EMPLOYEE VALUE

PROPOSITION
Marketing Decisions for HR

SUBMITTED BY:
GROUP 20
Pierre de Souza | H20160
Shivangi Arora | H20170
Yashita Garg | H20180
Aditya Verma | H20181
INTRODUCTION

Marketing and Human Resources are not as distinct as one may think. While a company has
to attract more customers to increase profits, it has to also attract top talent to ensure long-
term success. In olden times, there was a paucity of firms and abundance of unskilled labour.
As the work complexity increased, firms started looking out for skilled workforce, which was
scarce in nature. This turned the focus of the companies to employee branding – attracting
and retaining the top talent to gain competitive edge. One of the tools for the same is
Employer Value Proposition (EVP). EVP is the core of the employer brand that defines its
positioning and strategic direction. As today’s generation (GenZ) is much focused on
continuous growth, EVP becomes an important tool for employer branding. Employer
branding defines how a brand would like to be perceived as an employer.

MEANING OF EVP

In simple terms, Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the answer to two of the employees’
questions: “What’s in it for me?” & “What more can you offer?”. EVP is the set of offerings
and associations that an organisation offers to its employees in return for their skills,
capabilities, and experiences that they bring to the organization. It is employee-centric and
identifies unique people policies, processes, and programs that convey to an employee the
organisation’s commitment to their growth, development, recognition, community service,
etc. EVP has enabled multiple organizations in meeting employee expectations and improving
efficiency and engagement and reducing turnover rates. It is an important of employer
branding strategy since it helps an organisation to create a brand for its internal audience and
also to attract the best talent in the industry.

ELEMENTS OF EVP

Compensation & Benefits: Compensation includes the monetary benefits paid to employees
for their work & performance

• salary
• bonuses
• stock options
Benefits include the indirect compensation which are:

• health insurance
• retirement benefits
• paid leaves
• gym memberships
• company-sponsored holidays, etc.
Compensation remains to be one of the top priorities of any employee today -especially
among the youngest generation. In a survey1, it was observed that the youngest respondent
group was the most likely group to rate benefits as important/very important. Thus, in order
to attract and retain talent, firms add attractive compensation & benefit policy in their EVP
strategy.

1
https://www.sibm.edu/assets/pdf/beacon3.pdf#page=37
Career Growth: Career elements such as status in the organization, position in the hierarchy,
and most importantly, the scope to learn, grow, and develop is one of the most important
factors in EVP strategy. Employees today consider work as an opportunity for personal and
professional growth rather than just a means of living. This includes:

• technical training
• leadership training
• sponsored courses
• mentoring & career guidance
• promotion opportunities
• international opportunities
• opportunity to change domains
• opportunities to work in coveted projects
Work Environment: A negative work environment can be one of the biggest factors
contributing to regretted attrition. Some companies in US have even started to offer 4-day
work week, which has helped them motivate their employees, and also make them coveted
by potential employees. Elements of work environment are:

• flexible working hours

• work-life balance
• recognition
• team-building
• communication systems
• workspace design
It is important to create a meaningful work environment to ensure employees thrive and
perform their best.
Corporate Culture: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker. Rightly said, no
company can ever succeed in operationalizing its strategy if it does not promote a desirable
corporate culture. A company must ask, “What makes our culture special?” – and the answer
to this can differ from company to company. For Amazon, it may be the Day 1 spirit while for
First Federal Bank of California, it is the informal culture. Corporate culture differentiates a
company from another – it gives it a distinct identity. Elements of corporate culture include:

• trust and collaboration

• positive relationships across hierarchies
• team communication & support
• alignment of company goals with employee goals
IMPLICATIONS ON EMPLOYER BRAND

Employee Value Proposition outlines the value that an individual can create by being a part
of the organization as well as what value can the organization create for the individual. For
this reason alone, recruitment is increasingly becoming like marketing. Lest the company
treats it as a two-way street, it will lose its most talented and best-performing employees to
its competitors. The following are the areas which EVP impacts the most in an organization:

1. Talent Attraction and Retention

The proposition that the company holds out for its potential candidates and existing
employees answers the question: Why would a highly talented person want to work/keep
working at this company? Although the answer is imperative to the
candidate’s/employee’s decision, what is more driving is that when candidates are doing
their homework, they expect an organization’s brand to stand out for itself. They need to
know what is that that the company can offer to him/her which cannot be offered by
other organizations. This pushes even the passive candidates to consider making a switch
given better opportunities.

