A New Approach to the Employee Value Proposition

Gallup recently published its State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report and the results are grim. Engagement has dropped another 2% in the U.S., with employees continuing to check out at record levels.

In fact, according to Gallup, the majority of your employees (60%) are disengaged at work — with 18% actively disengaged.

This means most of your workforce is simply putting in a less than optimal effort to drive your business forward — and probably looking for another job. While nearly a fifth of your employees are actively doing harm by undercutting business goals and railing against leaders.

What’s going on?

The truth is companies leaned heavily on their employees during and after the pandemic – and employees, particularly Gen Z, are pushing back and reshaping their relationship with their employer.

They want more flexibility and autonomy. A focus on mental well-being. A better work-life balance. And to work for companies whose purpose and values align with theirs.

And while most organizations have recognized this fundamental shift, the empathy gap between workers and company leaders is now bigger than ever. As the WSJ put it, “rarely have bosses and workers been so at odds over so much.”

Rebuilding employee trust and engagement.

Organizations need to rebuild employee trust and engagement. Particularly with the 60% of employees who are disengaged. When you think about it, they’re your greatest opportunity for growth if you can re-engage them by clearly reinforcing and rearticulating your promise and aligning them behind it.

The most effective way to express that promise is through an Employee Value Proposition (EVP), conveying your unique offering as an employer (“the gets”), balanced with the expectations (“the gives”) for prospective and current talent.

However, the truth is EVPs have been around for a long time and frankly many of them are too transactional, vague and generic. More important, they often don’t authentically reflect the actual lived experience of your employees.

Which is why FleishmanHillard has taken a new approach.

A new approach to fulfilling your employee promise.

In our report “Unlock the Power of your EVP: Fulfilling Your Brand Promise to Talent,” we highlight how the conversation has shifted from compensation and benefits to one that reflects employees’ new expectations. An EVP that:

Clearly articulates what you value, and what you value in others, in an authentically human voice.

Explains how you provide employees with opportunities to grow.

Tells the story of who you are and what you stand for, highlighting your commitment to shared purpose.

Represents your vision for the candidate and employee experience – from entry to exit. 

Spells out your expectations of employees in creating a safe, caring and inclusive workplace.

Maps out how you’re empowering employees to make well-being a priority and find balance in their personal and professional lives.

The human deal.

This new approach to EVP calls for a human deal that recognizes employees as people, not just workers, and delivers on attributes that allow the integration of an individual’s employee experience and life experience. The nine elements to get right:

1. Well-being

Compensation and Benefits: Am I rewarded fairly? Do my benefits and compensation align with my skills and experience?

Work/Life Balance: Am I able to balance and integrate my personal and professional life? Am I able to perform my job wherever I am?

Safe and Efficient Workplace: Is the technology effective? Do I feel both physically and psychologically safe?

2. Growth

Recognition: Am I acknowledged and rewarded for good work?

Advancement: Do I have opportunities to learn, grow and advance my career?

Pride and Affiliation: Am I proud of my company? Can I grow as my company grows? Does it provide me with challenging and meaningful work on prestigious projects?

3. Belonging

Belonging: Do I feel a sense of belonging? Is my firm inclusive and diverse? Do I feel accepted?

Culture: Does my company have a positive, collaborative and inspiring workplace culture?

Purpose: Is my company committed to having a positive impact on society? Does my company’s purpose and values align with mine?

Of course, the work doesn’t end with mapping out the EVP itself. From top to bottom, leaders throughout the organization need to understand the company’s EVP strategy and the role they play in bringing it to life for their teams.

This requires thoughtful approaches that continue to inform, equip, align and engage leaders at all levels in making your EVP a lived experience, not just words on a page. Managers, as employees’ most sought-out and most trusted sources of information, are a particularly critical link in this chain.

With these considerations addressed, the EVP should and can be a strategic brand platform and an essential component of your corporate business strategy. Whether you’re just about to define your EVP or refresh an existing one, if done right, it can drive performance and profits, with noticeable improvements in important business metrics, such as turnover, absenteeism and accidents.

A strong EVP has the power to transform your disengaged workers into motivated and engaged employees aligned with your business priorities.

Paul Vosloo leads the Talent & Transformation team out of FleishmanHillard’s New York office.

In an artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) filled world, competition is fierce. The will to ethically utilize the problem-solving, efficiency-boosting and humanlike tech has found its way to the forefront of business strategies globally and the race to successfully integrate it to optimize operations is on.

We’re now seeing these intelligent machines emerge with immense impact on our daily lives. Its limitless potential and accessibility is empowering just about anyone to give the tech a go. Experts have high expectations for AI, with digital advances believed to range from personalized medical care to environmental sustainability by 2035 (PEW Research). These systems also come with risk and worry of what they could lead to — from misinformation to unemployment.

There’s plenty to unpack when it comes to AI and ML — the good, the bad and the ugly — and industry conferences and events are becoming a hub to talk tech. It’s a crowded landscape, and every AI and ML event is trying to stand out. But as you try to navigate the dense environment, there are a few key findings that can help make for an impactful event.

Plan for the Specific Needs of In-person and Virtual Media Attendees

The pandemic pushed us into a hybrid event model where a virtual component is now the expectation, no longer the exception. And though virtual events open the door to borderless media attendance, content must be engaging and thought provoking, especially when seemingly everyone is trying to talk about AI. We need to keep media tuned into the live stream. Remember: it’s easy to click to another browser and start multitasking. We want to prevent that from happening.

