Becoming an Employer of Choice

Elysia Hegarty Associate Director at Future of Work Institute, Cpl Elysia.Hegarty@cpl.ie

Introducing the People Value Proposition

This year we are amid an ultra-competitive and globalised talent market. The great resignation, the great reset and quiet quitting were phrases commonly heard over the last year. More recently now we are hearing about “career cushioning”. Which sees workers reskilling and upskilling on their own time, while window shopping for new positions in case they become a victim of layo s.

Eurostat (2020) highlights a signi cant growing percentage of companies across all countries in Europe reporting hard to ll vacancy challenges. Many are choosing alternative work paths with an average of between 20-25% expected to work in some form of freelancing capacity over the next 5 years.

Organisations Face Conflicting Challenges

Organisations face con icting challenges in this hyper-competitive talent market. From our extensive research of multiple organisations across sectors, we are seeing:

• An overwhelming candidate shortage, especially of experienced / skilled candidates and in particular in IT sector;

• Increasing salary demands and a further demand for remote work from candidates means organisations need to rethink their value proposition. In countries like Hungary, saw a wage increase of 5 - 9%;

• Economic instability due to high in ation and the war in Ukraine mean candidates are not motivated to change jobs if they are secure

• In countries like Czech Republic many of the new bene ts being introduced by international companies or start-ups cannot be matched by other of the markets forcing other markets to rethink their value proposition. It is essential that organisations get serious about de ning holistically the value they are providing to current and future employees to become an employer of choice. This should highlight what makes them unique and communicate this e ectively to the talent market. This means fully designing and deploying a People Value Proposition (PVP). A PVP is a total design of the value that people receive when they join and stay in a business. It is the essence, the experiences, the culture, and the story of an organisation all rolled into one.

Without a fully designed PVP how can organisations possibly portray their employer brand to the market in the right way? How can they truly resonate with the people that would thrive in the business? How can they keep people engaged through times of turbulence?

A fully developed PVP and supporting engagement initiatives has multiple and wide-reaching positive consequences for your business including:

• Attracting the best people & broadening the pool • Decreasing time to hire • Boosting employee’s morale • Increasing retention • Reducing cost of hiring • Enhancing employee and customer satisfaction • Enabling people and HR management to have greater strategic impact • Consistency of communications internally and externally

Through our research we have identi ed 20 key elements (shown in diagram 1) that are important to consider in assessing and the designing a comprehensive PVP. These elements cover everything from the obvious Remuneration, Bene ts and Perks to the not so obvious like Social Capital, Innovation and Technology and Leadership Behaviours.

Diagram 1: The FOWI PVP Elements

Diagram 1 highlights an example of a PVP assessment conducted for a client across the 20 key elements as a basis to create an overall PVP program and associated initiatives. This plot highlights the level of maturity and excellence across each key PVP areas.

We use this plot to assess the ‘Essence’ step of a comprehensive PVP programme as part of our simple 5 step process (Diagram 2). This further involves developing an overreaching and agreed PVP, creating a new story for the overall employer proposition, a set of new employee experience initiatives and developing a unique set of themes that were utilised as a mechanism for meaningful internal employee engagement. Following this we activated several unique in market social and multi-media campaigns.

Diagram 2: FOWI 5 Step PVP Process

This approach helps provide a meaningful impact on the overall business performance such as a broadening of the talent pool, creating a higher talent market engagement and strategic alignment internally in the business with an agreed set of employee proposition initiatives to drive greater employee engagement. Becoming an employer of choice is much broader than simply increases in salary and bene ts. There are many things that make an organisation unique and this process is designed to help hone in on their unique voice and amplify it to attract skilled talent.

Any modern organisation striving to become the employer of choice, to nd the best talent to power their scaling and growth goals should seriously consider the development of a People Value Proposition. It is key to di erentiating an organisation in a competitive talent landscape and acts as the basis for a meaningful and purposefully designed employee experience that attracts, retains, and excites current and future talent in equal measure.

About the Future of Work Institute PVP services

At Cpl’s Future of Work Institute, we are helping organisations to become talent destinations through a total approach to designing and deploying People Value Propositions, key engagement initiatives and communication strategies. Because of our unique co-creation approach not only can we help you design your PVP to the needs of the employees and organisation, but we can also create data driven marketing campaigns and content to drive interest and attraction of your future employees. Our o ering is unique in the market as not only are we experts in people strategy, proposition development, employer brand and engagement, but we are part of Cpl and Outsourcing Inc who everyday are living with the realities of nding the best people possible for our clients. These deep real-world experiences give substance to our style and have helped us create strategies that work.

Our PVP services include:

• People Value Proposition Assessment - Using our

PVP model we can conduct a deep dive assessment of your existing people value proposition using our

PVP model through cross-functional workshops, social footprint analysis, and online surveys. • People Value Proposition Strategy Development -

Using our co—creation processes we can develop an Ideal People Value Proposition based on 1, 3 or 5 year horizons and deploy key initiatives to generate quick wins and long term impact against

KPI’s. • Employer Brand Development/Enhancement -

Regardless of where you are on your journey, we can enhance your existing employer brand and communications strategies or fully develop them from scratch. This includes everything from brand essence, key themes, stories, visuals, and everything in between. • Recruitment Marketing & Audience Engagement -

We can fully design and deploy data driven localised recruitment marketing and audience engagement campaigns across multiple platforms and mediums.