What is Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
Introduction
By looking at the term – Employee Value Proposition (EVP), one can infer many meanings from it but one thing will be the same that it is something related to employees working in an organization. What about employees? Every organization pays the employees working for them, now what? Yes, every organization pays their employee but it is not the only factor that matters to an employee to keep continuing working in an organization.
Employee value proposition inculcates every factor or set of factors that an employee or labor market as a whole perceives as an important value they will gain, apart from their pay, if they work in an organization.
But what can be those factors and how do these factors affect an organization? How can an organization help with employee value proposition? Don’t worry, reading along will help you understand all about this, so let’s dive right there.
Employee Value Proposition Examples
The above section defines the meaning of the word employee value proposition but I am sure that you are still not clear with what exactly it is. In this section we will be looking at some examples that will help us get a better idea about employee value proposition.
Apple is a very renowned company and companies like Apple also look at employee value propositions. Apple’s headline for their employee value proposition is ‘Join us. Be you’. Ok, but what does it indicate? Looking at the headline of Apple’s employee value proposition tells employees that they can add value to themselves and the company by trialing and testing their own innovative ideas. Those employees for whom the factor of being oneself matters will tend to join or keep continuing working in Apple.
I am sure that by looking at this example you have a clear image in mind about what we mean by employee value proposition. After this point there can be many questions popping into your mind like how to make a good EVP for an organization? Or how will one know that their EVP is good? Or why is the EVP so important? So let’s move along and try to find answers to some of these questions.
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Importance Of Employee Value Proposition
Employee value propositions have a great importance in an organization and can majorly impact the brand value for the company both in a negative and positive manner depending on how seriously the organization takes care of EVP.
- Apart from the salary, EVP helps an organization to stand out in today’s highly competitive labor market place.
- It helps an organization to hire the right candidate by clearly defining what one can expect in an organization and what organization wants from them.
- By hiring the right candidates, the companies tend to decrease their hiring cost as more employees will tend to continue working and there will be less demand for new employees.
- It helps set standards in the labor market and a good EVP will lead people to look up to your organization. This in a way indicates a good organization name and hence the brand name.
- A good EVP helps both an employee and an organization as it aligns organization goals with the employee goal.
Components Of Employee Value Proposition
An employee value proposition can be broken down to five components which makes it easier to further analyze if an organization’s employee value proposition is good or needs some improvement.
1. Financial offering
An employee’s compensation acts like a great motivator for an employee to join an organization or keep continuing in the present organization. But this is not all that an employee looks unto in an organization. Not only this, as a part of the employee value proposition, the financial component does not only include an employee’s salary but it also accounts for bonuses and stock options. A fair financial offering indicated towards a healthy EVP.
2. Added benefits
There are many things apart from the financial offering that frames the employee’s work culture and largely contribute to the EVP. These added benefits can include insurance policies, paid leaves, company side holidays, memberships or retirement policies. A fair maintenance of all these added benefits accounts for a healthy employee value proposition.
3. Career improvement
This factor of EVP is about the learning and the values an employee can add to oneself by working in an organization. This accounts for training, courses, new challenges and opportunities and promotion opportunities. A higher career improvement opportunity is a good indicator of a healthy EVP.
4. Work environment
This factor includes things like flexible working hours, organization’s chain of communication, employee work-life balance and many other things surrounding employees work environment. A happy and healthy work environment indicates a good EVP.
5. Company culture
This factor is all about the culture followed in a company and can include the relation between different levels of authority and with that of fellow colleagues, team support, goal alignment and many other things. A balanced and maintained company culture tells us that a company holds a good EVP.
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Creating An Employee Value Proposition
Now that we know what an employee value proposition is, what is its importance, what are the various components and how can one differentiate between a good and bad EVP. Let’s take a step further and see how one can create an EVP for an organization.
- Take a thorough look at your organization and the product or service it offers and define the vital components you would like to inculcate in the EVP.
- Now that we looked at what should be, let’s take a look at what you are currently offering as an EVP and draw comparison without any biases.
- Think from an employee’s perspective and write what they should be expecting from your organization in terms of EVP.
- Align both the EVP- the one from employee’s perspective and one which you chose to offer and draw an final EVP.
- Once an EVP is decided, choose the right medium to spread the word across for the same among the labor market.
- Conduct surveys and compare the difference in the previous EVP and the current one.
- Continuously make improvements in your EVP based on your survey analysis and result.
Conclusion
Employee value proposition is not composed of a single component but includes in itself many factors that revolve around an employee of an organization. An EVP is something that every organization should be taking care of as a good EVP will bring the right talent to the enterprise which in turn will lead to improved product and service as a happy employee leads to a happy customer. This in all will improve the brand image. Not only this, a good brand image will lead to higher revenue along with reduced expense of hiring cost.
Now that we know all about EVP, we should be very mindful of the same. An important thing to keep in mind is that an EVP revolves around humans whose needs and wants keep on constantly changing and so should the EVP based on the overall change in the labor market.
