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How to deliver a successful Employee Value Proposition (9 top tips from talentsmoothie)

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It’s amazing to think that the term Employee Value Proposition has been around for nearly twenty years. 

Employee Value Proposition (or EVP) is the jargon commonly used to describe the characteristics and appeal of working for an organisation. It describes the ‘give and the get’ between organisation and employee, with the aim of creating a ‘win-win’ solution. When delivered well, this win-win is thought to make for more highly engaged employees, resulting in better financial performance for the organisation. Although it’s hard to put a figure on this, it has been suggested that a company with a well-defined and delivered EVP could add up to 5% to its value. It’s surprising then, that it’s also thought that less than 50% of organisations have a long-term plan in place to support the on-going implementation of their EVP.  

From our experience of delivering EVPs in a wide range of organisations, here are

9 top tips for a successful Employee Value Proposition:

  1. Make sure your leaders really want it to work. You need to invest time up front to ensure your leaders understand how important the EVP is to the business. This isn’t an HR initiative – it really is for the business to deliver and keep alive. Senior leaders need to take responsibility, because without their full commitment the EVP will be of limited value.
  2. Build it into everyday behaviours and make it stick at the leadership level. When you are doing team updates, start with your people achievements and highlight the behaviours you’ve seen that you value and that demonstrate the EVP, before you talk about the figures and finance. Refer back to your EVP when you speak about people-related issues such as personal development, performance, or people projects – keep your EVP high on the agenda throughout your conversations.
  3. Create a common language that people understand and call the EVP a name that means something in your organisation. It doesn’t have to be called an EVP. Be clear about what you want the EVP to achieve and communicate it; the use of a meaningful name could help you do that. Examples that some of our clients have used are ‘People Deal’ and ‘Employee Promise’.
  4. Develop the behaviours you want to see that will deliver the EVP and ground it for people so that they understand ‘so what does this mean for me?’. For example, if an element of your EVP is about working collaboratively, be specific about what good collaboration looks like in your organisation. Is it about being pro-active in the relationships you expect employees to build across departments or business sectors, or about sharing ideas in an open way, or about co-creating new ideas with teams you haven’t worked with before, or simply about creating an inclusive and energetic team environment? Maybe a mix of all of them! Your EVP should be clear about what you value and what you want employees to experience. 
  5. Create EVP champions across a mix of grades. Lower level managers as well as senior leaders can get involved at the launch, help implement the EVP and sustain its impact.
  6. Embed these behaviours across everything. Examples from our clients include:
    • Train managers on the behaviours that underpin your EVP and what it means to them and their teams – build this into manager training. 
    • Link the EVP to performance management and hold leaders to account for delivery.
    • Use the EVP language in internal communications including conferences.
    • Tie the EVP into your employee survey, to measure how well it is being lived across your organisation.
    • Link the EVP to everyday rewards, such as how you thank people for a job well done. One of our clients created thank you cards for employees who demonstrated aspects of the EVP, and recipients were then nominated for a larger Global Award – the reward was something related to their business, in this case travel.
  7. Identify your ‘Employee Experience Moments’ to ensure employees can enjoy the best possible employee experience at each point of their journey with you. Good segmented research will tell you if different employee groups value different experiences more than others. Then you can channel the experiences in the most effective and relevant way.
  8. Create the processes to support your EVP, for example:
    • Recruitment
    • Induction
    • Performance management
    • Leadership development
    • Career development
  9. Create a communication channel to demonstrate the impact the EVP is having, for example, on your intranet or social media channel. This can be used for the launch and to share great employee stories where the EVP is brought to life. Video can be used to explain the EVP journey and make the connection to your business mission, vision, purpose and values, so that the desired outcomes of the EVP are clear, understood and, most importantly, motivational for your people.

When you are confidently doing all or most of these things, it’s much easier to talk about your EVP externally, as well as internally. The positive effect of a successful Employee Value Proposition implementation will radiate out to build and improve your Employer Brand, so that you will find it easier to attract talent as well as retain it.

Make even better connections with your people. We are talentsmoothie, organisational development consultants and the employee experience experts. We can help.

hey@talentsmoothie.com

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