Have you articulated your EVP?

Company leaders: As you’re trying to attract top talent, have you articulated your EVP? 

(That would be your Employee [or employer] Value Proposition.)

This article from Harvard Business Review outlines 3 important steps to make your employer brand stand out in the marketplace:

So what’s an EVP?

Your EVP articulates what differentiates your company in the eyes of an employee or prospective employee. It outlines what your employees get from working at your company that’s unique. Once defined, you use your EVP in recruiting as well as within your organization.

It is not:

• Your list of benefits
• Your mission, vision, and values
• Their job description
• Your marketing and/or customer value proposition blurbage

It IS the intangibles that employees get from working with you.

And it is NOT defined by a bunch of executives or HR leaders or marketing people sitting in a room deciding what the EVP is.

Ask Your Employees

If you want to really know what your EVP is, ASK YOUR EMPLOYEES. Get it from their hearts and minds. Let them tell you what the EVP is.

And you can’t just ask them “What do you like about working here?” The answer could well be “The free snacks? Working from home? The people are nice?”

That’s not the EVP, the give-and-get as outlined in the article.

Instead, take a different tack. I’ve done this work using appreciative inquiry (AI) to get to the heart of the EVP. AI is a strengths-based, positive approach generally used in organizational change and leadership development. I used it with a select group of employees to define our EVP.

The output was far beyond what we expected when we started. It truly articulated what made the company unique, why employees loved working there. 

And it had nothing to do with free food.

From there, we shared our EVP on our careers website, incorporated it into our interview process, and leveraged it in our employee engagement work.

We felt confident it was true because it came from our employees.

What about you? You may hesitate to articulate your EVP because it feels like a lot of work. Or you aren’t sure what your employees will say.

It’s not a lot of work–in fact, it can be a lot of fun. And if you think your company is pretty awesome to work for, let your employees tell you why.

I love doing this work. If you’re ready to define your EVP and want the guidance of someone who’s done it, reach out and let’s talk.

Have you worked for a company that has a defined EVP? 

Cover Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash