4 Steps To Creating An Employee Value Proposition
Publié le 30 January 2023
Reach your recruitment goals this year and recruit the best candidates for the job with 4 steps to creating an employee value proposition.
What is an Employee Value Proposition?
An employee value proposition or EVP outlines the benefits an employee can expect to receive in return for their work at a company or an organization. It covers elements such as compensation, opportunities for growth and development, and the work culture.
An employee value proposition is important for both employers and employees. For employees, it helps them understand what exactly they can expect from the company. This can be especially important when deciding whether to accept a job offer or whether to stay with an organization for the long-term. While you may think that salary is enough to ensure employee retention, it’s not so simple any more. A 2022 study found that one third of workers cited good benefits as the number one things they were looking for from new job opportunities.
For employers, an EVP can be an important tool for attracting and retaining top talent because it lays out all the benefits of joining the company beyond the salary. According to Gartner, with a strong EVP, you can lower employee turnover rate by just under 70%.
Don’t know how to create an employee value proposition? Read on to determine the 4 steps to creating an employee value proposition:
1. Analyze Current Culture
Start by defining the values and culture that are most important to your organization. What do you stand for as an organization? What values are most important to you? For this, you can think about how your institution has evolved over time and what has shaped it. Determine the traditions that are important to your organization.
Consider the work environment, as well. How do your employees work together and interact with each other? What is the overall tone and atmosphere of your workplace? You can learn this just by observing.
Your employees can be a valuable source of information about your workplace culture as well. Consider sending out surveys to them or holding focus groups.
Ask them the positive and negative aspects of your workplace culture. You can also ask them if they were satisfied with how the organization handled specific PR crises. A PR crisis is a situation that threatens to damage an institution’s reputation and negatively impact its public image. The more feedback you get about the organization, the better.
Just give your employees the assurance everything they say won’t be held against them so they won’t hold back when giving information.
2. Develop a Strong EVP Statement
Once you have gathered all of this information, you can start developing your employee value proposition. Gather all the values that are important to your company and the positive aspects of your workplace culture. You will incorporate these into your EVP.
What about the negative aspects of the workplace culture you found out in your research? Remember that your employee value proposition aims to retain and attract employees so you will have to disregard these. That’s not to say they won’t serve any purpose. You can use them to craft policies that address them and help improve your workplace environment and, ultimately, make employees happy.
That said, here are tips for writing a strong EVP statement:
- Make it authentic: Your EVP should reflect your company’s values and culture, so make sure you base it on your initial research. Avoid making false or exaggerated claims.
- Include tangible and intangible benefits: An EVP should include both tangible benefits like competitive compensation and stock options. It should also include intangible benefits like opportunities for growth and development.
- Highlight any unique benefits: If your company offers any unique benefits or rewards that are not commonly offered by other companies, be sure to highlight them in your EVP. This can help you stand out in a competitive job market. For instance, specify if you offer an all-expenses paid end-of-the-year trip.
Use language that resonates with your target audience. Your EVP won’t be effective if your employees don’t understand it in the first place. Make sure, too, that your EVP aligns with your SMART business goals.
In essence, your EVP is the intersection between what your talent wants and what the organization is looking for:
All that said, here’s a sample EVP statement:
“At XYZ Company, we believe that our employees are our most valuable asset. We are committed to providing a positive and supportive work environment where our employees can grow and thrive. In return for their hard work and dedication, we offer a range of benefits and rewards that include competitive salaries and benefits, work-life balance, and opportunities for growth and development.”
Remember that the more specific your statement, the better.
3. Communicate EVP via Right Channels
Once you have your created your employee value proposition, you have to communicate it to your employees and potential employees.
Consider displaying your EVP in a prominent location in the workplace, such as in the break room or on your company’s internal communication platform.
You can also display your EVP on your own website. J&J, for instance, has an entire page devoted to its EVP. This isn’t just a great strategy to attract new talent to its workforce. It’s also good PR the company needs, with the negative PR brought about by authorities investigating talcum powder lawsuits filed against it in recent years.
You also need to ensure new hires know your EVP from the get-go. This will help them understand what they can expect from your company. So, include it in materials you send out during the onboarding process, such as your employee handbooks.
Don’t just share your EVP once and then forget about it. Make sure to communicate it regularly and reinforce its importance to your employees. If the EVP remains top of mind with them, it can help increase their morale. This is because they are reminded of the benefits they have and about the values they share with the organization.
You should also communicate your EVP with potential hires. Include them in your job descriptions so you can attract job candidates with values that are aligned with yours as well. The EVP should come with your digital business card.
4. Review against Defined Metrics
Your job doesn’t end once you’ve disseminated your EVP. You have to see if the EVP works as intended. Remember what we said about how your EVP serves to attract and retain talent? Well, you should see it does exactly that.
So, regularly collect and analyze relevant data. For instance, to determine whether your EVP is attracting the right talent, you could see if the number of qualified candidates who applied to your job post that included your EVP reached your required number for a specific period. If you want to determine if it will help increase the likelihood of retaining your best employees, you could see if they have positive feedback about it. You can use surveys or focus group discussions to ask for your employees’ opinions.
Once you’ve gathered the necessary data about your EVP performance, look for areas where you can improve it. This may involve, not just, revising the statement, but also offering new benefits or rewards, or even making changes to your company culture.
In Conclusion
As an organization, you need to have a strong EVP, which outlines what you offer your employees.
You learned the four steps to follow to create an EVP.
Analyze your current culture, develop a strong EVP statement based on your research, then disseminate it to your employees and potential hires. Finally, review it against defined metrics.
Follow these 4 steps to creating an employee value proposition and you’ll have a strong EVP that won’t just reflect your organization’s values. It will help you keep your best employees and attract top talent,who will be responsible for your organization’s continued growth and success.
