As a tech scale-up, there are a lot of different things to think about when it comes to investing your profits back into the business. If you’re focusing on business growth and expanding your team, one of the best places to start is investing in developing a stand-out employer value proposition (EVP).

An EVP is a valuable tool in recruitment, retention, engagement and also in understanding your scale-up’s unique position in the recruitment market. In this article, we’re going to explain the value of investing in an EVP for tech scale-ups and then share some of the best ways that you can promote yours.

What Is an Employer Value Proposition?

EVP stands for employer value proposition, which is the term used to describe the experience you offer potential employees as a place to work. It includes your company culture and corporate values, employee benefits and the day-to-day experience that employees have whilst working for your business.

Having an employer value proposition is a way of showing potential job candidates why they should apply for a role and what they’ll get if they join your tech scale-up. You can use it to establish what makes you unique as an employer to stand out from your competitors, along with creating an impression of your scale-up that helps to improve your reputation in the tech industry.

The Benefits of an EVP

One of the biggest benefits of investing in an employer value proposition strategy is that it can be a massive help with recruitment. When an organisation effectively develops and delivers on its EVP, it can see a 69% reduction in employee turnover, saving a lot of money from having to source and hire new staff and also creating a stronger sense of team culture. 

Having a good EVP can also cut recruitment costs, with a 50% cost-per-hire reduction and a hiring process that can be up to two times faster. This is a major benefit for a scale-up, as being efficient with your budget is a priority when you’re trying to stabilise growth and build up a portfolio of work. 

Tech scale-ups can also attract a much wider range of talent when they invest in developing a strong employer value proposition, helping to hire more talented candidates which can lead to more innovation and revenue growth. Companies that manage and promote their employer brand have been found to source candidates from around 60% of the labour market, which is 20% more than companies without a proper EVP. 

Your employer brand includes your company’s culture, values and goals, which are all worth defining and promoting if you want to stand out as an employer in today’s recruitment market. 88% of active job seekers say that they consider company culture important when they’re looking for a new role, with 32% of this group willing to take a 10% pay cut if they can work for a cause they feel strongly about. If you want to compete with competitor scale-ups, you need an EVP that offers candidates a desirable company culture. 

Once you’ve hired employees that feel aligned with your company culture, your EVP can also help improve their performance at work. Companies with a well-executed EVP see a 29% increase in commitment from their new hires, leading to greater employee engagement and more support from teams on a range of projects.

How to Define Your EVP

The benefits of a clear and desirable employer value proposition impact the very first stages of recruitment right the way to employee engagement and retention, so you’ll see the impact across the board if your tech scale-up invests in developing yours. If you’re new to the world of EVPs or feel unsure about how to properly define one, we’ve laid out the necessary steps below to get you started with EVP development.

Define Your USP

Your employer value proposition strategy should define you as better than your competitors, which means that it needs to include what makes your scale-up different. When you’re defining your EVP, start by going back to your business's unique selling point and consider this from the perspective of a potential employee.

Perhaps the projects and work that you do offer a unique opportunity for employees, or perhaps you’re uniquely positioned in a tech industry sector to provide a service that hasn’t been offered before. You’ll likely already have thought about your USP from a customer or client’s perspective, but your EVP requires you to look at it through the lens of potential job candidates.

List Company Values

Company values and culture are a huge part of what makes up the EVP of a company. This involves the motivations and priorities that drive business decisions and employee behaviour, all of which have a big impact on the experience of an employee as part of your tech scale-up.

Take the same approach that you did with your USP; go through each of your company values and consider how this affects your employee’s experience of their jobs. Then think about company culture in general and highlight the perks or key features of this, speaking to current employees to get a better understanding if necessary.

Outline Employee Benefits

Employee benefits are a key part of company culture, but they should be addressed separately when you’re defining your EVP. This is because an EVP is primarily used to attract job candidates and this group is going to be particularly interested in what else a role offers outside of the work itself.

To make sure that your benefits at least match up to what competitor businesses are offering, and ideally try to present a better set of options to potential employees. These don’t just have to be classic benefits like holidays, flexible hours and health insurance; think about your company values and consider whether there are ways you can bring in benefits that relate to these.

