The world of work has been turned on its head several times over in the last few years. The roles of HR, recruitment and talent acquisition teams have been especially challenging as they’ve worked to navigate the complex nature of the pandemic and other changes taking place across the globe.
While the basic principles of your EVP won’t have shifted miles from where it was, there will be new considerations and an element of realignment that needs to take place as part of your employer brand management.
Whether you are continuing in a similar vein to pre-pandemic strategies and trying to realign your team, or have completely transformed the way you work over the last couple of years, revisiting your EVP is an important step.
Why is an EVP 2.0 so integral?
The purpose of your employee value proposition is to align the company’s offering to your employees’ needs, wants and expectations. Employees and companies have seen some unprecedented events take place, but many have thankfully made it out of the other side. This leaves your recruitment colleagues and employer branding team with the following challenges:
- Understanding the mindset and priorities of existing employees
- Discovering what’s motivating top talent
- Differentiating your EVP from others in your industry
Your EVP 2.0 essentials
Take your purpose even further
It’s one thing joining a company because of its values, it’s another taking action to support those values. As people become more personally purpose-driven, it’s important that the brand they work for matches this.
For example, if your brand is known for its green credentials and helping the world become more sustainable, there should be an internal scheme that rewards ‘green’ behaviour – it’s all about building a great place to work. This could be vouchers towards owning a bike to encourage people not to drive to work, an internal recycling scheme, or special funding for sustainability projects (with additional holiday allowance to accommodate this).
Whatever your purpose, ensure you create a good workplace culture that is reflected in everyday working life as well as your initial promises – this includes ensuring that your internal communications are on-brand to show you’re committed to delivering them.
Benefits that go beyond just the individual
Family and personal goals are a key career driver, but often employees spend so much time at work that these goals can be hard to fulfil. Explore benefits that will build a greater emotional bond with your employees to foster a positive and supportive work environment.
This could be providing private health insurance for immediate family members or a training allowance to help the employee achieve new skills.
Get more flexible than ever before
If working from home mandates proved anything, it’s that employees can be trusted to work when and where they want or need to. Many companies are taking this one step further, and we’ve seen a range of working options and employee benefits including:
- Working from home permanently
- Hybrid working
- Flexible start and finish times
- Early closures in the summertime
- Unlimited holidays (providing that work is completed)
- Extended maternity/paternity leave
- Paid sabbaticals after a specified amount of years
Prioritise mental health support
A supportive company culture will help instil positive mental attitudes, but that alone isn’t enough to ensure your employees remain happy.
Create a forum that encourages open conversations – this could be through the acquisition of a digital mental health platform that employees can engage with as and when needed, regular mental health workshops, the introduction of wellbeing champions, and training for existing managers to effectively support someone who is struggling. There are lots of mental health awareness courses that can be taken, including mental health first-aid.
EVP 2.0: Company culture checklist
Ensuring all bases are covered
Our hierarchy of needs as humans is different in employment than it is in everyday life. Your EVP will be unique to your brand – hopefully including many of the initiatives mentioned already – but there are four basic boxes that your EVP 2.0 needs to tick. If lacking in one of any four areas, you could see your brand lose good talent to competitors and increase your employee turnover. To become an employer of choice, consider the following:
Physical needs
- Health incentives such as gym memberships or on-site classes
- Partner with apps that can support sleep and wellbeing, such as Calm or Headspace
- Provide access to private healthcare or nutrition services
Emotional needs
- A supportive and open work environment
- Access to therapy tools if needed
- Offer coaching for high-stress positions
- Conduct employee surveys to understand how people are feeling and what improvements could be made
Social needs
- Regular meet-ups virtually or in-person to ensure teams feel connected
- Embrace diversity
- Encourage cross-department collaboration
- Encourage giving back and volunteering days in line with your brand purpose
Financial needs
- Offer employees access to financial advisors where possible
- Provide interest-free loans for medium-sized purchases such as annual travel tickets, holidays or cars
- Ensure peace of mind for employees’ families with life assurance
- Conduct regular pay reviews
Communicating your EVP with Papirfly
A creative brand management solution can help to support the good workplace culture you are aiming to build. The platform we offer at Papirfly is used by some of the world’s most notable employer brand teams including Unilever, Vodafone and more. Teams are able to own and control their EVP in every aspect of marketing.
This gives your employer brand team the freedom to:
- Create an infinite amount of on-brand digital, print, social, video and email assets in a matter of minutes – no design skills are needed. These documents are stored in a centralised system and you can manage all campaign
- Store, edit, find and share every asset created in a centralised DAM system
- Access all educational brand and employer brand documents
- Manage all campaign timelines, briefs and assets from a single portal. On the go. Anywhere in the world.
So if you need agile talent acquisition, a brand management platform can help you keep consistency throughout your campaigns.
Discover our brand management platform for employer brand teams, check out our customer brand stories or book your demo today.