What’s Your EVP?
We are in a world in which the nature of work, the workplace and workforce are changing at so quickly. As business leaders must be ready to have a look at ourselves and how we can evolve with the times or set ourselves up for success right from the word go. If we want our businesses to succeed, there are some really great reasons to do so...
Technology is challenging us to do things differently, it is enabling us to engage with our clients in so many different ways. We can operate across multiple locations internationally and matrix working is continuing to push our operational boundaries.
We are way more mobile in our careers, so the workforce is constantly evolving. Flexible & home working are becoming the norm and with such diversity in the workplace from an age perspective it is creating a wide range of workplace needs and aspirations.
As business leaders, we need to set the standard, move the goal posts and rethink the way we approach our people activities.
We have a frightening amount of experience in our organisations today, some of it we need to harness in order to help carve out the pathway for success. Some of it we need to challenge in terms of the way we think in order to create a sustainable business in the changing landscape. Ultimately this will help us attract the right talent to our business, but also retain it.
When we look at the facts, we would never think about not having a well thought out customer value proposition or strategy for exploiting our targeted markets. Organisations will always have well thought out strategies around products, services, business development activities and branding.
The question we need to ask ourselves is why do we not apply the same tactics for ourselves as employers of people whom we expect to carry out our business on a day to day basis? This is where the EVP comes in…
An EVP looks at the company through the eyes of prospective, current and former employees. The reason we look at all three is because they feed each other… they determine the view of the organisation to prospective employees in the job market, they determine the view, thoughts and opinions of the existing workforce and they contribute to the reasons as to why talent leaves the business.
It is that complete offering a business makes its prospective employees in the hopes they will join & to current employees in return for staying, for giving their best efforts and in the hope they will speak well of them when they move on.
If its important to the employee, everything from mentoring & table tennis tables and nap pods to how frequently managers email on weekends falls within the proposition.
In some ways, it's like a psychological contract, but it's broader than that, it’s the entire employee experience of being at work. Those decisions regarding the value proposition are made moment to moment and their experiences build over time into a cumulative thing we call an employee value proposition.
When we start looking at this side of the equation, we start to balance it. A lot of organisations will have a lot identified around what they want from their people, but don’t necessarily pay the same attention to the other side and leverage to their advantage.
I was doing some research and the numbers are quite staggering. Companies with an established and effective EVP gain 29% more commitment from their new starters, some organisations see as much as 69% better retention and 87% of teams have unwavering trust in their manager or management teams. Now it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall when Gartner and Forbes did their face to face research on those numbers!
So what comprises and EVP? well, a lot of organisations will see it as a Talent Attraction Strategy piece, which it is, but that is only one part of it. remember what I said earlier? It essentially revolves around someone saying 'Why should I work for your company instead of somewhere else? What's in it for me?' and when you look at that statement, that can be a prospective employee, a present employee and a previous employee who didn't necessarily get the answers they were looking for. So, in terms of component parts, its a holistic view of what the organisation offers its people; compensation, benefits, career opportunities, its culture and its working environment.
Now this sounds all well and good and simple, but its the execution of it and how an organisation leverages these things. Its definitely worth starting off about having a clear plan from a diversity perspective, diversity is an important issue for any business, but it is not just about hiring people of different nationalities, races, genders and sexual orientations. Yes it gives that diversity of thought, experience and knowledge, but in order to harness that diversity everyone needs to feel they are truly welcome, safe & free to be their whole selves in the workplace.
Starting out by identifying what Diversity & Inclusion means to your business and how it can be successful in achieving your goals and supporting business success. This then helps getting you off on the right foot around determining the culture you need and want in order to create success.
Being clear around your mission and vision of the business sends a clear message to your prospective and current employees about the strategic purpose of what you want to achieve. Aligning your people with that vision and strategy is key to attracting people to your business and keeping them.
Defining the ethos of the business and being able to define how its core values are reflected in its culture and the environment in which employees are operating in. The values/guiding principles defined here will then define the behaviours and competencies expected at each level of the business. This is something that can be identified in a behavioural framework that allows you to hire, manage and support behavioural performance alongside your classic business performance.