2. Employee Re-engagement
It is not uncommon for even a self-motivated individual to become disengaged when not
presented with a robust employee value proposition in his/her organization. Often,
employees tend to forget why they started working for your organization and what
initially drove them to put their best foot forward and excel at the workplace. Shining a
strong and steady light at the EVP can help steer such doubts away.

IMPLICATIONS ON EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

Some of the key features which impact employee experience based on EVP are as follows:
Implementing and continuing with the right set of EVPs go a long way in attracting top talent
as well as retaining the current set of employees.
EVP and employee experience are two distinct but connected ideas that have an impact on
the employee happiness spectrum. Employee involvement is only relevant during a person's
employment. In fact, employee engagement is sometimes only taken seriously during the
yearly employee survey.
Managers who are aware of the survey's impending arrival begin paying more attention to
their employees, then wait for the results with bated breath. Executives only pay attention to
the issues when the results are released, and then they disappear for the remainder of the
year. Engagement has historically paid little regard to the organization's reputation or
"employer brand" before and after a person joins.
EVP, on the other hand, must be present from the initial interview through the last day of
employment—and all in between.
As millennials are the up-and-coming workforce, a lot of organisations have found the
consensus about them being tough and lazy to work with to be false with substantial evidence
of them working differently, but producing if not ground-breaking, then at least results which
are on-par with the senior members in the companies. The points below list down a few ways
in which organisations can go about handling millennials – who will be the future of their
workforce and creating EVPs which match their social and psychological needs.
BEST PRACTICES

Unilever: Unilever is well known across the globe as one of the top promoters
of EVP and often looked at as the benchmark companies aspire to achieve.
Unilever follows a policy of developing their own leaders, who either go on to
occupy the top CXO positions within Unilever or become leaders in other firms
around the world. They promote curious thinking and often ask the employees
to challenge the status quo with creative ideas and solutions. They let the
employees believe as well as see the results even the smallest of their actions
have on the overall bigger picture.

PwC: PwC tries to impact employee wellness in multiple ways. These include
and are not restricted to student loan recovery, parental support, mentorship
and adoption assistance for people, care centre for mothers, etc. Their main
point of EVP is to promote a work culture that fosters flexibility, which allows
all the people at the company to achieve their goals. This helps employees
focus on solving their problems at hand while also having a sense of individual
identity which is extremely crucial in one’s career path.

Canva: Canva is a graphic design tool app/website based in Australia. Apart

from offering free breakfast and lunch catered to the employees by in-house
chefs, employees are also provided a highlights page which highlights the
impact of each individual employee. They have summed it up in 5 points:
(i) Empower others, (ii) Pursue Excellence, (iii) Be a good human, (iv) Make
complex things simple and (v) Set crazy big goals.

Bain & Company: Bain & Company is among the most prestigious global
consultancy firms. They are rated as the best place to work among
consultancies by Glassdoor. The employees are provided an opportunity to
collaborate and work with the brightest minds across the world. They also
provide various perks like global transfers, externship opportunities, flexi-
timings, parental leaves, etc. They also have a unique “take two” perk where
employees can take 2 months off for rejuvenation of personal goals.
RECOMMENDATIONS & ACTION PLAN

