Ask these 10 questions to define your Employee Value Proposition
By: Gunjan Kalati
Tags: Potential Hires, Employees, Workplace Culture, Employer Branding, Employeevalueproposition

Image Credit: Pexels.com

It’s every hiring manager’s nightmare — you have found the perfect candidate for an open position, but your dream hire has another offer on the table. At this point, the candidate is weighing every element of what each company has to offer, including salary, benefits, work culture, room to grow, and more. Here’s when your unique identity as an employer kicks in, and the importance of crafting a strong employer brand becomes clear.

Similar to the way a company’s brand communicates its offerings and differentiators to the consumer, an employer brand aims to connect with a potential hire by demonstrating specific characteristics to attract the ‘right fit’ talent.

What is an EVP?

We call those specific characteristics the Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Put simply an EVP is the set of differentiators that make you an attractive place to work. According to a study by Gartner, a strong EVP can help you attract significant talent, boost employee engagement and reduce compensation premium by 50%. An EVP answers the following questions:

Why is your company a great workplace?

Why should a candidate work for your company instead of somewhere else?

What is in it for them?

While compensation and benefits are a crucial part of a company’s EVP, culture, career growth prospects and overall work environment sum up the whole package. Defining your company’s EVP is a significant part of your recruitment marketing and employer branding strategy. In order to attract the type of candidates who will thrive in your workplace and personalise your talent acquisition strategy, you must clearly define all the values you stand for and provide as an employer.

How to define your EVP

Now that we know the importance of an EVP, we’ve created a set of questions that can help you define yours. To get started, plan a focus group or send a survey to all or a selection of your employees. It’s important to learn about your differentiators from your employees themselves, and not just the HR tear — after all, they are the ones living and breathing your company’s culture. Below is a list of starter questions, but feel free to customize and add in ones that are specific to your company or industry

Ten questions to ask your employees to define your EVP:

1. What are some of your biggest motivators at work? 2. What makes our company different from others you’ve worked for? 3. What do you think are the organisation’s most meaningful traditions? 4. What qualities do people need to have to be successful here? 5. What work are you most proud of? And why? 6. If you were considering joining another company for a similar compensation package, what are the factors that would make you want to stay with us? 7. What values are important to you in an organisation? How do you experience those values here? 8. How satisfied are you with your opportunity to learn and grow in our organisation? 9. How satisfied are you with the recognition you receive for doing a good job? 10. Does the management support your pursuits and commitments outside of work?

What’s next?

Once you have your survey results, analyze the answers to derive common themes, values and stories from the feedback to better understand and crystalize your company’s EVP. Your clearly defined EVP should shine through on every platform that a prospective candidate might see — job descriptions, career pages on your company website, marketing materials and social media.

And it’s not just online — you should also train your employees on communicating your EVP so that it can be conveyed during networking, candidate interviews and throughout recruitment more generally. In our next several blog posts in the series, we will be exploring these crucial steps in more depth, so stay tuned!

Keep it real

In the words of Michelle Hord-White, NBCUniversal’s VP of Talent Acquisition, “Your EVP has to be inspirational, not aspirational. It shouldn’t be a goal. It should be an experience that we can talk to candidates about, and 100 days after they get there, they can confirm.”

It’s important that your EVP represents where you are as an organisation today, not where you want to be tomorrow, in order to have it effectively attract talent who will thrive in your workplace.

Different strokes for different folks

In order to use your EVP effectively, customisation is key. Keep in mind the different priorities of your employee respondents based on their work experience and commitments outside of work.

If you want to attract recent graduates to fill in entry-level positions, pay attention to the answers to this exercise from people with similar profiles in order to highlight why your company is a great fit for millennials.

Similarly, if you’re looking to hire managers at more senior level who may have children, you can highlight your company’s childcare services and other parent-friendly components in the interview and job description.

Stand by for more on employer branding

As a part of our latest campaign on employer branding, we will be sharing fresh and actionable resources and tools like these over the next few months. To receive all of our top tips straight to your inbox, sign up for our weekly newsletter here!

If you’re hoping to learn any specific about EVP, let us know in the comments below.