Foresights for 2024: Elevating your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

In a world where disposable income won’t bounce back to our pre-pandemic levels for another three years, the challenge is clear: How can we inspire a more agile, flexible and resilient workforce in a cost-of-living crisis? This is exactly what we explored at Buck’s recent Foresights for 2024 seminar. We’re pleased to share our key takeaways all about Employee Value Proposition (EVP) with you in this article.  

What makes a ‘good’ EVP?

Generally speaking, HR communications are all too often transactional and uninspiring. But when you’re talking to employees about their worth (reward), lifestyle (company policies), and their security (benefits), it’s hard to think of an instance that’s more emotional. Especially when it impacts their families too, which work so often does. We approach internal communications by balancing transactional and emotional communications to engage people. 

Storytelling is one of humankind’s oldest and most powerful art forms, and for very good reason. The accessibility of storytelling means it’s a unique tool that will resonate with every culture, generation, and community in the world. 

Many of us are from a Marketing background, so we instinctively use learnings from the marketing world and apply them to our clients’ projects in a way that inspires and truly informs their workforce. 

Consider Nike’s marketing. Once fixated on the technicalities of their shoes, now their narrative revolves around the emotional impact and personal performance that their products can help achieve. It’s time to communicate with employees in a way that resonates emotionally and inspires action.

Think about your EVP. Is it clear? Is it authentic? Do you have one? Simply put, your EVP is the complete package of what you, as a business, can offer an employee and what you expect in return. 

The challenge with EVP is that its parts are often delivered by different teams, making it a collection of promises that can contradict or confuse each other. Your EVP needs a holistic approach. Nowadays, we have vast amounts of data at our disposal, which means you have the power to create an EVP that’s consistent but uniquely meaningful to every employee.

So, where do you start? In a nutshell, you should be combining what you know about your people and your external and internal data. Knowing what to do with data is still a challenge for many organisations, but Chris Andrew shared these starting points:

Listen to your people. Then listen again. 

You can do all the work in the world, but if you haven’t taken the time to listen and understand people’s lived experiences and opinions in all corners of your organisation, your work isn’t going to be effective. To make giving feedback as easy as possible for your colleagues, Chris recommends having an always-on approach and meeting your audience where they are. 

Create a compelling story. 

Emotive narratives capture people’s attention, and as we say, Reward is emotional. This creates the perfect opportunity for you to be creative and grow engagement. Your Reward & Benefits philosophy can and should inform your EVP and vice versa. Repeat this across the entire employee lifecycle, and you’ll be onto something special that people will want to be a part of. 

Know your audience.

Who are you talking to? If you’re not segmenting using data or personas, you’ll more than likely be wasting considerable effort on your comms by adding to the noise instead of getting the message across. For instance, how adaptable people are to change, generational nuances, how often people can access the internet will all have a big impact on the effectiveness of your communications. 

Consider your channels.

Channels aren’t just a mechanism for delivery. As you strategise for the future, use your channels to reflect the culture you’re looking to create. For example, what you choose to communicate over an internal social platform as opposed to via an email will create a very different experience for your colleagues and set the tone across the organisation. Chris advised the audience to embrace technology and utilise your data to create a tailored, customer-grade experience for your people.

Redefining your EVP is pivotal in navigating the challenges of 2024 and beyond, and the good news is that by leveraging technology and your data, your EVP will be better than good. You can create a memorable experience that will resonate with your employees and future talent across the globe. 

We work with world-leading organisations to create clear, authentic, and holistically crafted EVPs to ultimately empower people at work and strengthen business outcomes. If you’d like a conversation with Chris or another consultant, we love unpicking your challenges, so get in touch.