Being clear and able to define, outline and communicate the long-term strategic objectives of the business in order to underpin the vision of the group. Aligning your teams with the objectives and bring about an understanding of how they fit into these objectives and their role in helping to achieve them.
The same principals apply for short term objectives and goals and how they are translated into the objectives and expectations of the teams thus allowing them to understand and see the link between the work they do on a day to day basis and how it fits in and contributes to organisational success.
From this solid foundation this will then feed how you:
Attract the right talent
Manage, develop and retain your great talent
Engage your teams and keep them because they want to be there
When it comes to talent acquisition, and trying to take into account different stages of growth as organisations, ultimately we see the usual reactive practice when hiring. We may engage with an agency and/or fire off a couple of job ads on LI or the usual job boards, interview, pull our hair out at the lack of quality and eventually hire with your fingers crossed hoping that they stay long enough to recoup the investment, break even and hopefully make the business some money.
With staff turnover in the recruitment sector pushing 43% when the national average is 15%, there needs to be a long term plan that deals with this. Now whether your business is in recruitment, financial services, marketing or technology it is irrelevant, there is a 'war' on talent period. Anyway, lets put some numbers to that example…
A 43% turnover rate will cost on average over £50,000, chop that by 10% to 33% then you are saving around £10,500. There is definitely a business case to having a strategy here in order to prevent it. Utilising your EVP from a talent attraction perspective is key, but first we need to have some goals , what do we want to achieve? Being clear from the beginning is vital.
Do we want more applicants?
Do we want to get better presence in the market?
Do we want to reduce time and cost to hire?
Do we want to reduce agency spend?
Do we want to improve quality of candidates?
Once you have established your goals, its worth looking at who you want in your business. If you are able to define your candidate personas, what are the characteristics of your ideal candidate? If you have a strategy set out from the beginning and it is fed by your D&I piece you should have a set of clearly defined behaviours/traits/competencies that work alongside the roles and responsibilities of the job itself.
Creating bespoke content for those personas is the next step, chances are you have these people in the business, so find out Why is it these people joined? Why do they stay? What is the messaging from these teams that will attract more of them? Creating some content that will engage with your target audience is all about getting your message across… 'This is who we are, this is how we operate, these are our people, this is what we do, this is why we operate, this is why you should join us!'
Think about your content, testimonials, blogs (company, individuals) videos, events, client facing activities, thought leadership are but just some examples. What we are looking to do is uncover the workings of our business, what does a day in the life of someone in your business look like? the more varied the content the more of your business gets exposed and people can really understand what its like to work in your business.
When we look at it, how much do you actually get from an interview... from both sides? As a candidate they may have a couple of calls from people they have never met, they may do some research via a few online sources like a company website, maybe some news, but how do they know everything you want them to know about when they are confined to limited sources of information. When they get to the office, its reception, a small interview room and maybe if they are lucky a quick tour around the office.
As an organisation, its worth having a think about the channels you are using – website? LinkedIn? Job boards? Glassdoor? Facebook? Instagram? Snapchat? If you are hiring millennials, remember these lovely people are digital natives, they didn’t grow up without the internet, sending letters and faxes. Millennials live in the here and now and are used to having everything they need at their finger tips, so if they don’t get what they want when they want it when comes to information around an organisation, they are more likely to dismiss it, why? because they cant identify with us, know who we are, what we are all about?
Its as much about inbound recruitment marketing as it is anything else and leveraging what makes us great and shouting from the roof tops. Depending on the size of our business, we can then leverage technology to then develop visibility and the candidate experience.
Channelling traffic reporting on it and creating automation within the process and having metrics to see where success is coming from and where it isn’t. Remember, its also about creating an experience at every step of the way from the moment a candidate comes into contact with the brand through a piece of content or an advert and through the journey.
Keeping in touch with them at every step of the journey regardless of the outcome and the messaging that comes from the experience – glass door interview reviews, google reviews.