But lest we forget, in person events are back, and while it’s not as easy to walk out of an exhibit hall mid presentation as it is to exit a livestream, media have busy and ever-changing schedules. We want to remain on their calendars and need dynamic, immersive experiences to draw in their RSVPs. 

Through a strategic approach, events can be mutually beneficial for both reporters — whether onsite or from the comfort of their home office — and for your brand. So, when you’re in the early stages of planning, be sure to ask yourself a few key questions that can help shape that strategy: Is this session best served as a livestream or can I make it more engaging through an in-person session? Are there any partnerships that can be leveraged to enhance discussion or reach an expanded audience? What is the key differentiator of my AI event from others, and am I clearly articulating that in external communications?

Create a Unique Angle, Specific to Your Audience

We know the AI and ML event landscape is packed, and it’s becoming increasingly challenging to make a lasting impression. In fact, since November 2022, 98% of tech-centric events shifted their focus to AI and ML regardless of it being part of their strategy prior. But as events look to include AI as a unique driving factor in its core narrative, it ends up having the opposite affect — it eliminates differentiation.

So, what’s the solve? Organizations need to be strategic in their event approach and carve out space in an oversaturated AI environment. Recognizing that not all AI is created equal is key and making a point to understand your audience and shift the broader AI conversation to a targeted, niche dialog can make a big impact.

Develop Your Post-event Strategy Early

Pre-event traction is a given, post-event relevance is not. A post-event strategy is critical to maintain your audience once the hype dwindles and the event wraps. To bring some longevity to your event, know what stories to tell and where to tell them. To achieve this, map your narrative and internal stories to how the topic is being covered in the news, along with your target audience’s news consumption habits. With this data at hand, you can tell high-impact stories that not only break through to your audience but move them to action.

Focus on High-level Content and Engagement Over Celebrities

Despite what you’ve seen, A-list stars don’t drive event attendance or talkability. Their keynote or live performance won’t convince experts to register. The truth is, audience-centric content, thought-provoking conversations and networking opportunities with like-minded professionals will. These attendees are eager to collaborate and hear unique perspectives on various AI topics; and they were likely interested before you announced your headlining celebrity. Don’t use up your budget on a high-profile guest.

So, instead of an award-winning actor, bring in subject matter experts who will encourage ideas and innovation, or industry thought leaders who will initiate discussions around groundbreaking AI advances. If agenda content and the experience is tailored to your target audience, attendance will follow suit.

Navigating an inflating AI and ML event landscape will continue to be an uphill battle, so long as innovations continue and use-case breakthroughs emerge. There’s room for everyone and every AI event to have a seat at the table if you plan accordingly, carve out space in an inundated AI event environment, take a driven approach to reaching the right audience and bring in relevant thought leaders to encourage engaging conversations.

E-commerce, while hardly a nascent industry, has yet to meet peak maturation. Like most grumpy teens, it’s still communicating in monosyllabic grunts — but this won’t cut the mustard in a landscape dominated by rapidly evolving technologies, sustainability issues and ethics concerns. It’s time for e-commerce businesses to step up their comms strategies to cement their places as the future of retail. All in, e-commerce platforms should rethink their core purpose in a circular economy, one which is rooted in ethics and sustainability principles. It is critical for brands to not only listen to their consumers but to respond — whether that be through investment in technology to improve the customer experience, or to hang some big brand goals around sustainability. In a world where culture is currency, the ones that can’t keep pace with shifting demands and expectations won’t survive.

Is Retail Really Innovating?
Investment in technology went into hyper speed as brick-and-mortar stores shuttered in the face of COVID-19, and it shows no sign of slowing. Innovation and transformation that previously would have taken years, happened overnight. While this has helped spur the next generation of multichannel touchpoints, it presents its own problems. The everyday consumer has yet to truly understand the benefits technologies such as chatbots, analytics and AI can bring them. Consumers expect seamless interactions that ultimately benefit them; whether it’s personalized recommendations, loyalty programs or easier, more efficient check-out. The businesses that can articulate their brand promise will, ultimately, be the ones that win out.

E-commerce businesses need to be clear about how and why they are using technology to improve the customer experience; they need to think about what true innovation is. It could be argued that solutions are tacked on without any real thought, just a simple application of technology that already exists — we must question what the real revolution in e-commerce will be in this era of digital transformation.

Commitment Issues
This piecemeal approach to e-commerce needs an overhaul – one that is cemented in the commitment to become vital to consumers through far deeper levels of connection, both online and offline. Delivering on this vision requires companies to put e-commerce strategies at the center of their organizations so they can choreograph experiences that meet customers’ ever-rising expectations.

But this is no pipe dream. Some brands are generating vast amounts of revenue through a continued commitment to digital transformation and they’re doing it quickly. And it isn’t just legacy players doing so; newer entrants lack the burden of disparate, siloed systems and can, therefore, be much nimbler in attaining their goal of being true customer-led, digital-first platforms. However, many others continue to languish in an innovation no-man’s land for fear of cost, change and concerns — or more accurately, a combination of all three.

Know Your Consumers
The consumer experience is rapidly evolving from a transactional process focused simply on shopping and buying, to a model built on deep, enriching relationships at every step of the customer journey. Retailers and brands must become a key staple in their consumers’ lives. But first, they need to build a sophisticated understanding of the way consumers live, eat, shop, work and play — and use this knowledge to provide value in the right place, at the right time, via the right channels.

An experience-led consumer journey is no small feat. It will require a consumer-centric view of the entire business, from supply chain and operating model to content and marketing, all the while being propped up by technology ecosystem powered by real-time consumer data. With a marriage between infrastructure and brand, the e-commerce of tomorrow is ripe for the taking today.