Employee Value Proposition Framework Part II: What Do I Get to Do and Become?
What does working here actually enable me to do?
At the end of Part I, I suggested that one of the things an employer can give you is security. Not necessarily that your job is safe forever, but because working there might make you more employable elsewhere.
That's a bit different from being given something. It's about what happens to you. Which is what this second part of my employee value proposition framework is about: What do I get to do and become?
Before we get into it, I want to return to a consistent theme in these blogs.
I'm giving you everything that could form part of your EVP. Your EVP shouldn't include them all. It can't. It would no longer be an EVP, it would just be a list. Lists are informational. Lists do not persuade, or inspire, or motivate. No-one remembers a list, that's why you have to write them down.
EVPs should be Distinctive, Attractive, Realistic and Consistent. They should tell a story. They should give people a reason why they should remember you. So, what I'm providing in these six articles is all the potential themes.
The exercise you need to conduct when developing your EVP is to choose which themes say most about you, and most help you construct your story. In this edition, we're looking at what an employer enables people to do, experience and become.
The Work Itself: What Will I Actually Get to Do?
When someone is actively considering a role, three basic needs have to be met. Does it pay enough? Is the location/flexibility acceptable? Can I perform the tasks? Those are the table stakes. Without them, the role probably can't be considered.
For your EVP, which needs to cover all your roles, you need to elevate that. We're not talking Purpose and Mission (yet!). We're talking about the stuff you do, and produce, and what needs to be done to deliver those outcomes. Often, it's about elevating people's view of your organisation, or challenging the assumptions they bring to it.
A really simple example: if you say Firefighter, people think of putting out fires. Maybe getting cats out of trees. Fires in their mind are probably in houses, rather than warehouses or moorland. They're probably not thinking of the role in traffic accidents or chemical spills. Or prevention and community engagement.
The reality of the work is significantly broader than the image people hold. That breadth might make the difference between someone dismissing an occupation and being excited by it.
In almost every EVP I've ever created, there's an educational part: we're not quite what you assume we are. Sometimes it's the variety of work. Sometimes it's the complexity of the challenges, or the resources people get to use. Sometimes it's the opportunities to do things you can’t elsewhere.
Autonomy: How Much Say Do I Get?
In working life, this is likely bigger than you realise.
In Self-Determination Theory, autonomy is one of three basic psychological needs, along with Competence and Relatedness. If you want to get into the theory, Google away, but it's essentially about feeling that your actions ae your own and align with your values and interests. Also, people generally don't like being controlled or micromanaged.
They want a say in what they do and how they do it. To feel their judgement counts, that they have some ownership. Of course, there need to be guidelines. There needs to be education, and there needs to be a common direction. Autonomy doesn't mean having complete freedom. You can have very clear requirements about what needs to be achieved AND considerable freedom over how you achieve it.
Exactly where and how those lines are drawn will be different in different organisations. It might be that you give people a great deal of freedom to experiment, accepting that some things won't work. Or perhaps many decisions get made by the people closest to the problem, rather than having to work their way up and down a hierarchy.
The reasons behind these choices, and the outcomes they produce, may be the spicy difference between you and the next company. In which case, front and centre. A key part of a handful of EVP pillars. On the other hand, the reasons behind your approach to autonomy, and the outcomes it produces, might be rather vanilla. In which case, omit it. Or make it part of a sub-theme.
Autonomy is a valid question for candidates, you should have an answer when they ask. But you don't need to include every detail of every facet of working life in your EVP.
And please don't assume that saying "we trust our people" is enough. Almost everyone can say that. What does it actually mean in your organisation? What do you let people do that they might not get to do elsewhere? That's where something potentially distinctive starts to emerge.
Development and Progression: What Could I Become?
These are different things. They can certainly be presented differently, but I'm going to bundle them together. Why? Because people naturally do.
Here's a research anecdote for you. When I asked people what image they had of a civil servant, they told me a middle-aged man in a bowler hat. When I probed, they were perfectly aware that no-one had worn a bowler hat to work for well over 50 years. But that was the image they held, however out of date it actually was.
It's much the same with career development. Ask people about progression and they'll move immediately to a very regimented system. A pyramid, with clearly defined levels, which they move up one by one.
A few organisations do still work like that. But many have fewer discrete levels, or are simply more fluid. Sometimes, by the time someone has moved through, say, three levels, the hierarchy looks different from when they started.
And – as with bowler hats – people may know the image they hold is out of date, but they need to be nudged beyond it.
Their actual experience of developing and progressing would be hard enough to map once they've done it, never mind plan it before they start. They might have moved sideways, picked up responsibilities that didn't previously exist, developed a new specialism, moved into management and back out again. Or simply become much better at something they already did.
Development doesn't have to mean progression. Progression doesn't have to mean promotion. Not everybody wants to manage people. Some people would be delighted to become one of the best in their profession, without ever changing their job title.
