The Human Deal: Is it time to revisit your employee value proposition?

The pandemic has caused many companies across all industries to stop and readjust. Everything from their business model to updating their customer value propositions. But what about the employees who are on the front lines of creating value for these customers?

A recent report from Gartner identifies how to the pandemic has changed the relationship between people and their work, and highlights why the employee value proposition (EVP) must evolve to meet these changes. Properly aligning your employee value proposition (EVP) with what current and future workers want and need most is vital for attracting, motivating and retaining employees.

The research suggests that in order to thrive in the post-pandemic world – and to attract and retain the talent so crucial to organisational success – employers must deliver a more human deal, reflect on their approach and evolve their EVP, shifting the focus from what they give employees, to why.

What updates to your EVP should you consider?

Gartner suggests the following key actions that leaders can take to build their new human-centric EVP:

• Build deeper connections by integrating inclusion goals into day-to-day work and talent processes, focusing on direct family benefits that match employee and organisation needs, and training managers on how to identify employees’ trust through empathetic conversations.
• Provide radical flexibility to all by giving employees flexibility — choices within team-established boundaries, determining which activities within a role can be flexible and identifying manager-tested flexibility solutions.
• Create personal growth opportunities for employees by providing them with objective career coaches and empowering them to design development that meets their personal needs.
• Ensure holistic well-being by holding employees accountable for personalising well-being progress, encouraging mental health champions to hold honest conversations about mental well-being, and establishing clear dos and don’ts for how managers can support employee wellness.
• Take action on shared purpose by establishing cross-organisational ownership of societal issue decision making, use peer coaching to hold employees accountable for taking personalized action on societal issues and prioritize societal issues aligned with the organisation’s goals.

Updating your EVP helps to ensure alignment between employees’ needs and corporate strategy to ensure relevant, consistent messaging. With all the changes that have happened over the last 18 months, employees’ minds are racing, and understandably so. Employers should think about adjusting their thinking to focus on their employees because they are why you’re still in business. And when your employees are happy, recognized and engaged, this translates into better experiences for customers and your teams.

We’re discussing key themes that employers should focus on to create an EVP relevant the workforce of today and the future, as part of a  virtual interactive forum series, with colleagues from the Empowering People Group. You can watch the first forum on demand here, or register for the second forum in December here.