Employee value proposition, employee life cycle, and employee experience – All tied together
Your employee value proposition (EVP) doesn’t have to be lavish or the best thing since cheese puffs. But it needs to be comprehensive, well thought out, consistent, sustainable, systemic, and compelling. And it’s not all about cash or health insurance or clean restrooms – although all of those are important elements. It’s not just about what you include as part of your EVP; it’s also when and how you present and represent it. Finally, it is what your employees experience.
Let’s talk about what your EVP is. It’s what you will provide to your employee in exchange for their contribution to achieving your business objectives. It’s the key to your efforts to attract, engage, and retain the talent you need to be successful. Your EVP should include material and non-material elements and should span from today through the future. This is about being strategic rather than transactional. For example, cash compensation, while very important, should be thought of as short-term and transactional. Connecting with and enhancing an employee’s meaning, purpose, and success is long-term and strategic. With that as a backdrop, an EVP can be categorized within the following areas:
- Material offerings include compensation, benefits, physical office space, location, flexibility, schedules, and perks.
- Opportunities for development and growth that are beneficial for both you and your employee. This requires a partnership between you and your employee to build capabilities for future opportunities within your company as well as equipping your employee for opportunities with future employers. This makes it clear to your employee that you are invested in them regardless of where their career path takes them. It builds commitment.
- Connection, community, meaning and purpose. When it becomes more than just a job, more than just a paycheck, and more than “Working for the Weekend” (cue Loverboy’s 1981 iconic rock anthem), you will deliver the most compelling employee value proposition.
So, when and how do you communicate your EVP? As far as how you communicate it, every employee-facing and candidate-facing leader and company representative must communicate the EVP consistently and completely. As far as when you communicate, you communicate through the entire employee lifecycle:
- Pre-candidacy – Make your EVP known to potential candidates and get them to visualize a career with your company.
- Candidate – Integrate your EVP into your recruiting and interview process. Not only are you evaluating the candidate, but the candidate is also evaluating you.
- Onboarding – Just like running a race, the start is important. This period spans post offer to day-one through the training/learning period and includes touch points along the way. Training and learning should be constructive, organized, and purposeful. Differentiating elements include affinity groups, an onboarding partner and an assigned mentor.
- Talent development – Focus on personal and occupational development leading to the development of a career path.
- Performance management – This one may be somewhat surprising. Your performance management system facilitates employee performance and provides ongoing feedback opportunities, coachable moments, and provides the basis from which you can align rewards to performance. Ultimately, a strong performance management system will help the employee attain their career aspirations in the most efficient manner possible.
- Offboarding – When implemented effectively, the employee offboarding process can turn former employees into advocates who may refer new talent to your company and in many cases may come back to work for you.
Establishing an employee value proposition and weaving the EVP throughout the employee lifecycle will result in the most effective employee experience and will likely result in better business performance.