What Is Employee Value Proposition & Why Is It Important?

What is employee value proposition?

A company’s employee value proposition or EVP is the collection of benefits and incentives given to your employees in return for their hard work. This may include bonus schemes, healthcare packages, flexible working initiatives, or staff social events. It’s the glue that holds your company culture together.

Ultimately, your EVP is the key to building a happy, more productive workforce.

5 key components of employee value proposition

There are 5 key components that every EVP should be built around. These are:

1. Compensation

The first component is all about how well employees are remunerated for the work that they do.

2. Work-life balance

Do employees have the space to create a healthy work-life balance? Are you mindful of how much stress is being placed on them? Does your culture encourage time off and reasonable finish times? All of this is key to your EVP

3. Career stability and development:

What development or progression opportunities are there within your organisation? If employees are able to progress and achieve their personal goals while working towards those of your business, your culture is more likely to become magnetic.

4. Location

What facilities does your office have for employees to enjoy, or to make their working days easier? Are you well-connected to public transport links? Do you allow remote working? It’s important to think about these factors when creating an employee value proposition

5. Respect

Respect is key to any successful EVP – think about the ways you show respect to your employees and how valued they feel. Ask for their feedback when creating your EVP through tools such as 121s and employee engagement surveys

Benefits of employee value proposition

Having a clearly defined employee value proposition can have benefits for both an organisation and its employees. It allows businesses to better understand their staff, including what motivates them and what’s important to them in an employer. For employees themselves, a clear EVP can make them feel more engaged with the company, subsequently benefiting their morale, productivity and the organisation’s bottom line.

Why is an EVP important?

Your EVP is what first attracts talent to join your team and, most importantly, encourages them to stay for the long run. It’s what enables you to meet the wants, needs, and expectations of your employees.

It’s important to build a candidate or employee value proposition that truly resonates with your workforce – promoting engagement, productivity and staff retention. Without optimising your benefits package, you run the risk of high staff turnover, low morale and a damaged employer brand.

How to improve your company’s employee value proposition

Improving your employee value proposition means keeping up-to-date with changes to your colleagues’ expectations. There are a number of tools available to help you achieve this:

Gamified engagement tools

Gamified engagement tools provide a quick and easy way to gauge your employees’ wants and needs, and optimise your EVP. These platforms give surveys a playable interface, which increases completion rates, and lets your employees give honest, up-to-date feedback.

Use these tools to poll your workforce on which company values matter most/least to them. This will help you to keep your EVP in line with their changing expectations.

Employee review meetings

Employee review meetings are a crucial part of any successful management strategy. These regular catch-ups allow you to stay in touch with employees’ progress, and identify key engagement challenges.

Use these as an opportunity to survey employees on their feelings towards their roles, management, and wider company values. This enables you to review their wants, needs, and expectations, adapting your employee value proposition to meet these consistently.

Candidate culture-match surveys

Cultural compatibility is one of the most important qualities to look for in potential employees. By surveying candidates upon application, you can identify their Individual Value Proposition (IVP), using this to assess their compatibility with your core values.

This also helps to inform crucial changes to your EVP; if your ideal candidates are drawn to specific benefits and values, you can implement these to attract more of the best talent. Meeting candidates’ expectations early on ensures they get off to the best start possible with your employer brand, promoting morale and retention.

By identifying which values matter most to your applicants, you know which benefits to promote across recruitment advertising campaigns. This ensures your employee value proposition truly resonates with your ideal candidates, driving more compatible talent to your business.

Survey your employees to identify the most important benefits

To develop a strong EVP, you first need to understand your employees’ wants and needs. Surveying your employees on a regular basis is a great way to identify which benefits matter most/least to your workforce. 

Focus your benefits budget on the factors that matter most

Once you have identified the most/least important aspects of your benefits package, you can refocus your spending on the benefits that matter most. This ensures company money is being spent in the right places – driving employee engagement, and defining a strong EVP.

Adapt your EVP regularly to meet employees’ needs

Your employees’ wants and needs are a changing force; social changes, an influx of new employees, and even the passing of time can all influence this. Keeping up with EVP trends is a crucial part of HR strategy.

Make sure you survey your employees regularly, and adapt your EVP accordingly to meet their changing needs. This is crucial for maintaining a strong employee engagement strategy.

How to find your company’s EVP

Want to find out your company’s EVP without any unnecessary hassle? Here are three steps you can take to do just that…

Review your current benefits & incentives

First things first – what are the benefits and incentives currently offered to your employees in return for their hard work? These are the building blocks of your company’s EVP; it’s important to list each of them in order to identify your most important assets.

These can usually be found in employment contracts, your company’s careers collateral, and your HR strategy. Think of things like bonus schemes, healthcare packages, and holiday incentives.

Survey your employees to identify their priorities

Next up, it’s time to survey your employees to find out which benefits, incentives, and cultural factors matter most to them. Don’t panic – this doesn’t mean issuing hundreds of paper surveys throughout your workforce! Find out how you can survey your employees anonymously with gamified technology…

Consider incentivising survey completions with a prize draw – this will help you to collate as much data as possible, giving you a more accurate view of your company’s EVP. Be sure to set a clear but reasonable deadline by which employees must complete the survey!

Analyse which benefits matter most – This is your current EVP!

Once survey responses are in, it’s time to analyse the results to identify your unique EVP. Be sure to compare and contrast results across different departments to highlight any key differences in how your company’s EVP should be defined.

See any trends as to which benefits matter most to employees? Great! These are the core building blocks of your EVP – the incentives that make employees choose your business as their employer.

Use the data to identify your company’s EVP

You’ll be glad to know that the hardest part is over! All that’s left to do now is identify which benefits, incentives, and cultural factors matter most to your workforce – this is your EVP!

If you’ve asked for employees’ feedback on suggested, rather than current benefits, this data will help you to decide which ones to finance and implement.

For benefits that employees value less, or cultural factors that aren’t appreciated, you should consider approaching these to prevent any future engagement issues. 

Use this data to build a more dynamic HR strategy – one that responds in real-time to the wants, needs, and expectations of your employees.