What is EVP and how to develop it

For a product or service branding, we use USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) to brand positioning and building brand perceptions. When it comes to employer branding, we use EVPs (Employee Value Propositions)

An EVP is about characterizing the substance of your organization and how it is special and what it remains for. (Avinash Pawar et.al, 2015). EVP is affected by an organization’s values, culture, society, initiatives, environment and talents. Employment branding is internally and externally advancing a reasonable perspective of what makes a firm diverse and attractive as an employer (Lievens, F & Slaughter, E. 2016).

There are so many ways to approach in developing EVPs. But most of them follow the following key steps.

1. Analyse your data

What you need to do is to have all the data available on the table and analyse them first. data could be of employee engagement, board and exit interviews, employee retention rates and measures, recruitment and employee progress etc. Once you have all these details it is easy for you to identify key themes and trends. 

2. Discover and go deep

This is the most significant step in developing the organization's EVP and it should include senior management, HR, marketing, existing and target employees.(Mckee K, 2017)
This stage usually includes interviews with key stake holders and focus groups with employees to dive deeper into the themes identified.

3. Develop the EVP

Now is the crafting part. Now you have a broader view after going through first two steps. crafting message will include a statement in which the essence of employee experience and employer brand commitment is reflected. At this stage you will have to clarify which areas should be focused mainly to support EVP. For instance, career development, work life balance, career security etc. And in this situation we will also have to check whether the EVP developed goes against the HR strategy as well. If if EVP does not support the HR strategy, it's better get revised (Mackee, K. 2017).

4. Message Delivery

Crafted EVP has to be delivered across each stage of recruitment processes, through to on boarding, career development and even through the exit stage. In this stage, you need to make sure that you would deliver the intent of the EVP at each of these stages in materials such as recruitment adverts, performance development materials.

Finally building methods to measure EVP is necessary as it will reveal its results, ROI and value of the EVP.

Avinash Pawar et.al., 2015. International Journal of Management Research & Review -The Indian Organizations Outlook 12(5), pp.1195-1203

Mackee, K. 2017. EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION. HR Minute.[Online]. Available at: 
<https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.sbhra.org/resource/resmgr/docs/HR_Minute_4_26_17_EVP.pdf> [Accessed on 01 May 2019]

Lievens, F & Slaughter, E. 2016. Employer Image and Employer Branding: What We Know and What We Need to Know -Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior .10(3), pp. 44.