Describe Workplace Experience

Finally, part of your employer value proposition is the day-to-day experience that employees have as part of your tech scale-up. If you have a permanent workplace, this will revolve around office experience and culture. If your employees work remotely, this will include any internal procedures and communication methods that keep the team connected and create your scale-up structure.

Workplace experience will tie into company culture and benefits, so you might not need to separately describe during EVP development. You should still consider it however, and perhaps speak to your current employees about what they enjoy to get a good idea of what other candidates might be attracted to.

What Makes a Good Employer Value Proposition?

Creating a good employer value proposition involves understanding the kind of candidate that you’re trying to attract. This won’t be as specific as when you're putting together ideal candidate profiles for specific roles, but needs to drill down into offering an experience that the right kinds of candidates are looking for.

You want your EVP to appeal to candidates from a range of backgrounds and stages of their career, but if you want to use it as an effective recruitment and retention tool then you’ll need to tailor your offering. Outline what it is that your ideal candidates are looking for from an employer, and keep this at the forefront of your EVP.

For example, if you’re a scale-up that works in a very niche industry sector, you want a team that’s made up of specialists in this area with the necessary skills to grow a business with a specific purpose. Think about which of your values and elements of your company culture align with this specialism and also consider what you offer candidates that help them develop relevant skills and stay connected with innovation in this niche sector.

Another example is if you’re a ‘tech for good’ start-up that exclusively works on projects or supports businesses that bring about positive change. Your EVP needs to be catered towards candidates and employees that care about doing good with their work and will be motivated by the impact their work has, along with values and benefits that align with this ‘for good’ purpose.

It can be tricky to find the right balance between creating an EVP that appeals to a diverse range of candidates but also designing one that clearly defines your tech scale-up as a unique place to work. But what matters the most in EVP development is offering an employment opportunity that candidates are going to enjoy, which is why speaking to your current employees is one of the best ways to tap into what about your scale-up makes it a desirable place to work.

Promoting Your EVP

Once you’ve developed a strong employer value proposition, you need to ensure that you’re promoting it if you want to enjoy the benefits that it brings to recruitment and employee experience. Here are five of the best ways to make this happen.

1. Include Your EVP in Job Adverts

Your employer value proposition is a major draw for potential employees, so you need to start sharing this right at the start of your recruitment process in your job adverts. EVP messaging in job adverts will help you appeal to the right kinds of candidates straight off the mark, making the rest of the recruitment process much easier.

Instead of just listing benefits and salaries, talk about what your scale-up offers as an employer and use language that directly addresses the reader, such as ‘Do you want to work for a growing business dedicated to developing new tech for good solutions?’ or ‘Do you want control over your working hours and flexibility with holidays?’.

2. Feature Every Aspect in Employer Branding

Employer branding is the way that your EVP is marketed, so you need to ensure that you’re featuring every aspect of this in your marketing efforts in some way. You canshare information about your mission and USP on your website and in blog or newsletter content, but you can also feature a lot of aspects of your company culture through social media marketing.

Your EVP is also defined by the reviews and reputation that your tech scale-up gains from your employees, so make sure that you’re managing your digital presence and monitoring any discussion of your scale-up that might affect your reputation.

3. Share Employee Experience With Content

Your employee’s experience at work is a huge part of what makes your scale-up a desirable place to work, so this should be a key focus in your EVP promotion.

Social media is a fantastic place to share this, using photos, videos and even encouraging employee takeovers of your scale-up’s accounts so that your followers see what working at your company is really like. You can also ask employees to create written content that can be shared on a blog or as part of email marketing, either talking about their work at your tech scale-up or just sharing insight into industry trends or developments.

4. Practise What You Preach

Finally, remember not to focus all of your efforts on promoting your employer value proposition to potential candidates. You also need to ensure that you’re creating the experience that you’re advertising in your scale-up so that employees will want to remain working for you and new employees will be satisfied with the experience when they start a new role.

Keep channels of communication open with your employees about whether they feel connected to company culture and happy with benefits and workplace experience, and be open to adapting your EVP based on what works well.

Summary

If you haven’t defined your employment value proposition then it can feel like you've got too much to distil down into a proposal, which is where working with an expert can help. There are plenty of benefits to developing a good EVP, so the cost of the investment will undoubtedly pay off in how it impacts your recruitment success and employee satisfaction.

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