How to create an inspiring Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

 

By Evelyn Jackson (CEO and Creative Director) & Hannah Jameson

An Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is one piece of the puzzle that makes up a highly functioning and engaged workforce. Below, we’ve put together the steps to help you discover your EVP and why you need one. Of course, these steps also apply to those companies with an existing EVP who could benefit from rethinking and reinventing their EVP.

An inspiring EVP will motivate existing employees and also lend a new life to the hiring process when acquiring new talent!

What is an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?

 An EVP is a bridge connecting your organisation to employees who currently work for you and the talent pool you want to bring in. It describes your business and why it has come into existence. 

An employee value proposition or EVP is the reason employees and talented people will work for you. 

It describes why your business exists, the experience they can expect, how the work is done and the outcome that can be expected as a result.It defines who you are as an employer and what you’re willing to offer employees in return.

Why do you need an EVP?

At Corporate Crayon, we work to inspire work that matters, so having a connection between your organisation and your employees is a critical factor in the success of your workplace. 

Like almost every deal you make, it’s about what you get and what the person sitting at the other side of the table gets. When you effectively communicate your EVP to current employees or potential hires, you’ll attract those who are naturally the best fit for your company. Similar to how you would re-energise your team, those values must be natural and authentic in their roles. 

Having an EVP gives you more opportunities to foster and attract those dream employees that are key to constructing a flourishing team. Listed below are just some of the benefits having an EVP can and will provide. 

  • Attract the right kind of talent for your organisation.

  • Retain your best talent.

  • Increase employee engagement and overall organisational engagement.

The 5 Steps To Get You There

How you define your EVP can be a challenge for some. Often, it’s hard to conceptualise the defining factors that make up your organisation. It also can be tricky when you’ve been looking inwards for so long that outside help is the best resource.

1) Know Your Audience

The first step in the process is to know your audience, both inside and outside your organisation. It’s who you’ll be talking to; if you don’t know who they are, you’ll be talking to no one. 

Discovering your audience’s why is the first important step to uncovering the unknown. Being authentically curious allows you to uncover and understand your audience. For instance, you can uncover what they value. Why do your employees value working for your organisation rather than your competitor? And what is their motivation that’s the driving force behind their work? Why do people in your industry/sector want to move roles? What are they looking for?

Asking and, more importantly, listening to these answers will give you the invaluable information you need.

2) Define Your Offerings

What makes your company unique? And why is that important to the success of your organisation?

Why should an employee or new talent come work for you rather than your competitor? Is it your brand story and the work you do, or is it the employee experience you provide? Or you've got a point of difference within your organisation that draws employees in. Defining every element and aligning it to your ambition as an organisation is critical. It is this alignment that will drive authenticity in the experience your audience will see.

It’s discovering the answers to these questions that will help to understand your makeup as a company and assist in building an EVP that reflects who you are.

3) Tell Your Story

After you’ve completed your research and defined your offerings, it’s time to develop the story you want to tell. This stage involves planning and developing your EVP definition, the story and the expression. It's pivotal during this stage to engage key stakeholders and test the direction you are taking. It is critical to involve your marketing experts, who are the brand custodians and gain their support. Their thoughts about a revised EVP should remain in alignment and work to complement how you are positioned with your customers.

4) Develop Meaningful Creative

With a strong understanding of your EVP story and how it can work with your brand, developing meaningful creative should be easy. What is the visual language you will use to communicate your EVP inside and outside your organisation?

Thinking ahead to how your EVP will be used, where do you need it most? How will it come to life in the eyes of your audience? Then creating a visual language that can adapt and be applied to all mediums where you need it. Be it your website, internal communication, social media, job advertisements, internal events, training and development, benefits and even office space design. Your visual language should reflect the story and vice versa.


Your creative needs to be tested with your audience and then reworked to take into account their input. Remembering the audience for an EVP is often both internal and external.

5) Simple Application

An EVP needs to be launched, yes. But importantly, an EVP needs to live beyond the excitement at launch. Create an approach that works for your organisation to reinforce the EVP in its early stages (6-12 months), ensuring you develop a playbook or toolkit for leaders and employees to use to communicate your EVP. In doing so, you will start to see your EVP be embraced and, better still, be integrated into your organisation’s fabric.

Reviewing your policies and benefits to ensure they’re in line with your EVP and paying particular attention to how you communicate these is important to gain adoption, celebration, and, ultimately, to inspire your audience.

Keep measuring your EVP (with key metrics and a feedback loop) on how it is delivering your objectives, being conscious that significant change inside or outside the organisation will impact how effective it can be. 

How Corporate Crayon can help

Creating an EVP is a process; it often takes an external perspective and expertise to achieve its full potential. We know the value of the investment in creating an inspiring EVP. And it's not something you can do overnight.

At Corporate Crayon, we work with organisations to inspire work that matters with connection, performance,  and employee energy. To achieve this, we help organisations with Employee Value Proposition (EVP) Consulting.


For help with creating an inspiring EVP for your organisation, or to find out more, contact us today.

Article, BlogEvelyn JacksonEVP, employeevalueproposition, Employee Experience, approach