Attracting and keeping great people - going beyond Employee Value Proposition - Part 2

What's your 'secret sauce'? Defining your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

In this post, we'll explore how to define your organisation's EVP - before unpacking in the next post how to use it as a launching pad for delivering great employee experiences.

To recap, Employee Value proposition, or EVP, is the sum of all the things that make your company unique and attractive to join and remain at (for more, refer back to Part 1). Key to this is the two distinctive parts - a good EVP must be both a) attractive, and b) unique. An EVP that is attractive but not unique means you will have no competitive advantage over similar companies in attracting great people; whereas a unique but unattractive EVP won't attract anyone!

What makes an EVP attractive?

An attractive EVP motivates employees to join and/or stay at an organisation. Maslow's "A Theory of Human Motivation" paper in 1943 identified a hierarchy of factors or 'needs' that motivate human behaviour (see diagram below) - and this is still relevant today.

For those experiencing financial hardship and/or during tough economic times, more importance may be placed on baseline tangible benefits such as the salary and availability of parking. (Interestingly, flexibility can also fall into this camp, as the ability to work from home could reduce other costs e.g. commuting, childcare, or time available to care for others).

Once these baseline needs are met, 80% of the battle to attract and retain great employees comes down to the intangible benefits - culture, inclusivity, psychological safety, autonomy, development, feeling valued and appreciated, and having a sense of meaning and purpose.

How do you know which benefits are attractive to your employees and potential future employees?

Well, ask them.

Your staff are already a captive audience - so ask them (survey, focus groups, or informally):

• Why did you join this organisation?

• What about it was attractive to you?

• Why did you choose this company over another?

• What do you like most about working at the company?

• What might tempt you to join another company?

Knowing what's important to your potential future hires can be a bit more difficult, but not impossible. Options include:

• Review existing research

• Commission your own market research

• Survey applicants for roles at your company (regardless of outcome)

• Speak to target communities - e.g. attending university open days

How do I make sure it's unique?

Know your competitors.

Rarely is anything ever truly unique; however, what's most important is that you don't promote the exact same EVP as your closest competitors for talent - otherwise you aren't really making a strong argument for "why us and not them". There has to be at least some point of difference.

After understanding what is attractive to your current and potential future employees, ask yourself - of these areas that are important to them:

• What are we uniquely positioned to give our employees that others can't?

• If we were to implement something in one of these areas, what might be harder for others to copy?

Bringing it together...

Once you've distilled your EVP based on what's attractive and unique about your business, you're going to want to:

1. Make sure that the reality of working for your company lives up to the promised EVP, or people will become disillusioned and leave (more on this in Part 3); and

2. Communicate your EVP to your employees and your pool of potential future employees.

See here for some examples of other companies' EVPs.

If you're interested in chatting further about this topic or could do with some help, please reach out - karli@mintcollaborative.com.au.