The Importance of Employee Value Proposition
Organizations are busy putting together a customer value proposition in order to win the best customers and retain them for ongoing return business. The same theory applies to organizations’ internal customers i.e. its employees. In today’s knowledge economy, people play a critical role in organizational success, often acting as the key differentiator for business value. Organizations too are realizing this, and they are striving to hire the best of talent and offer them the best possible opportunities. Thus is born the concept of the Employee Value Proposition (EVP).
An employee value proposition is nothing but the sum total of the offerings a company offers to its prospective and current employees so as to elicit their best efforts. It is the totality of tools that employers implement to be able to attract, retain, engage and develop employees. While the concept is not new, it has gained renewed importance due to the cut throat war for talent, in which every organization is trying to woo the best of talent in the labor market. The employee value proposition is the core of the people strategy of an organization, driving employee engagement at various levels. It determines how employees, including past, current and future, perceive the company as an employer and encompasses the entire gamut of HR interventions experienced by the candidate, and employee-employer branding, recruitment, engagement, pay and benefits, learning and development, career growth, retention, HR operations and so on.
An employee value proposition must, therefore, be thoughtfully designed since it has a direct impact on behavior. It must look into the tangible and intangible elements of the psychological contracts between the employer and the employee. It must start way before the employee joins, even before the person is a job candidate; it must appeal to the person irrespective of whether the person intends to work with the organization or not. It must then percolate through the entire employee value chain, eliciting trust in the leadership and belongingness to the organization from candidate to former employee. Organizations must align their policies and processes based on this foundation by carefully curating the work opportunities, nature of work, culture, benefits and so on. The starting point for this is to understand what employees truly value—what makes people truly happy. A single and formal engagement survey often does not capture such intricacies. It is important to get under the skin of the employees and understand them as people with needs and dreams. All the while, keep in mind the happiness-focus and strive to know what happiness at both work and personal life means to your people.
Of course, employees to have an equal responsibility to make the EVP thrive and live. They must share their experiences and views openly, their thoughts and ideas on how to make work-life better. This is possible only if a culture of openness and trust prevails. Organizations can create this by involving leadership to share their ideas of happiness, and to share the organizational values. Seeing their leaders sharing openly will motivate everyone to come up with share their piece of advice on making the workplace a great place to work. Employees will feel valued and happy for their contributions, and their commitment levels will increase. Of course, the sharing must be followed by specific actions by which these ideas are translated to implementation through HR processes. A great culture is thus a prerequisite to designing and deploying the right employee value proposition.
An employee value proposition implemented well can make all the difference between people as a strength and people as a liability. It is important for the EVP to be constantly and openly communicated through various channels to be able to create the right people advantage in today’s competitive times.
