Your EVP represents who you are as a company, how you operate and the unique things you offer to employees. Defining it clearly can help you attract the right talent and foster a sense of belonging among your existing team members.
Molly Johnson-Jones, cofounder and CEO at Flexa, a platform helping jobseekers find tech companies with the most flexible work options, gives her top tips for how to define your EVP.
Sit down with a notepad and pen
Every company with employees already has an EVP; to define it, simply write down all the things you have on offer when it comes to your working environment, mission, culture and benefits. Ask your employees to contribute as well. That piece of paper is the foundation of your EVP.
Conduct an internal survey or create focus groups
Ask: What do you love about working here? What do you not love? What changes would you like to see? How would you rate us in terms of working environment, benefits, culture and mission? You’ll get a lot of data around why people have come to your company — as well as employee quotes and stories — which you can use to draw up your EVP.
Shout about it
The whole point of an EVP is that it represents your company to respective hires — it needs to be out there. Be totally transparent about what you have to offer on your career pages, break it down into a summary on all job descriptions and shout about it on social media.
You could bring in employee stories that you collected in your feedback round — for example, if you have an enhanced parental leave policy, ask your prospective parents for a quote on what they like about it.
Make sure that the EVP is included on all internal comms too, such as employee handbooks and onboarding materials, to make the message consistent internally and externally.
Be realistic
Make sure that the values and behaviours you are promoting as part of your EVP, especially to the outside world, actually align with the internal reality. If you select values arbitrarily because it looks nice on your website, this will be misleading for potential hires and may result in higher churn.
Review your EVP annually
Your EVP is going to evolve over time in line with changes in your company, so it’s important to keep it up to date. Do a light-touch review of your EVP twice a year by asking yourself the following questions:
- Do you still offer or want to offer all the benefits that you do?
- Is the way you’re currently working still working for you?
- Has the mission of the company evolved?
- Has the stage of your business changed? (The kind of people a startup wants to hire are largely different to the ones a scaleup wants to hire.)
This will ensure your EVP is aligned with the internal reality but also reflects the kind of people you want to hire in the future.
Stay up to date with work trends
Defining your EVP is a chance to make positive changes within your company that are in line with the zeitgeist. We know that flexibility in terms of working schedule and location is the new world order (in our recent survey of hundreds of thousands of job searches, 83.6% of people said they would like their employer to offer work from anywhere schemes) but there are other benefits and working methods you could consider offering too. According to our data:
- 38.8% of candidates want part-time roles (perhaps this is due to more women entering the workforce again due to the economic climate)
- 39% want a work-from-home stipend to purchase desks and equipment
- 30.5% want mental health support
- 25.9% want a wellbeing allowance for yoga, gym or office plants
On the subject of... employee value propositions
How to create an EVP. HR tech Personio has put together a complete guide.
What employees really want. Flexibility, childcare support and paid-for lunches with colleagues are just some examples of things to include in your EVP.
Conducting EVP staff surveys. Here’s what questions you should ask.
