Is Your Organization Living Up to Its Employee Value Proposition?

Today’s workers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the delivery of their employer’s employee value proposition (EVP) promises — but much of the blame may lie on misaligned expectations and poor communication.

According to recent research from Gartner, among the more than 1,300 surveyed workers:

Only 33% say their organization consistently delivers on its EVP promises.
Only 21% say their employer communicates enough about their EVP (and 75% of HR leaders say they don’t do a great job of internally communicating the EVP).
Just 16% say they know what their employer’s EVP entails.

A compelling EVP — a term used to describe and encapsulate the total rewards, recognition, support and culture an employer provides its workers — helps organizations attract and retain talent, boost loyalty and trust, reduce turnover, and maximize training costs.

But organizations won’t see those benefits if employees don’t feel the EVP promises are being delivered — or if they don’t know enough about the EVP in the first place.

“It’s not just attrition,” said Keyia Burton, a senior principal within Gartner’s HR practice. “The scarier part is disengagement and lower discretionary effort — the willingness to go above and beyond without being asked and without being offered more pay. When you lose that, that’s when you start getting real [unintended] business impacts — on innovation, on customer-centric focus, and more.”

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What’s Contributing to Employee Dissatisfaction?

Amy Edmondson, the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, points to the “enormous overnight shifts” in many employers’ work experience during the COVID-19 pandemic as a significant factor that has led to larger gaps in worker EVP expectations and what organizations can realistically provide.

Edmondson and Mark Mortensen, a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, a France-based nonprofit graduate business school, created an “Integrated EVP” tool that allows both employees and organizations to assess their EVP goals and offerings.

“Part of the perception of under-delivery comes from the combination of a misalignment about what actually is needed vs. wanted — they are not the same — and lack of clear communication from both sides,” Mortensen said.

Renya Spak, the chief growth officer at health engagement platform Well, said additional contributors to EVP challenges include:

Higher-than-ever turnover taking up HR and manager bandwidth,
An increasing focus on well-being that some employees don’t yet feel is being addressed, and
Increasing healthcare costs that make personalized benefits costly.

Challenges with Communication and Employee Trust

So, where do HR and total rewards professionals go from here?

Gartner’s survey found that:

Only 38% of workers believe their organization’s EVP offerings will improve in the future.
For each communication channel added to inform employees about their EVP, workers are 24% more likely to agree that their organization delivers on its EVP promises.

An EVP can’t just be created and shared as a recruitment tool — it needs to be embedded in every aspect of the business, said Hannah Wilken, the regional director of people science at employee experience platform Culture Amp.

“If the EVP is not embedded and tracked, it can be perceived as lip service and thereby potentially dismantle trust in the perceived ‘owners’ of the EVP at an organization,” Wilken said.

Why Total Rewards Pros Need to Take Note

When workers and employers don’t see eye-to-eye on an EVP, it can lead to animosity on both sides — with employees accusing their employers of being out-of-touch, and employers arguing that workers aren’t committed and don’t understand what it takes to run an organization, Mortensen said.

Edmondson added: “Anytime you see a company finding ways to escape the win-lose dynamic or the inherently confrontational, conflicting premise, and instead get on the same side of the table and ask, ‘What do we need to do together?’ — then you have more promise.”

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

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