When we like a candidate and offer them, thinking about the on-boarding process is a real opportunity, getting them up to speed around the business, its vision, mission, values and how it operates. How much time do we spend in that induction process battering them with who’s who and what they do, the teams etc?
How many times do we have a huge period of radio silence during notice periods or the time between offer and day 1. How can we engage with those employees so that they feel part of something before they set foot in the office for the first time? How can we keep them up to date with what is happening in the business? Events? Socials? Meet ups? All hands etc… If we engage with our new talent at every step of the way, we can not only ensure that they are engaged at every step of their on-boarding journey, we can get them to hit the ground running and improve productivity/efficiency when they first join our business.
Remember, we have a fantastic opportunity to gauge feedback, learn and adjust things that need tweaking as well as highlighting what we do and what our new starters think to the wider candidate market.
So the next step is to look internally, how do we manage our working environment for existing work colleagues and how do we create our advocates? I remember a podcast by Marcus Child where he talks about how to create advocates or those raving fans in the form of customers/clients.
Marcus spoke about how, as people, we are quite fickle, we may be able to satisfy our clients, but creating satisfaction doesn't always create loyalty. Well, lets face it, the same applies to our employees, just because our employees are satisfied, that doesn't mean they might not leave. The same can be said about creating those raving fans that promote our businesses or those advocates that would create loyalty and refer other people to our business.
So, what can we do as business leaders? well, there is no one magic 'thing' that we can do actually it entirely depends on our own teams, but, the first thing we can do is give our teams great leaders and managers of people.
Great talent management centres around great leadership and management. We expect the teams to look out for the future of our organisations, we should be looking out for the future of theirs. Its no surprise that great managers and leaders are more comfortable on strengthening the abilities of their teams and provide continuous improvement.
Moving away from the standard ‘annual appraisal’ is a big step, after all, if we wait for an entire year to review performance, how do we expect to implement performance change in the short term if needed?
Great managers and leaders work with their people to identify clear objectives and goals from a performance and a personal perspective. Its these goals and objectives that are reviewed on a regular basis, creating a sense of continuous improvement. Supporting and expecting management teams to expand their skill sets in this area is vital. The workplace is changing and the expectation of the changing workforce is that of a collaborative partnership rather than a hierarchical one.
From experience, the focus is mostly in the short term view of results rather than investing the time in helping the teams grow and putting in the leg work. I have always found that the most successful managers and leaders I have worked with and coached have invested their time and effort into their people in order to get them where they need and want to be.
We have all seen (and experienced) when mistakes are made, those concerned will know about it, but what about successes? Is that same level of certainty there to take official notice of what has been done well? If not, our teams literally have a thankless job. We face the prospect of teams being unlikely to perform well again if we don’t appreciate their accomplishments. The thing is if we don’t, someone else will.
People often talk about a culture of transparency; few emotions are more corrosive than the fear of the unknown, this could centre around the organisation but equally apply to their own performance. I often hear frustrate senior management teams get frustrated around the lack of ‘ownership' of some of their teams, but if important information about the company is ‘none of their business’ its hard to argue that the company’s challenges are their problem. Great leaders are transparent as much as they are legally and ethically are able to be.
Talking to their teams about what is happening, especially during tough times can make such a difference. You will be surprised how many people rise to the challenge and rally round when you have the culture right and transparency around what challenges we may face as a collective.
Businesses who make their teams feel fearless cant promise there wont be problems or bad surprises, but they strengthen confidence so they don’t have as much to worry about. Combining strong management, good values and aligning teams with a vision will create that engagement.
Providing teams with the career opportunities and growth pathway is vital. Linking back to leadership (doesnt it always!), What are the opportunities for growth for the teams? is this growth in the form of clear career pathways? Is it the chance to get involved in projects and have exposure to new skills and something that is different from their current role?
What development opportunities are there in place from a training perspective? yes, the majority of organisations will have on job training that is in the moment, but what structured development that will allow people to see where they can go and how the business will support them in order to get there.
