An employee value proposition (EVP) is the set of attributes that the labor market and current employees perceive as the value they gain through employment with the organization. Gartner research identifies five major EVP categories: Rewards, opportunity, organization, people and work. These five categories contain 38 attributes employees weigh when evaluating their current or prospective employment with an organization. Understanding how employees and candidates perceive these attributes enables HR leaders to diagnose the EVP’s strengths and weaknesses.

Employer brand is the efforts undertaken by employers to manage labor market perceptions of them, while employment brand is the perceptions the labor market has about an organization as an employer.

Gartner has several case studies and employee value proposition examples available to clients, including:

• Instead of communicating “one size fits all” messaging, Company A engages employees who most resemble its target talent in creating segment-generated EVPs to appeal to candidates like them.
• To create an authentic EVP, Company B aligns its talent branding and employee experience with its mission.
• Instead of updating all aspects of its EVP at once, Company C takes an agile approach by identifying rewards it can adapt quickly to create a relevant EVP for the organization and employees.

Organizations that fail to deliver a strong EVP struggle to attract critical talent. In fact, 65% of candidates have discontinued a hiring process due to an unattractive EVP. 

A well-designed EVP can reduce hiring costs and increase new talent retention at your organization. More specifically, an EVP that is attractive to labor markets and employees:

• Reduces the compensation premium needed to hire by 50%
• Reaches 50% deeper into labor markets to attract passive candidates
• Decreases annual employee turnover by 69%
• Increases new hire commitment by 29%

Gartner research also finds that, beyond attracting talent, organizations delivering a strong EVP also achieve better employee outcomes, including higher discretionary effort, intent to stay and performance.

An effective employee value proposition (EVP) management strategy should have:

• Appeal — Aligns with labor market preferences
• Authenticity — Aligns with true company strengths
• Relevance — Aligns with organizational strategy
• Differentiation — Sets the organization apart from competitors

HR leaders can use these principles to adapt the EVP strategy to shifting business priorities.

To ensure the organization’s EVP is appealing, HR leaders should ask questions such as:

• Which EVP attributes are most important to critical talent groups?
• Which experiences do employees express dissatisfaction with-in engagement surveys and exit surveys? How can we enhance these experiences?
• Do we highlight critical talent’s most important experiences in our employment brand messaging?

To ensure the organization’s EVP is authentic, HR should ask questions such as:

• Does the EVP align with our company values?
• Does the delivered experience enable employees to live our company values?
• Do the experiences included in employment branding reflect our company values?

To create a differentiated EVP, HR leaders must bolster the organization’s competitive advantages. To do this, HR leaders should benchmark the organization’s EVP against competitors to determine its relative strengths and weaknesses. For example, HR can evaluate top competitors’ online reviews to diagnose the attributes that enhance or detract from each company’s EVP. After determining the organization’s relative EVP strengths and weaknesses, HR leaders can build a differentiated EVP that stands out from its competitors’.

HR leaders can use insights from the labor market and within the organization to identify the EVP attributes candidates and employees care most about. They can then use this information to craft and deliver a compelling EVP that both attracts and retains talent. As HR leaders think about applying labor market insights, they should consider the attributes employees cite as most important to them when accepting a job, or, in other words, employees’ drivers of attraction. Employees cited compensation, work-life balance and stability as their most valued EVP attributes in 2019. 

Win the support needed to bring the EVP to life by encouraging employees to co-own the EVP:

1. Teach employees about the organization’s EVP. Present a concise, memorable summary of your EVP, demonstrating alignment between your EVP, organization and people strategies.
2. Define employee behaviors that align to the EVP. Outline the behaviors and their corresponding actions that are critical to delivering on the EVP and that you expect all employees to live by.
3. Give employees ongoing opportunities to reinforce, advocate and provide feedback on the EVP. Actively involve employees in promoting the EVP and delivering it to their peers inside and outside the organization.
4. Plan an employer brand messaging strategy. Ensure your internal EVP communications are translated and broadcast to the external labor market through an influential employer brand that is tailored to key talent segments.

To monitor how effectively your employee value proposition (EVP) meets objectives, and determine when and how it should be refreshed:

• Gather feedback from stakeholders and participants.
• Assess the effectiveness of the program creation process.
• Ensure the EVP design is clear enough for effective EVP delivery planning.
• Track your EVP’s effectiveness through employee feedback.
• Track progress against objectives using preestablished EVP success metrics.

Employment branding for influence, rather than broad appeal, can result in an increase of 54% in quality of applicant pool, 22% in quality of shortlist and 9% in quality of hire.