Employee Value Proposition (EVP): Examples and Guide
Your employee value proposition (EVP) shapes how current and prospective employees perceive the value of working in your organization. When labor markets tighten and voluntary attrition rises, a strong EVP becomes a competitive advantage. Employee expectations have shifted: workers today evaluate their employers against a wider set of criteria than pay alone, and organizations that fail to keep up risk losing top talent to those that do.
What is an EVP?
In simplest terms, the employee value proposition is the total set of rewards, values, culture, and growth opportunities an employer provides in exchange for the skills, experience, and commitment employees bring to the organization. In practice, it should accurately reflect the reality of what employees experience working in the organization, not just what appears on a careers page. Just as the unique value proposition (UVP) or unique selling proposition (USP) focuses on how a product or service satisfies customer needs and wants better than other solutions, EVP focuses on how the organization meets employee needs and desires better than its competitors.
EVP differs from employer brand in that it is internally focused. Employer brand is externally directed and shared with customers, centered on product or service quality and market position, but rarely organizational culture. Employer brand is just one component of a broader EVP, because EVP goes far beyond company reputation to encompass the full employee experience.
Perceptyx research identifies the five EVP attributes employees rate both most important and most favorably, and reveals exactly where organizations are falling short. The data also shows which attributes predict intent to stay — and how companies like Google and Target are adjusting their EVPs to compete.
What matters most to your employees? Our free People Analytics Playbook will help you ask the right questions so you can craft an attractive EVP.
What do strong employee value proposition examples look like?
The best examples of the employee value proposition represent the most valuable attributes that an employer provides to its employees, which may be unique advantages over the competition. These align closely to the elements of the employee experience that are most important to employees:
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Relationship with manager and co-workers
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Autonomy in performing work
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Physical workspace
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Pay and benefits
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Opportunities for development and advancement
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Feeling of accomplishment/contribution to the organization’s success
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Trust in leaders and their vision for the organization’s future
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Culture of the organization
Aligning your organization's EVP to these elements requires ongoing attention as employee expectations shift. Labor market data consistently shows high rates of job switching and career pivots, with a significant share of employees open to leaving their current employer within the next year.
With so much movement in the talent market, evaluate your EVP from the perspective of the people you hope to attract, engage, and retain. How do employees perceive the value of working in your organization? Does your current EVP still reflect what prospective employees are looking for? Many organizations find that their EVP needs regular updating to match what matters most to employees right now.
What do employees value most in an EVP?
While aligning EVPs with the important elements of the work experience should always be the goal, recent research conducted by Perceptyx clarifies what appeals most to employees in the current moment.
In the study, we asked more than 1,000 employees to rate 29 EVP attributes in order of importance, and to rank their current employers’ performance on each attribute. These were the top five EVP attributes that were most important to most respondents:
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Health benefits
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Compensation
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Retirement benefits
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Work-life balance
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Pay for performance
While attributes like compensation, health benefits, and development opportunities remain important to employees, survey responses revealed a shift in what employees most value now. The five attributes rated both most important to employees and most favorably (in terms of their current employer’s performance) were:
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Company stability
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Manager quality
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Team quality
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Social responsibility
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Remote-friendly
Several of these attributes are probably artifacts of the pandemic; stability has likely become more important to employees in industries like retail and hospitality, which were heavily impacted. Half of manufacturing employees surveyed had learned new skills or were on the path to gaining new skills, with most of them gravitating toward tech-heavy roles. These workers are acquiring IT skills to enable a pivot into a more stable career.
Work-life balance and remote-friendly work options are where organizations are not currently meeting the mark on EVP attributes important to employees.
While employees in the survey rated their employers favorably on remote work options, this may reflect the timing of the survey relative to broader return-to-office transitions. More than two out of three employees want to work remotely at least part time, yet fewer than one in 10 job opportunities are remote-friendly.
This gap persists even in roles well suited to remote work. In software development, for example, fewer than one in five opportunities are remote-friendly. The disconnect between employee preferences and available options makes flexibility a key differentiator in any EVP.
So what are the implications of this mismatch between employees’ wants and what is being offered by most organizations? The research shows linkage to employee intent to stay, the strongest predictor of turnover. For those employees who did not rate their current organization favorably on the top five EVP attributes most important to them, only 52% intend to stay in their job for the next 12 months.
On the flip side, among employees who rate their employer favorably on all the EVP attributes ofgreatest importance, 96% intend to stay for at least the next 12 months. These findings confirm that an attractive employee value proposition directly influences whether employees stay or leave.
How do you build an EVP that retains top talent?
What defines an attractive employer? For most employees, it’s satisfying those EVP attributes that matter most to them. Just as consumers make purchase decisions by comparing features and benefits, employees play mental chess to weigh their options in terms of which organization offers them more of what they want. Who provides the most value to them as an employee? Each individual has different things they value most, so each will make a different calculation.
The starting point is to ask your employees which EVP attributes they value most highly and how they rate your organization's performance on each of them. Where large companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on compensation and benefits, understanding which attributes top talent values most can help direct those funds strategically.
In large organizations with a variety of departments and roles, there may be a number of unique EVPs specific to roles, locations, or units. Zeroing in on what matters most for each group of employees with targeted survey items can help you understand the unique EVP for each group and prevent unwanted turnover. While the enterprise may have an overall EVP for the organization, this type of information allows the EVP to be refined for segments of the organization most important to the business. Tailoring the EVP for these critical segments to the unique mix of attributes favored by those groups will help you win the war for talent – both by retaining workers and attracting new employees.
A good example of an employee value proposition attribute that’s been tweaked to meet current employee wants and needs is Target’s August 2021 announcement of debt-free education assistance for its 340,000 employees.
The quit rate in retail jobs has doubled over the past year; Target’s decision may reflect a calculation that offering educational opportunities will allow the company to keep employees aboard for at least the length of time it takes to obtain a degree. For an employee who takes advantage of the new benefit, it might mean the difference between staying in the job for a year or less – or staying for the two to four years or longer it will take to complete a degree program. Target no doubt also hopes the program will enable cultivation of employees for promotion or move to corporate roles. This is one practical way to use an EVP to attract, engage, and retain talent – and mitigate the effects of mass resignations.
Organizations across industries are adjusting their EVPs in response to ongoing labor market competition, and likely some in your industry have already done so. Evaluating how your EVP compares to what competitors offer, and identifying where changes are needed, will position you to attract and retain the best employees.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main components of an employee value proposition?
Perceptyx research that surveyed more than 1,000 employees across 29 EVP attributes identified these five as most important to employees overall: health benefits, compensation, retirement benefits, work-life balance, and pay for performance. A second group, rated both highly important and currently delivered well by employers, includes company stability, manager quality, team quality, social responsibility, and remote-friendly work options. A complete EVP addresses attributes from both sets.
How do you create an employee value proposition?
Survey your employees to find out which EVP attributes they rank as most important, then ask them to rate your organization's current performance on each one. The gap between importance and performance scores shows you where to act first. In large organizations, run this exercise by role, location, or business unit, because frontline workers and knowledge workers rarely share the same priorities. Once you know the gaps, adjust benefits, policies, or management practices to close the ones that matter most to the groups your business depends on most.
Get in touch and let us show you how.
Get tips on how to enhance the employee experience from our free guide, The Employee Experience Playbook.
How is an EVP different from an employer brand?
An employer brand is externally focused: it tells customers and job-market audiences about your company's reputation, products, and market position. An EVP is internally focused: it captures what employees actually experience on the job, including pay, manager relationships, development opportunities, and organizational culture. Your employer brand is one element of your EVP, not a substitute for it.