What is the Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and Why Is It So Important for Employee Engagement?

How does the perception of your organization influence employee engagement? The answer is a lot. How your employees and prospective candidates perceive you as an organization in the marketplace is a key indicator of both existing employee satisfaction and prospective employee interest. Is working with your organization and brand something that they either aspire for themselves in the future (i.e., your talent prospects) or aim to maintain for the long-term (i.e., your existing talent)? To make this determination, your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) gauges these internal and external sentiments about your organization so that you can both attract and retain top talent.

Obviously, you want your employees to have pride in what they are doing and where they work. So how does your organization compare to others in this regard? We know that organizations that are successful are those that invest in staff engagement and empowerment in the workplace. Organizations with high unwanted turnover and psychologically unsafe working environments do not have top talent knocking at their doors. Successful organizations that have a high level of employee satisfaction and employee loyalty have a strong EVP. An EVP is a representation of how an organization’s core values and principles are translated into a positive or negative position in the market. When positive, it can be a competitive advantage for employers. A good EVP likely comes with a multitude of employee fulfillment stories and data points, while a bad EVP likely shows a lack of organizational pride through high turnover and a struggling recruitment strategy.

Are you investing in making sure your organization is doing the best it can to create a workplace environment that is attractive from the outside, and proud on the inside? Your EVP will be a good way to know for sure.

Three main reasons your EVP matters

Your EVP strengthens your brand position. 

In addition to attracting and retaining top talent, a good EVP improves how you are perceived by potential clients, partners, investors/funders. Surely you’ve said to yourself in the past, “oh I’d love for us to find a way to work with X or Y organizations because I love what they do!” Now imagine if others are saying the same about you?! If your organization’s reputation is positive within your industry and the awareness of your brand is building, then it’s not just employees who will be attracted to you; your prospects for business partnership and channel marketing opportunities significantly increase, all of which helps you to grow as an organization.

Your EVP allows you to attract and keep top talent so that you can grow. 

While employee turnover is certainly part of workplace life, keeping it at a minimum is what allows you to build and maintain strong operations. A strong EVP means that your employees are proud to say they work for you, employee empowerment is strong, and your top-talent prospects aspire to join you. A low EVP means that you may have significant challenges in growing your organization because you are constantly playing catch-up to remove the burden that turnover creates on the rest of your employee base. If you’re in that revolving circle, the ability to grow becomes much harder.

Your EVP allows you to maintain a healthy internal culture that’s poised to innovate. 

If you have a strong EVP, then you are in a good position to focus on improving and growing your organization’s employee experience. In a marketplace that is constantly changing, organizations need to be nimble and innovative in order to manage the challenges and opportunities that come their way. A major key to fostering an environment of innovation is to have a strong and inspired company culture. If work engagement is positive, employees are empowered to find new and better ways of getting work done, collaborating, and feeling connected with the organization’s mission. Happy people become innovative people. Unhappy people become blocked.

WorkProud is laser-focused on helping organizations build and maintain a robust EVP that ultimately helps to strengthen them in the long run by creating a unified digital employee experience that champions recognition, increases workplace pride, and propels performance and innovation. 

Learn more about how WorkPround is doing this for major brands across the globe.