What drives your employees to succeed? Is it just perks or bonuses, or is it culture? A successful employee value proposition (EVP) model combines employer branding with employee engagement to provide easy-to-use tools and processes to attract and retain talent. Here are some ideas that can help to make your organisation’s EVP come alive.
Your organisation’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the pact you have with your staff. It is a combination of benefits, rewards, and security that an organisation offers to its employees in return for their work and skills. However, it also refers to the experience your employees ‘expect’ from you and what an organisation receives in return for making them feel welcomed and valued. This includes intangible components such as training, personal and professional development, workplace culture and various job opportunities.
Having an EVP is just the first step in making your organisation more attractive and relevant for, not just prospective employees, but also current employees and stakeholders. Employer branding, related to the EVP is also critical for success, however, this aspect is often ignored by the organisations.
Employee branding is the image of your company that your employees present to the external audiences. An organisation’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) works alongside the Employer Brand and is a crucial factor in maximising the ROI on your HR programs for attracting and retaining talent.
With the advent of social media, activism, and personalization, the power of employees has grown manifold, cumulatively surpassing what organisations can potentially achieve for the brand. Employees will however only be motivated to project the organisation’s image to external constituents when they get the best ‘experience’ inside. One of the factors that improve the experience is engagement. Translating the EVP into meaningful practices and actions can up the game with the employee experience.
Even if the EVP has been thoroughly researched and ‘sounds’ and ‘feels’ like the best pitch your organisation has ever had, testing it among key audiences is always helpful. You will discover reactions and better insights.
In this post, I share ways to make your organisation’s EVP come alive:
• Craft a common language:
To get everyone on the same page, you need a consistent voice and narrative. Create a simple articulation of what the EVP means, why it matters now and how every employee can speak as one. Make it visible through internal branding and artefacts. Socialize the narrative – since the new language will require unlearning and relearning especially among managers – a key audience in making the EVP come alive.
• Stress-test the EVP:
Even if the EVP has been thoroughly researched and ‘sounds’ and ‘feels’ like the best pitch your organisation has ever had, testing it among key audiences is always helpful. You will discover reactions and better insights, which can enhance the approach and narrative. Create a few pieces of communication and run a pilot before rolling out widely.
• Prepare your channels:
To get the EVP out, you will need to have your channels of communication ready to fire on all cylinders. This means, scanning, re-purposing or completely taking down ‘older’ content not linked to the EVP.
• Involve staff:
The EVP isn’t the HR’s ownership or driven top-down by the CEO. Awareness must be consistent across the organisation and everyone has a part to play. Seek partnerships with employees and tap their potential to raise your organisation’s profile.
• Keep it simple:
To ensure the EVP is embedded in the organisation, make it accessible and easy to use. From customized scripts for your hiring team on ‘why’ prospective candidates must join to Linkedin banners that every employee can update on their individual pages; from e-mail signatures that staff can proudly use to the recognition boards which create a culture of gratitude at the workplace – the EVP can be put to practice easily.
The EVP isn’t the HR’s ownership or driven top-down by the CEO. Awareness must be consistent across the organisation. Seek partnerships with employees and tap their potential to raise your organisation’s profile.
• Focus on execution:
This is probably the most important link in making your organisation’s EVP a success. The emphasis on program management cannot be overemphasized. Building a program plan and following through will see the EVP over the line. Review progress against simple internal and external benchmarks.
Not landing your organisation’s EVP well can lead to inconsistent experiences inside and outside the business. Today, differentiating your brand in a highly competitive talent and business environment is the only way to succeed. Articulating a consistent message, testing resonance, involving staff, executing a plan and course-correcting are some of the ways to make the EVP be a game-changer.
