I’m using the word ‘discover’ in that title for a reason. I could have said ‘unearth’. I could have said ‘find’. (I could have said any other word that comes up when I click on synonyms for ‘discover’… wait, how dare you call me lazy?!).

What I would not have said is ‘create’.

I have this conversation quite a bit – that an Employment Value Proposition exists whether your company knows about it or not. At the the end of the day, if there are good reasons why people want to work for your organisation they can be used to find and attract candidates who will be a perfect fit – but you just can’t make those reasons up to suit you. They’re already there. So how do you find them?

There are simple steps to use which help uncover that information; and those steps, in no particular order, can look a little bit like this:

1. Talk to people
Find out what everyone is feeling. Not thinking – feeling. What emotions are stirred up when the organisation’s name is mentioned to its own employees? Are they about their individual experience, or something larger? Do thoughts of things like good (or bad) managers colour the overall experience? Talk – get people one-on-one, together in focus groups, conduct surveys… and if you can, get out into your business and chat with people in the halls.

2. Get information from as many sources as possible
Employees are exactly where to start your research, but they’re only the beginning. Everything you can get your hands on: client surveys, customer feedback, corporate marketing collateral, HR employee sentiment data, focus group outputs… gather whatever exists.

3. Weight your data appropriately
This can be a tough one. You must stay objective through this process – not everything you’ve gathered should be given the same focus. For example, feedback from someone who has just been through your recruitment process – unsuccessfully – is very different to data from, say, a focus group of shareholders. How to you balance those opinions so that you get something relevant and useful? (Actually – which of those two do you think is more important? Have a think about it.)

4. Be honest with yourself
If you’re going through this process, you’ll see things you didn’t really want to see. Not everyone is happy 100% of the time, and sometimes they’ll tell you about why they aren’t. Try and remember that the negative information is useful – don’t gloss over it because you only want to see the sunny-side.

Uncovering the data is only part one of your EVP diagnostic… working that data into something you can articulate to candidates is the next step of an incredibly worthwhile process. But I think we’ll save that for a future post!

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