Knowing what your organisation offers employees and having a defined Employer Value
Proposition is one thing; expressing it is another. While it will require some effort up front,
the benefits your EVP can provide your company can be felt for months and years to come.
A well-communicated EVP can help organisations find the right hire at the first instance. It can
also promote commitment to diversity which has been shown to positively influence decision
by candidates considering working at an organisation. When it comes to analysing firms and
job offers, 67 percent of job seekers believe that having a diverse staff is vital as per a report
from Glassdoor.
Engaging current happy employees to become advocates for the organisation will lead to
positive messaging and trends on employer review portals such as Glassdoor. 70% of people
look to reviews before they make career decisions. According to the Corporate Leadership
Council, a well-executed EVP can improve the likelihood of employees participating as brand
champions from 24% to over 50%. Keeping the promises made in your EVP is critical for
gaining employee buy-in and obtaining referrals to make your recruitment process go more
smoothly.
Reducing time to hire and recruitment costs is another huge advantage with a well designed
and implemented EVP. Finding the proper applicants in a skills shortage is a problem for
recruiting communities. According to STEM.org, 89 percent of organisations find that hiring
takes a month longer than intended and that they must pay inflated salaries to attract the
finest candidates.
It's a good idea to map out your existing candidate experience from attraction to onboarding
to identify problems and opportunities for development. Between accepting an offer and
starting a job, 20% of candidates drop out on average as per Sense. A polite email from the
CEO congratulating them on their new position, parking or commute instructions, and
reminders of the perk package waiting for them are all excellent examples of how to keep a
candidate interested.
An appealing EVP and a positive brand reputation can help you stand out from the
competition and attract the best prospects.
Integrate inclusion goals into day-to-day work and talent processes, focus on direct family
benefits that match individual and organisational needs, and train managers on how to detect
employees' trust through empathetic interactions to foster deeper connections.
Allow employees to have radical flexibility by providing them choices within team-defined
parameters, establishing which actions inside a function can be flexible, and identifying
manager-tested flexibility solutions.
Provide impartial career advisors to employees and enable them to plan development that
suits their individual needs to create opportunity for personal progress.
Establish clear dos and don'ts for how managers can support healthy working environment
by holding employees accountable for personalising well-being progress, encouraging mental
wellbeing champions to hold open discussions about mental well-being, and holding
employees accountable for personalising well-being progress.
Establish cross-organizational ownership of societal issue decision-making, use peer coaching
to hold people responsible for taking personalised action on societal issues, and prioritise
societal issues that are linked with the company's objectives.
KEY ACTIONS:
1. Understand where you currently stand and what your current offerings are. Assess
what it is like to currently work at your organisation.
Building a company culture to showcase in your EVP isn't only the responsibility of business
executives; it's also the responsibility of your team members who live and breathe your
company values. You will create your perfect corporate culture from your people, bringing
your vision to life. To create a strong, realistic EVP, you must first learn about your current
and future employees' impressions of your company's brand and culture. Some questions that
have to be answered are
a. what would attract potential employees to the company?
b. What do existing employees think makes the company unique?
c. What is most valued about working at the company
d. What do they continue working or why would they consider leaving?

2. Define individual parts of the EVP which are compensation, benefits, career, work
environment and culture.
You can begin developing your new Employer Value Proposition once the survey data and
focus group sessions have been analysed. If done correctly, this should accurately reflect who
you are as a company.
At this point, it's also worth looking at the careers sections of your competitors' websites to
see how they meet the issues, aspirations, and ambitions of people in your industry.
Your EVP should ideally be adaptable to the many audiences to which you need to reach. A
technical director and an accounting intern, for example, are likely to have completely
different goals. Similarly, permanent, and contingent employees will have different objectives
(though there is often some overlap).
The process of developing an Employer Value Proposition is far from simple. It takes time, as
it does with all strategic endeavours. However, if done correctly, it may put your company on
the right track for years to come, allowing you to attract, hire, and retain the greatest talent.

3. Create & promote the EVP

The natural thing to do next is compose a statement that highlights your Employer Value
Proposition once you've clearly established what important to individuals in your sector and
organisation, how you vary from your competition, and what sets you apart.
You must also make sure that your EVP statement is unique to your company. While
researching and learning from best practises is fine, your EVP statement must be genuine. It
also needs to be concise, upbeat, and motivating, in line with what your ideal employee wants
and what your company provides.
Simply put, it must be memorable as well as realistic.
After you've defined your EVP, the following stage is to activate and promote it to the rest of
the world. If you don't do this, the entire process could be a waste of time. After all, what
good is an EVP if no one knows about it?
Even companies who make the effort to invest in an EVP sometimes only share it on their
career’s website, which is a mistake. You need to take things a step further to develop an
excellent EVP.
Begin by marketing your EVP on your company's blog, social media pages, and newsletters.
Simultaneously, share your EVP internally via internal communication tools, and appoint
employee ambassadors to spread the word to their own social networks.
In the end, your EVP should be an integral part of your company's content, social media, and
communications efforts.

4. Regularly review and optimise the EVP

Companies, as we all know, change directions on a frequent basis. For example, your company
might undergo a rebranding. It could also be acquired or merged, or a new CEO or People
Director could arrive with a fresh perspective on who you are as an employer.
As a result, it's critical to assess your Employer Value Proposition on a regular basis to ensure
that it continues to reflect who you are as a company, as well as to re-examine the talent
objectives within your company and the wider industry. As previously stated, feedback from
surveys and focus groups is critical.
Measuring the impact of your EVP on a regular basis is also critical. Are you obtaining a higher
quality and quantity of candidates for job openings? Are you witnessing a decrease in
employee turnover? Is your EVP material getting traction on your blog and social media?
All of these aspects must be considered to guarantee that your Employee Value Proposition
has a real-world impact.