Struggling to hire? Your EVPs just aren't attractive enough

New Zealand’s employment market is at capacity, from the brain drain and low unemployment rates to COVID impacts, the great resignation and Gen Z entering the workforce. Attracting and retaining staff is a top priority for HR teams around the country. As such, ensuring your employer brand is attractive to an increasingly demanding workforce makes your employee value proposition (EVP) more important than ever.

What is an EVP?

“The amazing thing about EVP is it’s already happening all around you, it’s just a matter of understanding what the components are and then pulling them into a format that people can really easily communicate,” said HR consultant Stephanie Love.

EVP is the unique set of offerings an employee receives from an organisation in exchange for their skills, capabilities, and experience. It should be unique to your company and reflect its core values, relevant and compelling to employees.

“EVPS need to be effectively communicated if it is to be a key driver of talent attraction, engagement, and retention,” added Love.

Employee hierarchy of needs

Love works on the formula that employee needs fall into three categories:

Foundational - Your compensation, benefits and wellbeing packages all need to be competitive.

Experiential - What is the experience going to be working for the organisation? Is there career progression, leadership opportunities and training opportunities?

Emotional - Does your company have a purpose, do your employees value that purpose?

What can you include in your EVP?

An EVP is made up of remuneration and benefits. Remuneration can include base salary and car allowances along with variable payments like bonuses, commission, and profit sharing. Benefits can be tangible – time off, medical insurance, general perks, or intangible – career progression, global mobility, wellbeing, recognition.

It’s so important for organisations to think about how people feel when they’re at work and make sure that they’re creating an environment that puts people first the communication and articulation of your EVP is a gateway to be able to do that

7 steps for implementing an EVP

1. Start to paint a picture - think about all the things that your organisation is currently doing and put them into a document.
2. Think about where you are and where you want to be and develop a strategy and action plan around that.
3. Identify low-hanging fruit. There are a lot of EVP initiatives that can be implemented quickly and at a low-cost.
4. Prioritise modelling and introduction of incentives
5. Update marketing content to reflect your EVP
6. Market it everywhere – email, social media, careers website,
7. Refresh your EVP on a regular basis

9 tips for making an attractive EVP

• Work with your marketing team – if you have a strong business brand you can leverage it for your employer brand.
• Use engagement survey data and exit interview data to gauge what your employees want.
• Ask your people why they stay. Conduct stay interviews and look at net promoter scores.
• Invest in a career’s website and make sure it tells people why they want to work for your company.
• Utilise social media. Create content. Tell your story. Encourage your executive team to post on LinkedIn. Create a hashtag.
• Look at accreditation. Gender Tick, Wellbeing Tick, Pride Pledge, B Corp.
• Sell the experience – Work on your sales pitch, get inspiration from recruitment agencies and highlight unique offerings.