Creating an Effective Employee Value Proposition for L&D

Employees are essential to growing an organization. Organizations are looking to staff the most talented individuals to fill job roles to better expand their product and service offerings. However, many prospects find themselves comparing several competing job offers. The problem becomes attracting and retaining the right people for the right job.

Employee value propositions are one way of not only getting the right people to work for you but also a way of creating advocates for your organizational vision. It is necessary for learning and development teams to sit down with talent management to identify what points an employee value proposition should include.

What is an Employee Value Proposition?

An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is an organization’s formal strategy to provide an employment experience that prompts and sustains advanced levels of discretionary employee performance and productivity. In its most basic form, an EVP is an employment package meant to allure and retain personnel that contains a mix of promised characteristics, benefits and work processes reflective of an organization.

This is not a one-sided strategy. Both employer and employee values are the building blocks of an EVP. An effective EVP is not restricted to just talent development or acquisition. Instead, an EVP should be applied daily throughout the entire organization across each department for every job role.

Organizations who develop and maintain a strong EVP have shown to reduce time and costs ordinarily spent on recruiting while still effectively competing for high performing talent. The associated cost savings could then be invested back into furthering employees themselves. These employers are in a better position to articulate strengths and attract quality talent that is aligned with their EVP. Yet, as Brandon Hall Group revealed in their webinar, Employment Value Proposition – Harnessing the Power with Your Organization, only 15 percent of organizations have a well-defined and communicated EVP.

Employee Value Propositions have many long term benefits for both employers and employees. So why is it difficult for the majority of organizations to develop a strong EVP?

Employee Value Proposition Challenges

The backbone of designing a well-articulated EVP is a clear cut definition of how your organization compares to its competitors, while still remaining true to promises. Many companies struggle to clearly define themselves. The effect of this is two-fold:

1. An organization develops an EVP similar to competitors and is unable to attract top talent.
2. An organization goes out on a limb by branding their EVP in an appealing manner that does not reflect the reality of the organization.

While the latter is able to attract and recruit more talent, it’s also a surefire way to increase turnover rates. Plus, developing an EVP based on false promises will get you on the fast track to experiencing backlash from unhappy employees on sites like Glassdoor.

In general, HR has undergone a dynamic change in recent years, shifting to talent management strategies that attract, develop, motivate and retain highly engaged and productive employees. This transition is not without due cause. Each year $450 to $500 billion is thrown away on disengaged employees. With a lack of organizational readiness and an uncertainty of EVP structures, many organizations struggle to become visible to the right talent. Talent management is now tasked with creating a consistently accurate message.

Why should people want to join your team? There are a lot of competitors dipping into the same talent pool, so what can you offer that competitors can’t?

How to Define Your Employee Value Proposition

Employees are an organization’s best asset, but talent recruiters often resort to a tug of war when it comes to attracting potential prospects. A well-developed EVP improves both attraction and retention of the best of talent. Additionally, an organization’s employees greatly influence the retention and satisfaction of customers leading to an improvement in organizational performance. Here are 5 best practices L&D and talent management professionals must relay to one another when creating their employee value proposition:

1. Define Your Organization’s Vision

An organizational vision is what drives interactions between employees, customers and partners. At Mimeo, our vision is to help give our customers back their time. As a result, every facet of Mimeo works to employ this vision into workflows. Every organization has a different vision in place. Your organization’s vision should be expressed in the EVP to attract the employees who align with it.

2. Establish a Workplace Culture

Workplace culture reflects organizational values and likewise the values of employees. Your EVP should highlight what a typical day on the job is like. This could be dress code policies, social or volunteering opportunities, office technologies and L&D programs. A section of workplace culture should provide insight into how employees are expected to be managed and what kind of attitudes make up the organization.

3. Detail Compensation

Compensation comes in many forms like financial bonuses and access to other opportunities. Does your organization offer unique compensation plans? Catalog how varying roles are compensated for their work and other opportunities, like travel, are managed. For example, how are your top salespeople rewarded? This could be through publicly recognized awards, luxury vacations or other giveaways.

4. Outline Unique Employee Benefits

What makes your organization different from others? If you’ve worked within an organization for a long amount of time, your job perks tend to feel ordinary to you. Yet, for prospects, these are opportunities that your competitors aren’t offering. Define what policies, programs, and rewards your employees are provided with. These could be discounted gym memberships, commuter benefits or a chance to serve on the company social committee. Scheduling is also a big plus for employees. An EVP should clearly define if your organization has flexible operating hours or the opportunity to work remotely.

5. Illustrate Your L&D Program

Professionals are keen on advancing their skill sets. L&D programs should never be overlooked.

Coaching capabilities, certifications, badging, one-on-one meetings, formal training, and other development opportunities should be summarized within your EVP. Demonstrate the breadth of your L&D program and provide past examples of how employees have used these experiences to advance professionally.

If you have an employee value proposition in place, how do you determine if it’s effectively working?

Millions of dollars are being invested in training each year. But how are organizations measuring the effectiveness of their training, especially soft skills training like sales? At Richardson, Eileen Krantz, Vice President of Client Analytics, has discovered that some clients believe that there is just an inherent value in providing quality sales training, others are more concerned with just aligning training with the sales strategy, and some develop a comprehensive measurement strategy to isolate the financial return on their investment.