Turning Data Into Action: How to Create an Inclusive Employer Value Proposition

There’s no doubt. Our world is changing. Between the pandemic, protests, and economic downturn, our wants and needs as people, consumers, employees, and job seekers have suddenly and dramatically changed. 

These changes aren’t standalone or passing trends, either. Research by Edelman found that 63% of Americans are “concerned about systemic racism and racial justice” in the US. One step further, 60% of those surveyed said that they are likely to buy or boycott based on how an organization responds to the protests against racial injustice. Thus, businesses are now rethinking their approach to hiring and work as well as their contributions to society.

With racial justice and gender equality now at the forefront of national and local policy, business, and workplace decision-making, business leaders are coming together to make tangible changes to advance diversity and inclusion efforts at work. As it relates to hiring, our 2020 Gender Equality survey found that women are more likely than men to take an employer's stance on gender equality into account during their job search and/or decision, with 45% of White women and 60% of Black women said they care about a company’s stance and “it will likely affect my search/decision” as compared to only 31% of men. 

Needless to say, employers need to take a strong anti-racist stance both for their consumer brand but also their employer brand. In our recent webinar You have diversity hiring goals…but now what?, Romy Newman, the co-founder and president of Fairygodboss, met with Lisa Smith-Strother, the vice president and global head of employer, diversity, and talent acquisition branding at RELX, to talk about why and how organizations can update their employer value proposition to support an enhanced focus on diversity. Here’s what you need to know.

What is an Employer Value Proposition?

According to Smith-Strother, an employer value proposition, or EVP, is at the intersection of what companies want in talent and what talent wants from companies. Organizations develop EVPs to help them understand and communicate the value of a career at an organization to employees and candidates. With both gender equality and racial justice top of mind, organizations are having to redefine their EVPs with diversity and inclusion in mind. 

How Do You Build a Compelling EVP?

At RELX, they start with a discovery phase. “No one knows your organization better than your employees,” Smith-Strother says. That’s why she suggests gathering market research and employee feedback across departments and geographies to really understand what it’s like to work at the company. This is done by meeting with employees directly, engaging Employee Advocates and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), launching surveys, and conducting focus groups. 

From there, they fed the feedback and information gathered through LinkHuman’s Employer Brand Index, a framework that reviews 16 different factors including wellbeing, benefits, company reputation, innovation, and more, to help build a message framework that properly aligns with the organization, employees, company values, and the candidates the organization is looking to attract.

How to Promote Your EVP to Improve Diversity Hiring?

Once an organization has a compelling value proposition, communication is critical. That starts with translating your value proposition into an employer brand identity, positioning, and messaging. For that, Smith-Strother conducts a content and imagery audit. She looks across internal and corporate channels to determine where the company can do a better job at showcasing the amazing talents, work, and stories of underrepresented employees, partners, and suppliers. 

In practice, EVP’s are used as an important part of an employer brand across internal, corporate, and external channels. Internally, Smith-Strother recommends leveraging internal newsletters, communications, events, as well as ERGs to spread the word. By engaging ERG members and Employee Advocates, companies can capitalize on the extensive knowledge and networks to drive real, tangible change.

On corporate channels, Smith-Strother talks about just how important social media is to engaging and building relationships with candidates. “Not everyone has the budget for programmatic advertising. Across RELX, we have found success in organic social media, as well,” she says. Even more, she recommends supplying employees with templates with diversity-related content and hashtags, and then allowing employees “to share content but in their own voice.” Through Employee Advocacy tools, she’s able to create those templates, share with advocates, and even measure the results and impact of her efforts.

In addition to internal and corporate channels, communicating an employer value proposition works best when shared across third party channels, as well. That’s why many organizations work with employer branding and job board sites like Fairygodboss and partnership with professional organizations like Black Women in Science and Engineering, Girls Who Code, Grace Hopper, NSBE, Society for Women Engineers, and even targeted industry LinkedIn groups and African American fraternities and sororities. Sharing the inclusive EVP and employer branding through external channels and with partner audiences can lead to a strong ROI in both the quantity and quality of underrepresented candidates.

How to Measure the ROI of an EVP?

LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020 reports that “55% of talent professionals say they still need help putting basic analytics into practice” and that “73% say people analytics will be a major priority for their company over the next 5 years. Considering, let’s talk about the impact of developing and promoting an effective EVP.  

Smith-Strother recommends leveraging both traditional recruitment and marketing analytics and tools. On the marketing side, she recommends measuring improvements in followership, engagement, earned media value, and traffic back to jobs and careers pages. To find data, Employee Advocacy tools, Smith-Strother mentions, are your friend. 

On the recruitment side, measuring applications, influenced hires, and diversity referrals are all important metrics. It’s also important to note that positive returns from the recruiting point of view may take some time. The effort to become more intentional about diversity often leads to longer time to hire and increased cost to hire initially. However, after about a year-and-a-half, the time Smith-Strother typically sees ROI, organizations are able to engage passive talent and diversify candidate pipelines.

Employer Value Propositions and Diversity & Inclusion

Pew Research recently shared that “67% of Americans say they strongly (38%) or somewhat (29%) support the Black Lives Matter movement.” These beliefs are spilling into our workplaces and are influencing the way both employees and candidates feel about an organization. Business in the Community found that “60% of candidates are asking about racial justice responses'' during the interview process. In many cases, organizations are seeing similar questions from customers, prospects, and suppliers, as well. 

But it’s no longer enough to talk-the-talk. In the webinar, Smith-Strother shares the actions RELX have taken to create a more inclusive workplace. Her team has taken big steps like launching a 10-week research project to help the organization understand how they are doing in terms of diversity and inclusion. That includes studying the diversity of RELX’s leadership, compiling actions each business unit can make to increase gender diversity; learn about the differences in retention, career development, and sources of bias in performance reviews in relation to race and gender; establish baseline metrics; and then developing a forecast model based on goals across business units. Even further, once the research is complete, she plans to publish the results as a way to hold the company accountable for improvements. 

Even more, RELX has made a bold statement in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement, is increasing DEIB education for employees, and has donated to racial justice and anti-racism organizations. They have also signed the Race at Work Charter to further their commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization and workplace. And, they added employee benefits like paid days off to volunteer and participate in ERG activities.

Conclusion 

In summary, this year has brought a lot of change, and organizations have been forced to adapt. Many are responding by connecting the dots between hiring great talent and caring about diversity and inclusion. Further, they are learning that diversity isn’t something that just happens. It takes a purposeful and team effort to diversify teams at all levels of the organization, unlearn centuries of racism, and rebuild in a way that puts people first. 

If you’re a Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, or Diversity and Inclusion leader looking for resources to help you develop or adjust an employer value proposition that will improve your diversity hiring efforts, this webinar is one you won’t want to miss. Watch the full webinar here.