When you're developing your EVP, you need to get past development programmes, training budgets and career pathways. They may be important, but they are the mechanisms, not necessarily the outcomes or stories.
By being here, I've been able to learn this, do that, experience the other. I've been trained in X, been exposed to Y, worked on a project about Z. I've held these roles, I've had those responsibilities. I've become someone who can do stuff I couldn't do before.
The reasons why organisation can offer these paths are also interesting. Is it your scale? The range of work you do? The willingness to move people between functions? Or that people have to take on responsibility early? These can all be ingredients of a distinctive employer value proposition.
And remember what we said about security in Part I. One of the most valuable things an employer can offer is the opportunity to become more employable. It may seem counterintuitive, but it's attractive to someone who wants to grow, and realistic for an organisation that can't promise endless promotions.
There aren't many areas in which I'd say your EVP has to have something to say, but I think this is one. It's so front of mind for people, and so close to what they associate with an ideal working life … even if they do have a rather archaic picture of it.
Using Expertise: Can I Bring What I Know to Bear?
At the start of this article, I talked about the table stakes for considering a job. One of which is understanding "can I perform the role?" This is the step on from that. It's about whether you can bring your existing skills, knowledge and expertise to bear. And all the better if you can link things together, perhaps in unseen ways.
Here's a classic but simple example: supermarket delivery driving. A lot of applications for these roles come from people who want a driving job, often because it offers the right kind of hours, and often because they enjoy driving. Some might particularly enjoy driving because of the lack of interaction with others. But this is actually a highly interactive role. It's customer service, just removed from the shop to the doorstep.
If you can excel in both those aspects (and enjoy a physical element!), this may be the role for you. Even though the skills people need, and get to use, may be quite different to expectations.
That's especially interesting when competing for talent with employers outside your own sector. You might offer them an opportunity to use more of their abilities, or combine skills they haven't previously had the chance to use together. Equally, someone who's spent years developing a particular specialism might relish the opportunity to use it on more complex problems, with better resources, or in situations where it makes a greater or just different difference.
It's satisfying to be good at something. It's even more satisfying when you get to put that ability to good use. Try to root those stories out. Ask people not just what skills they need to do their job, but which skills they're particularly pleased to get to use. You may get rather different answers.
Achievement: What Will I Be Able to Accomplish?
This can take many forms. You can be the (invented, apocryphal, non-existent) cleaner at NASA who's putting a man on the moon. We'll get properly into purpose in Part V. Here I want to concentrate on something slightly different. Not just what the organisation is trying to achieve, but what individuals get to achieve by working there.
That might be the satisfaction of completing something difficult. Solving a problem that had been around for years. Making a customer's life easier. Creating something new from an idea to a finished product. It might be that people can clearly see the outcomes of the expertise they've applied. That it's improved sales, performance or service. It might be that people are excited by the challenge they're faced with next.
There are big achievements, small achievements, individual achievements and collective achievements. What matters is that people can recognise their own contribution, and take some satisfaction from it.
There's a tendency in employer branding to describe achievements at the level of the organisation. We've grown by X%. We've won this award. We've delivered this many projects. All potentially impressive. But the question for your EVP is slightly different.
What did people get to do to make that happen? And what satisfaction did they take from doing it?
There's a strong connection here to the other themes we've covered. Autonomy gives me some control over my actions. Development gives me greater capability. Using my expertise allows me to apply that capability. Achievement is me seeing what I can do with it.
These ideas are all closely related to intrinsic motivation. There are well-established connections between the satisfaction of that kind of basic psychological needs at work and motivation, wellbeing and performance. Things that can matter to the individual and the organisation. And, from an EVP perspective, things that people feel, rather than receive.
How Do These Ideas Become Part of Your EVP?
These are big ideas. Concepts that pull your employer value proposition out of the prosaic, and tap into people's desires and passions.
But I want to return to the distinction I made at the start. You don't need an EVP pillar for autonomy. And one for career development. And one for achievement.
You need to understand which is genuinely important to the people you want to attract and retain, which you can credibly offer, and which helps distinguish you. And you need to understand how they connect.
Perhaps you're a place where people are given responsibility early, which helps them develop rapidly, which means they get to tackle increasingly interesting challenges. That's potentially a story, a compelling reason to choose you.
Or perhaps you're an organisation where people can become really, really good at one thing, with the resources, colleagues and opportunities to apply that expertise to work they're proud of. That's another.
Neither needs to be universally attractive. (In fact, if you try to make them universally attractive, you'll dilute whatever made them interesting in the first place.)
And while we're talking about what people get to do, learn and achieve, there's something rather important we've only touched on. The other people involved.
The relationships we build, the people we learn from, the people who help us succeed, and the people who make the whole experience enjoyable (or otherwise). Which will bring us to the next question in this six-part series:
Who will I do it with?
Sam Monteath is the founder of Reason Why: The UK's first dedicated, research-led employer branding agency providing research-led employer branding that gives people reasons to choose you
Discover more about the types of research I conduct here
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