What is Employee Value Proposition? 

Employer branding is crucial for attracting top talents, and the way market perceives your organization affects your recruiting, hiring, employee retention processes, and much more. If you’re looking for opportunities to strengthen your employer branding, first, you need to learn about EVP. What is Employee Value Proposition, and how to define it?

How to attract the best software developers?

According to a survey by Careerarc, 84% of candidates research the company before applying for a job.  Only 21% of candidates would apply to a 1-star rated company, and only 34% to a 2-star company. Moreover, 64% of consumers have stopped purchasing a brand after hearing about the company’s poor employee treatment. This means that improving your employer branding attracts talents and affects the bottom line.

What is Employee Value Proposition?

To put it shortly, EVP is a set of distinctive features, associations, and offers that an employer makes to its employees in return for their skills, abilities, and experience. It is built on the organization’s identity, culture, profile, and image. Content Stadium survey held in 2022 shows that 46% of in-house recruitment and employer branding teams have an EVP strategy in place, and 33% have plans to get started. 

What is the difference between EVP and employer branding? 

Although these two terms are inseparable, they are slightly different. Employer branding is primarily a marketing process of crafting a certain image of the organization as an employer. EVP, on the other hand, is what the company offers to the employee and an answer to the question “why” (why should you apply for, work, and stay at this company). So, we can assume that defining and highlighting Employee Value Proposition is one of the most critical elements of the Employer Branding strategy.

How to create a good EVP?

Good EVP needs to be relevant, unique, and able to attract the attention of potential and existing employees as well as customers and recipients. Here’s a short guide to creating an EVP.

Answer essential questions 

When creating a compelling Employee Value Proposition, you have to answer a few questions about your brand and employees. Consider why candidates are attracted to your company and what makes the current employees think the company is the right fit for them. What do they value the most in the organization, why do they stay, and what makes them leave?

Analyze your employees’ feedback

Give your employees the possibility to express how they view your organization and why they see it as unique and worth working for. Based on this data, evaluate to what extent your Employee Value Proposition is defined and fulfilled, and try to pinpoint what is the most important answer to the “why” question.

Test your Employee Value Proposition

After creating your EVP, check whether it applies to the company. To do that, gather a small group of existing employees and ask them if they think the Employee Value Proposition statement adequately captures the brand’s essence.

Your EVP should correspond with your company’s actions and be especially targeted at your employees to improve employee advocacy. Make sure that the defined values are reflected in everyday operations, policies, communications, and business plans.

What are the components of a good EVP for software engineers?

The main components that can help to create an Employee Value Proposition are:

• compensation, 
  
  
• benefits, 
  
  
• career, 
  
  
• work environment,
  
  
• culture. 

These aspects can be adjusted to fit the developers’ preferences and attract software engineers. Finding and retaining the best IT talents is easier said than done – and figuring out what developers want at work is one of the ways to improve.

According to the Developer Report 2019 by Mindtake, almost 60% of developers aren’t actively looking for a job. However, they would consider a change if presented with the opportunity. What’s more, Stack Overflow report results show that software engineering talents value work-life balance and learning opportunities. The features like focus on the developer’s experience, transparent salary calculation, and access to outside experts encourage the candidates to apply. 

So, when looking for talented developers from abroad, you should consider what elements of your EVP would interest them. Surely offering benefits like flexible work time would appeal to them since they may live in a different time zone. Further training and upskilling opportunities are also popular assets able to attract real IT talents, especially when it comes to software engineers who may not have comparable possibilities in their home countries.  

 

Real-life examples of Employee Value Proposition

There are several great examples among top companies that showcase how they used their organization’s culture to form a unique EVP and express it. Let’s check it out.

Nike

Nike is one of the top sportswear companies in the world. According to Nike’s career page:

At NIKE, Inc., we see a world where everybody is an athlete—united in the joy of movement. Driven by our passion for sport and our instinct for innovation, we aim to elevate human potential. 

In their communication, they stress the importance of creativity and inspiration and claim that their main motivation is elevating human potential.  

Netflix

Netflix’s videos and blog showcase employees’ everyday life and express the company’s values in a motto, ‘people over processes.’ They openly communicate their main rules too:

1. Encourage decision-making by employees.

2. Share information openly, broadly, and deliberately.

3. Communicate candidly and directly.

4. Keep only our highly effective people.

5. Avoid rules.

PwC

PwC promises to allow their employees to build personalized careers and actively supports their development, well-being, sense of purpose, and ambition. They launched an initiative that is summed up by the motto ‘Be well, work well’ and plan to invest more than $2.4 billion in their employees’ well-being. 

Shopify

This e-commerce platform represents a people-first approach allowing employees to work virtually anytime, anywhere. What’s more, their culture surely appeals to creative individuals that want to make an impact:

This is putting the power of the few in the hands of the many, is a future with more voices rather than fewer, and is creating more choices instead of an elite option. We’re arming the rebels. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?

What’s more, the salary calculation is presented on their website with complete transparency – and, according to the Stack Overflow report, it is well appreciated by software engineers.

How to write an eye-catching Employee Value Proposition?

Employee branding based on EVP results in more engaged and committed employees together with good reputation that attracts customers. We wish you exactly that and we are glad to help if you need more tips. 

Good job advertisements also play an important role in shaping your company’s image. So, if you’re wondering how to create a perfect job ad, read our next article!

If you’re currently looking for a reliable partner who will support you in your search for top-class software engineers – feel free to contact us. At inhire, we will provide you with the best candidates from European locations ready to get involved in your process.   Let’s talk.