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Employee Value Proposition: A tool to help communicate why your agency is a great place to work

An Employee Value Proposition, or EVP, is the promise you make as an employer to your employees in return for their commitment to your organization, and it can be a valuable way to succinctly communicate why an individual should want to work for your agency—an employer’s “elevator pitch” of sorts.

If done right, an EVP can help differentiate your agency, or even your specific office, from other potential employers.

As you begin to structure your EVP, follow these guidelines:

• Underscore the reasons why employees choose to work in your organization.
• Define your organization as it is, not as you wish it to be.
• Write a statement that is evidence-based but does not necessarily state that evidence.
• Be succinct. Make your statement 2-3 sentences long and easy to remember.

An EVP can also speak to and convey any of the following elements of your agency where it excels:

• Employee Experience: the intangible aspects of your organization that an employee appreciates, such as opportunity for impact, interest in duties performed, interpersonal connections, job security and more.
• Recognition: the tangible and intangible forms of appreciation an employee may receive.
• Benefits: the additional support an employee receives, including things such as a pension, medical insurance, paid time off, health memberships and more.
• Compensation: the fixed cash compensation and performance-based rewards an employee receives. 

Agencies have more control over, and ability to change, some of these things more than others. So understanding what your current workforce appreciates will help you home in on your areas of strength as an employer.

The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings and other data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey can be used to identify the unique qualities of your agency or office that would motivate potential employees to apply.

You may do better in some areas and show room for improvement in others. For your EVP, you’ll want to focus on where you score well. Be sure to also use qualitative evidence to inform your statement. Gather feedback from staff—and even a sampling of your target applicants—to further refine the statement.

Consider how the Department of Veterans Affairs describes working in Support Services as an example of how agencies can communicate the opportunity their workforce has to improve the lives of the American public:

“Helping veterans and their families attain health and hope is our duty, and every team member at VA has a unique, meaningful role to play. We bring professionals from diverse fields and backgrounds together, united in the mission to serve those who served America. And every day, our Support Services team is making contributions that count.
With a host of training and educational resources available, VA continually invests in the potential of all its support staff, helping them exceed their goals. It’s a way to experience a more satisfying career with the added fulfillment of changing veterans’ lives.”

As with any tool, the most important aspect of defining an EVP is what you do with it. Once you have a strong EVP, empower those working on recruitment and hiring to use it. Some easy places to use your EVP are at job fairs and during interviews. You can also consider getting more creative—work this statement into a job posting or even a TikTok recruitment campaign!

Once your team is able to communicate why your agency is a great place to work clearly and consistently, and you begin to spread the word, your efforts to attract new talent will improve.

Our West Coast team just launched a program focused on helping agencies refine how they recruit and hire talent in California. Consider joining the West Coast Federal Talent Consortium community today to dig into more tools like this.

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