Supporting managers or those looking to develop into their first management roles is key and is an opportunity to define what leadership looks like for their teams. when so much rides on the capability of our leadership teams, how equipped are they both now and for the future? How do our teams talk about their relationships with their managers? what is that telling prospective talent looking to join the business?
Do we have a culture of promoting from within or do you hire externally for management and leadership roles? yes there is always a case for strategic leadership hiring, but is there the potential for the team to see their long term career within our organisations? if we have or appear to have glass ceilings within our business how can we retain our staff effectively?
So lets say we are working on this and we are putting things in place, what about the physical environment in which our people operate? does it have Googliness? Do we have the fun environment with the table tennis tables and nap pods? is it 'cool?' well, Its that definition of ‘cool’ that sometimes baffles us! what is it? Well it differs from person to person, but research shows that it is now part of the bargain when it comes to becoming an employer of choice.
‘Coolness’ might be cutting edge project, learning from great colleagues, escaping routine with creative tasks, a place where individuality is valued an inspirational CEO, brain tickling work spaces or the way the business knows how to throw a party when the work is done. Even though this is all personal, there is nothing wrong with teams expecting a real spark from the business where we spend most of our waking hours. Again, i believe this is defined by the culture of our business and what makes us who we are; be it a corporate blue chip organisation, edgy technology business or entrepreneurial recruitment firm that is challenging the way things are done. Ultimately we cant ignore that it feeds into people's decision making processes.
Well-being is so current nowadays (and rightly so) and highlights a shift in thought process and highlights the value of taking care of your people. To a certain degree it rotates back to the whole benefits piece as well as strong inclusive leadership. The importance of work/life balance for our people is gaining importance on our people agenda. Employee assistance programmes, support networks and channels helping from financial advice, mental health support and helping employees find that balance they crave along with proactive care for those who choose to work with us and help the organisation on its chosen path. I know from my experience when I lost my father, the organisation and leadership team were amazing and went over and above to help me during probably one of the toughest times I ever faced.
Perks and benefits that are articulated and well thought out also can bring great benefits from a retention perspective. Benefits that are relevant to the individual be they parents, social butterflies, music lovers or whatever personalities we have in our businesses, things like great employee discounts, salary sacrifice schemes and the ability to buy and sell holiday days can really make the difference.
I spoke to an engagement platform on behalf of a previous client and they showed me a case study about how one organisation unexpectedly covered the costs of its chosen benefits platform purely from its people buying and selling their holidays! Fundamentally, times are evolving from your bog standard 'cycle to work scheme', 'annual season ticket loan' benefits. There is no doubt that they are benefits, but one size doesn't fit all and you can bet that more and more competitors evolving their offerings.
Corporate Social Responsibility almost fits in with the well-being and benefits piece nowadays. Developing a specific CSR approach for the business to assess the impact it has on society, responsible & ethical policies in place that support individuals, the local community and the environment now plays more of a part in day to day life.
I remember a meeting with a senior leadership team about how the the business wanted to approach its CSR activities as it was part of an accreditation they were looking to achieve. One MD spoke about how she understood CSR evolving from supporting a 'designated charity' to perhaps supporting teams with initiatives and causes that are close to their hearts. Again approaches vary and the approach taken should be the one that is right for the individual business. Its about finding the a way that allows the business to take a stand on key social challenges be they in the local community, environmental issues or charitable causes (preferably all of the above in my eyes).
Ultimately, what is important is that as business leaders, we discharge our responsibilities to our people in such a way that when our teams think about their work, they think about:
Their successes and achievements
Opportunities available to expand their skill sets and development areas
Great teams that they work with
Genuine leaders & managers
An exciting place to work
All the reasons why someone talented chose to join the business and stay there
Given how much our time we all spend in the workplace and how important our chosen profession and careers are to us, defining and evolving our EVP is no small proposition. Ultimately it is the umbrella of happiness that creates our individual EVP and all the people activities we undertake that roll up into it.
Its no mean feat and takes a lot of work over time, but when you get it right, things start to click, your teams are more engaged, their performance improves and work becomes a movement.
If this hits home for you and strikes a chord, then we should definitely talk. Get in touch: