An EVP is an expression of what an organisation uniquely offers its employees that answers the question “What’s in it for me?” and acts as a key differentiator within the workplace. It should be consistent with the corporate brand and is most often partially descriptive of the current state and partially aspirational.
By identifying and adopting an EVP, you can identify what makes your organisation a great place to work and focus activity on those experiences which will bring this to life. An EVP can help to motivate and inspire those already within the business and attract high-calibre potential employees, no matter the role. An EVP will give you a blueprint for EX across the entire employee life-cycle.
We view the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) as the employee deal: what is expected of employees within your organisation, and also what they can expect in return. Clearly the EX is central to this. Many companies simply view this as the balance of rewards and benefits that are received by employees in return for their performance in the workplace. However, we believe this approach is too transactional and that an EVP should be much broader than this and encompasses the entire EX.
A strong EVP will:
- Align with the culture of the organisation, stating clearly what behaviours are expected of employees and then rewarded
- Outline how it should feel to work within the organisation and what the EX should be
- Be informed by existing employees and culture
- Be unique, relevant and compelling if it is to act as a key driver of talent attraction, engagement and retention
We use the following model to help develop and use your EVP:
We recommend starting the process of creating your EVP with a research phase. It won’t come as a surprise to hear that you should involve your people to develop your EVP, rather than inventing it in isolation. Gathering insight from employees enables a true understanding of your organisations unique strengths, as well as the current reality of the EX. Typically we recommend running short workshops with a range of employees to facilitate rich conversations about the current and future culture and EX. It is also helpful to run one-to-one interviews with stakeholders, which can include customers and other external partners if relevant.
Gathering insight enables the creation of a draft EVP, populating the framework set out in the model above. This can then be tested with employees and further refined. Once the headline proposition and defining attributes are agreed, you can look at what this means for your EX. For example for each attribute you can outline what the deal is, that is what employees can expect working for your organisation, but equally what is expected of them.
In summary your EVP can be used as the blue-print for your EX, informing employee touch-points within the employee life-cycle. It helps to direct the design, build and communication of your EX. We have helped a diverse range of organization design their EVP, from the British Council through to Community Integrated Care.
If you would like to find out more about the process we use and how we can help you design a world-creating EVP then we’d love to hear from you.
