What makes people want to join a company, and what keeps them there? These questions lie at the heart of recruitment and HR management, and they’re just as crucial when managing your recruitment business or advising clients.
Retaining top talent is a smart business strategy. After all, replacing skilled and engaged employees is resource-intensive. Yet many companies sometimes overlook the bigger picture, often leading them to reactive instead of proactive hiring.
Employee retention and talent attraction are deeply connected. Your company’s workplace culture and values play a key role in both. According to recent research by Gartner, a growing number of workers in Australia feel disengaged and view their management less favourably. By focusing on your employee value proposition, your business can avoid these challenges. Here is how an EVP comes into it.
What is an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
An employee value proposition is the unique package of value, both tangible and intangible, that your organisation offers to its workforce in return for their skills, experience, hard work, and commitment to the business.
All successful businesses are built on a set of on core values and ideals. The first step towards building your company’s EVP is to articulate these values and create a mission statement to act on them.
Having a well-defined employee value proposition enables you to reward employees in line with your values. It ensures your team members’ work will embody those values. With a defined EVP, you can hire, develop and retain people who are on the same wavelength.
4PG’s Employee Value Proposition Framework
Here at Four Pillars Group, we refer to our EVP as our ‘People Promise’. Our regular one-on-one reviews and feedback process defines our expectations and goals, and our EVP allows us to reward our people for their commitment and achievements, which helps us meet our targets.
We recognise that people who do great work deserve great support. This is why we care about developing a workplace culture of flexibility, learning and belonging. Our goal is to support our employees and businesses in achieving their career and financial goals. We encourage everyone to be the best they can be, both inside and outside of the work environment.
Our employee value proposition framework comprises of five key pillars (yes, we added one!)
- Compensation
- Benefits
- Career progression
- Environment
- Culture
We look at our EVP holistically, by considering these key questions:
- Why did our employees choose to join us?
- What do they enjoy about working here?
- What do they value most?
Many recruitment companies believe simply linking pay to billing performance is enough to keep their employees satisfied. But we see things differently. Looking beyond compensation allows us to identify the other benefits we offer to employees, and the areas where we can improve. Seeing the big picture helps us create a more fulfilling workplace.
Examples of EVP For Recruiters
Let’s consider employee value proposition examples from recruitment companies we’ve partnered with. Our portfolio contains businesses with a real variety of values, ideals and missions, and their EVPs are just as diverse!
I’m fortunate to work with a female business leader who is deeply committed to empowering women, both as business owners and senior recruiters. She leads by example, offering her team enhanced parental leave, flexible work arrangements, and increased annual leave. These EVP initiatives put her in the strongest position to attract and retain female talent at every stage of their careers. She is practicing what she preaches.
Another business I support has a mission focused on corporate and social responsibility. The leader of this company has designed her employee reward programme to incorporate charitable donations and volunteering. This enables her to hire and retain people with a similar sense of social conduct, who appreciate such benefits outside of their standard compensation packages.
Working with the healthcare industry, in Australia, Curamoir Healthcare Recruitment is a business in our portfolio priding itself on supporting the health and wellbeing of its employees. We’ve worked with Curamoir’s team to offer an employee assistance programme (EAP) with counselling and career coaching, payments towards gym memberships and energiser days. That’s how we demonstrate our commitment to the positive mental health and wellbeing for our employees – replicating our client’s purpose in the world.
Advice for Managing Your Recruitment Business EVP
Signal Your Company’s Strengths and Success: When defining your company’s EVP, start by looking at what you already do, including the small things. Employers often fall into the trap of overlooking the benefits they already offer to teams, such as flexible start and finish times and working from home. Not all employers offer these benefits! Consider your full offering and put pen to paper to make it a comprehensive document. Providing this to employees, whether during the interview process or on their first day, ensures they understand and appreciate the value of working with your company.
Stay in Your Lane: It’s okay to focus on what works for your company! Instead of shaping your benefits programme around market trends, build it around your budget, your employees, and your company’s core values. Let these be the driving forces behind your EVP’s success. I’m fortunate to work with businesses that have strong values and a clear vision of who they are and what they stand for. Because of this, I truly believe they’ve been able to attract and retain talent who are fully on board with their culture and mission. That’s the key to a successful EVP!
The Takeaway
EVP is foundational to successfully managing your recruitment business – and we speak from experience! By defining an employee value proposition framework that is unique to your company values and goals, other pieces of the recruitment and retention puzzle will fall into place. An EVP allows you to hire and keep people who are in it for the long haul.
To learn more about how Four Pillars Group can help your business build a powerful EVP, get in touch with me or the team today.
