. An ideal example of this is Apple. They do not get into the ongoing war for talent; rather they have awesome talent queuing up to join them.

6. Reduce new hire premiums
It is a fact that when candidates consider an organisation’s Employee Value Proposition as attractive, they demand a lower compensation premium at the time of accepting the offer. On the other hand, EVPs that are considered to be unattractive warrant a 21% premium to hire employees, while attractive EVPs need only an 11% premium.

What makes a good EVP?

To ensure that an Employee Value Proposition generates maximum returns, it needs to be built around attributes that genuinely lure, engage and retain the talent that you seek for. It must also display consistency coupled with strategic objectives, and it should clearly demonstrate its uniqueness. The Employee Value Proposition must also comprise of elements that may not be true now but that the organisation aspires to achieve. This is crucial to driving change and progress it also gives employees a sense that the organisation is making efforts to respond to the changes they wish to see.

Apart from the ‘content’ of the Employee Value Proposition, it needs to be articulated in a style that appeals to the masses. The characteristics of the EVP also need to reflect in the corporate and employer brands. A well-driven Employee Value Proposition promotes engagement, informs recruitment messages, development and communication and also helps to inform the employees of the strategic HR priorities. It also helps to sustain, support, and drive an organisation’s business strategy forward.

How do you create an EVP?

There are multiple ways to understand what do employees expect to consider an organisation as a great place to work. The employee opinion polls and the survey data is a good starting point is to tap into existing information in your hands. This data depicts the opinion of employees as to what works and what doesn’t. However, these surveys do not convey what is important to your employees.

Hence it is important to understand this fact to create an attractive EVP. In order to be successful, the Employee Value Proposition needs to be credible. Hence the EVP must always be tested. Testing an EVP ensure that all categories of employees and potential employees find it attractive. The testing also helps you identify which elements of the EVP need to be scaled up or down to appeal to different groups of individuals. Testing should be rolled out to internal as well as external employees.

The testing also reveals changes that need to be incorporated to the EVP to appeal to the varied audience group. Considering that valid and rigorous data has been used to create the Employee Value Proposition, you can expect it to work for 90% of the target audience. It needs to be tested as the 10% that it needs to be adjusted for may be a crucial part of your workforce. Recent surveys have revealed that 88% of the employees are seen to quit organisations for reasons other than financial concerns. Hence a company needs an EVP for their employees to distinguish their workplace practices with that of their competitors apart from the compensation offered.

EVP Examples

Key Challenges in developing an Employee Value Proposition

  • In order to develop an effective EVP, Marketing excellence is required in segmentation, brand positioning, brand activation, and insight. EVPs are often driven and owned by the HR team who may not possess these capabilities.
  • The lack of stakeholder engagement undermines the ability of the EVP to gain commitment and traction within the business thereby affecting its effectiveness.
  • Companies need to consistently engage themselves in research, but very rarely these research initiatives are designed to uncover springboards for genuine EVP propositions and insights.
  • EVPs are seen to be overly introspective and tactical, that undermines their distinction and impact.
  • EVPs offer a promise that needs to be delivered since employees of an organisation are no less discerning than customers.
  • An EVP is not an end in itself. It needs to be effectively brought to life both internally and externally via many touch points.

The challenges listed above are no doubt true, but the benefits that Employee Value Proposition entails are immense. Employee Value Propositions is a crucial marketing tool that enables employers to lure and retain the right talent and to build the competitive edge which is the driving force.