Are your teams happy? Do you know what percentage are looking elsewhere? Statistically some of your staff are likely to be looking for a better deal.
The time it takes to fill a job increased by 50 days since last year, to an average of 68 days. That's a time to hire statistic you don't want to still be battling with in 2023.
You still have projects to staff and teams to keep productive. What should tech leaders like you do?
Get to know the market
Two things are becoming increasingly clear:
People are reluctant to move jobs because their financial situation could become unstable
People are equally dissatisfied in their current roles, and likely looking for a better deal
The market is reflecting the first point more tangibly than the second right now, with good talent hard to source. But it's not that great talent isn't looking... it's that they're harder to convince.
To weather this staffing storm, you need to know how to keep your current teams from splintering, whilst attracting the talent your competitors want.
Here's how.
Audit your company
Auditing your EVP is a great way to signal if internal changes need to happen. To do this, you need to understand the boots-on-the-ground experience of your people. Find out from existing staff:
- Why did they join?
- Do they think the company is unique? If so, why?
- What do they value most about working for you?
- Why do they stay?
- Why do they leave?
Be all-encompassing in your data gathering, and weight feedback appropriately depending on the source. Focus groups, anonymised surveys, and exit interviews are all feasible ways to get this information.
Define key points
'Put together your EVP' is as vague an instruction as 'magic a brand out of thin air'. The key points of your EVP will include answers to the questions above. You'll also want to answer these questions:
Compensation
Are people satisfied with their compensation? What type of compensation do they value the most?
Salary is important here, but also bonuses and attitudes towards performance-based rewards.
More pressingly, is the organisational approach to reviews and performance-based rewards perceived as consistent and fair by staff? If your departments or teams are heavily middle-managed or silo’ed, differing approaches to bonuses and rewards may exist. Left unchecked, this brews quiet resentment.
Work-life Balance
What is the attitude to work-life balance? What do people value most?
Ask about 'benefits' - paid time off, holidays, pensions, flexible hours, parental policies. You may discover approach to Maternity/Paternity is considered inadequate, forcing staff to consider roles elsewhere when family planning becomes a concern. How can you improve life for existing employees?
Stability
What is the view on stability at your company?
Think about opportunities for progression, individualised learning, training, and the effectiveness/take-up of any mentorship or secondment programmes you offer. Keep this in context – in future, how will you communicate stability to prospective employees? Could you highlight plans for growth in a promotional video, or in the interview? Are you willing to be open about typical length of service for an employee?
Location
How do people feel about the company location?
Geographical location is important, but you want to know about the working environment, commute stories and any limitations, accessibility, and work-life balance.
Respect
Finally; do your employees feel respected? Do they respect others?
This asks about positive relationships, collaboration, team dynamics, culture, values, and beliefs.
Got answers to all of the above? You'll have more than enough to work with.
Hone your EVP
'Get creative' is a phrase so aimlessly flung around it may as well be a lexical strumpet. When it comes to crafting your EVP communications strategy, though, it pays to be that little bit different.
What matters is the content, the structure, the 'look and feel', and how you distribute your message. Helpfully, in that order.
A great example of an EVP formation process is Sky.
Sky has a formidable consumer presence, but their employer brand left much to be desired. In summary, this was how they developed it:
- Did a lot of internal research
- Discovered - Strong feeling of pride for those that work at Sky
- Sky Only experiences in the office environment
- 4 key points - 1. we're fans too, 2. be brilliant, 3. embrace pace, 4. together we can
- Summarised as 'A job you love to talk about'
- Prioritises distribution via social media channels
- Buy-in from internal recruiters using quizzes, training, competitions etc to get messaging on board and in front of candidates
- End to end messaging journey
Read about Sky’s EVP journey, or listen in this podcast episode from AIHR blog.
Get testing
Your test audience is, luckily, immediately accessible to you. Present your EVP to your staff and ensure it aligns. Smaller focus groups will invite more honest feedback.
This is a great point to glean insights on segmenting the overarching message further.
Although you don't want to amend it too much, it's important to take input from your staff on how to communicate key factors like benefits, compensation and progression. These are likely to have stark demographic differences depending on seniority level, age, parental status, etc.
Communicate...
To work, your EVP strategy needs grassroots, cross-organisational buy-in. Partly this means involving the right people from the start, like Brand and Marketing to maintain a sense of unity and to keep practicality in mind.
Communicating your EVP takes many shapes. You’re looking at embedding it into the copy on your website, adjusting how you speak to customers, introducing new campaigns.
...and embody.
Nobody wants to work somewhere with a sky-high employee churn rate. Now you know what’s important to your people, you can optimise retention efforts.
Living and breathing your EVP through your shared culture, values, policies and future is how you retain staff.
They joined for a reason. Now, help them want to stay.
Want an expert’s support to craft your EVP?
Big Red’s consultants want to talk to you. Working with us gives you end-to-end visibility of a seamless recruitment process; with a hefty focus on authentic communication. And in the end, you get high-calibre candidates aligned with your plans and values. Contact us.
