Building an attractive EVP to overcome talent shortages
posted 13 Feb 25
EVP, or Employee Value Proposition, is an incentive package for employers to better attract and retain top talent. By offering an enticing package up front, companies can see a more fruitful hiring process as they attract more talent to their role, and candidates can apply for a job that puts their happiness first.
Why an EVP matters
Companies across very different sectors like healthcare, industrial roles, and hospitality are facing a common challenge: talent shortages. There is regular reporting of skill shortages, particularly in digital and soft skills.
In order to attract top talent, we believe the solution is to offer more than competitive pay. To supplement your offered salary, companies should offer an engaging EVP to stand out to the best talent in the pool.
According to an Office Angels report, companies with a proactively managed EVP have seen benefits such as a 9% decrease in annual turnover, a 23% increase in profitability and an 18% increase in productivity.
An EVP package can include benefits like flexible work shifts, emotional support resources and career growth opportunities and support, which is particularly attractive to professionals in healthcare. Additionally, you can offer packages that focus on candidate job satisfaction and a positive workplace culture, such as employee benefits like discounted meals or gym memberships. For sectors like industrial work, you can focus on safety, training and development to attract top talent.
Steps to building an EVP
1. Identifying key motivators for your workforce
It’s important to identify the values and benefits that are important to the candidates in your sector. As demonstrated above, healthcare professionals might have different priorities to professionals in industrial roles.
For instance, it’s important for healthcare professionals to be promised stability and recognition for critical roles, whereas driving candidates might prioritise dependability, fair pay, and a strong sense of security. Engineering companies should offer opportunities for innovation and problem solving in an industry famed for those skills, and call centre professionals are likely to appreciate flexibility to allow for a better work-life balance.
Use data-driven insights to understand sector-specific challenges and align your EVP with these insights to address candidate’s challenges in the industry. You might want to conduct or consult surveys within your industry to offer insights into what is most important to the talent you’re hoping to attract – or simply remember the first rule of management: listen to your employees.
2. Showcase competitive benefits
Once you have identified what top talent prioritises in a role, you can lean into it with your EVP package. Offer training and upskilling opportunities, for example, certifications for construction workers or roadmaps to develop in the company, allowing you to retain staff in the long run rather than hiring new staff. Additional retention incentives can include loyalty bonuses for high-demand roles such as nursing staff.
3. Communicate effectively
It’s a lesson that consistently needs to be learned: communication. There’s no use having benefits that no one knows they can gain from. Make sure to detail them in job descriptions, but also use job adverts, career fairs, social media, and employee testimonials.
Remember to also communicate your values during interviews with candidates. Ensure that EVP themes and industry challenges (and how you intend to correct them) are discussed to engage candidates personally. You will show that your company puts employees first and offers a workplace culture that values what they value.
Next steps
As time goes on and roles are filled, you can go back to new hires and established teams within your company to gain some feedback. Ensure the EVP still resonates with current and future talent, and if the challenges addressed are still relevant in your sector.
Look back over your EVP to regularly update it to ensure that it reflects the changing market conditions and employee priorities.
A well-thought-out EVP is a useful tool in attracting and retaining top talent in your sector, but it’s just as important to tailor your EVP to your candidates as it is for a candidate to tailor their CV to your role.
By understanding your workforce’s motivations and communicating your offerings effectively, your organisation can become the employer of choice in a competitive market. This will allow you to attract talent that can tackle the challenges of industry-wide skill shortages and allow your business to grow.
