What is Employee Value Proposition and why is everyone talking about it?
Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is a popular buzzword in today's business world. In simple terms, an EVP is everything a company offers to its employees in exchange for their time, skills and experience. Okay, so why is everyone talking about it right now?
EVP has become a business buzzword for a few reasons, let’s break it down:
1. The war for talent. Whether it’s Magic Circle law firms recruiting Oxbridge graduates, advertising agencies hiring top notch designers, or hotel chains needing chefs and receptionists the competition for quality staff is as high as ever. Couple this with more and more firms realising that the quality of their people directly impacts their customer experience, means that talent has become the hottest topic around.
2. People’s changing expectations. Twenty years ago most companies simply competed on compensation (salary and bonus) and benefits (typically just their pension, and maybe healthcare too). These days, people expect much more from an employer, such as flexible and hybrid working, a good work/life balance, strong career development, mentoring, and a healthy company culture to name just a few.
3. Greater focus on wellbeing and mental health. The pandemic forced office types to work in isolation at home for a year, while frontline workers to exposed themselves to heightened levels of risk. Employers have now begun to take on much greater responsibility for their employees’ wellbeing and mental health. Many now offer support focused around this - from access to professional mental health support, managers monitoring their team’s wellbeing, to providing healthier options in the cafeteria and yoga classes every week.
4. The transparency of social media. Sites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor have given staff and recruits a window into companies that wasn’t available before. Today it is easier than ever to get a feel for what it’s really like to work at your company, or at somebody else’s. Nowadays if employers don’t treat their staff well, word gets around quickly. Think Uber or Brewdog for examples of companies that have suffered the collective wrath of the Internet in recent years. Although Brewdog have just won a best place to work award, showing it’s possible to turn things around quickly if management are truly focused on it!
So how do you go about building or assessing your EVP?
You want to create a mixture of benefits that have the broadest appeal to the greatest number of employees, while still remaining affordable to the business. Depending on your workforce, you might find different things are relevant. A tech scale-up with most employees working remotely would need to offer different things to a retailer with a more diverse workforce who largely work on-site.
It's helpful to think of your EVP spanning 4 categories:
Pay. Here’s where all the tangible benefits sit. Think salary, bonuses and commissions, loyalty rewards, holiday allowance and healthcare. What do you need to pay to be competitive in your sector? What are the behaviours you want to reward?
Play. Most of us spend over half our waking hours at work each weekday. How can you can give it moments of delight – celebrating team wins, creating a table tennis league, or a delivering a cake for people’s birthdays. But also consider things that are not just fun, but benefit the business too; such as monthly team lunches, team building sessions or yearly away days.
Performance. How do you support people’s career goals? How can you formalise your commitment to giving people regular feedback, training, and mentoring? What choice do your staff have over what clients or projects they work on, or which store they are based in and which shifts they work?
Purpose. Create initiatives that staff can get involved in that help further your company’s purpose and keep people engaged. Think DEI forums, B-Corp committees or sustainability programmes. Give people time to peruse their own projects or even just one day off a year to do charitable work in the local community.
You can watch our EVP webinar here which will give you a practical insight into how EVP implementation looks inside organisations. Great Place to work is also a really good resource for anyone looking for inspiration for their EVP.
But no matter your focus - McKinsey put it well when they said ‘Make your offer magnetic — and deliver’ (focus on the delivery!).
Remember that the best EVPs contain elements that reinforce and uphold your company’s values. If you’re all about customer service, how do you celebrate people who go above and beyond? If you’re all about sustainability, how to you make your staff take ownership in their day to day roles and develop the initiatives themselves?
Some of these things are stuff companies have been doing for years (such as team away days). But creating an EVP gives you a chance to bring it all together, benchmark yourself against your peers, and make more explicit everything you offer your employees.
Check out our guide on how to build a brilliant EVP here.
