Your employment value proposition (EVP) is one of your best assets when it comes to attracting and retaining great people.

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Naturally, it’s important to make sure that your EVP is clearly articulated and delivered not only in the early stages of employment, but through every step of their journey with your organisation. From the moment they first hear about you, their experience during the recruitment process, the lead up to their first day of work (and every day after that), during their professional development, to the moment they leave and become your alumni.

Thinking about the employee lifecycle and the employee experience at each stage, reflect on the consistency of your EVP delivery, particularly at times when it matters most to your employees.

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1. Attraction and Recruitment

First impressions count. What your potential employees see across your many front doors - your careers website, LinkedIn company pages, employee LinkedIn profiles, social media channels and Glassdoor company page creates that all important first impression. Transparent and authentic content such as employee stories, “a day in the life” of team members, photos from team events and around the office help showcase culture. The more you share about your work environment, the more likely you are to attract people who are the right fit for your organisation.

At the pointy end of the recruitment process, how you tell people they were unsuccessful in their application should also reflect your EVP. Showing you care can go a long way towards creating brand advocates, as customers rather than employees. For example, VirginMedia’s insights team cross referenced customers who experienced their recruitment process with people who cancelled their service. Unsurprisingly, 7,500 customers were lost because of direct candidate rejection or poor candidate experience.

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2. Onboarding

Onboarding is more than a checklist of tasks – think about how you introduce your values and bring your organisational culture to life. For example, sharing access to your internal collaboration tools or staff intranet will give a more realistic taste of what it feels like to work in your organisation, fostering a collaborative and open culture before your new starters have even stepped in the door.  ‍

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3. Development

‍Offering opportunities and initiatives for development that align with your organisational values empowers and supports employees to progress their careers, with the support of the organisation behind them. Development initiatives speak volumes about your culture whilst giving employees the skills and tools to take their careers to the next level, enhancing their performance and challenging them to achieve better outcomes for the business.‍

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4. Engagement

Regular monitoring and management of employee engagement will give you ongoing status checks not only into how each individual employee is feeling and behaving, but also insight into your organisational culture. This in turn presents an opportunity to employ an actionable feedback loop that can help you strengthen your EVP where employees feel like their voice matters.‍

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5. Exit

When an employee exits your organisation, you have the opportunity to retain them as a brand advocate. Ask for feedback on their experience, understand their reason for leaving (and whether you might change their mind) and think about how you engage with and create value for your alumni network.

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