Integrating wellbeing into your EVP: Three talent acquisition experts share their tips

Agata: There are quite a few challenges we all face these days, including limited budgets, increased demands, and the need to keep doing more with less. Everybody is hiring and there's constant pressure on talent acquisition teams to deliver results and find quality candidates.

EVP is an extremely useful tool that doesn't have to cost a lot and can have significant impacts on the business when it comes to attracting and retaining talent.

By definition, a strong EVP gives employers a competitive edge in engaging top talent. This sometimes however, is taken at face value: "strong EVP = the best EVP" or in other words "top of the market salary + benefits". I often hear "We can't compete with X, because we don't pay as much or they offer Y". But in reality, an effective EVP is so much more, and rarely means just that.

We know that candidates often look beyond salary and benefits, and it is a real opportunity. They look for ways in which their next career move and next employer align with their values, career goals, and personal interests.

In my opinion, a strong EVP does exactly that: when designed with a clear purpose for who it is for, it's also differentiated enough to allow any brand, no matter its size or benefits package, to be considered. The problem is that it's super subjective and can mean so many things to every single person, so it's extremely difficult to scale.

Hannah: Although the hiring market hasn’t been as strong as prior years, hiring and retaining the right talent continues to be a challenge for employers, they still need to stand out from the crowd.

A clear employee value proposition is vital, giving applicants an insight into what it’s like to work for your organisation and the unique experience that you offer to staff. It’s not dissimilar to a shop window in that you want to attract potential talent to buy into your organisation and what they could achieve there.

Your EVP should reflect your company’s culture and values and be showcased at all the touchpoints an applicant has with your organisation during the hiring process, such as your website, job adverts and social media.

Steve: 2024 is a mixed year. In the start up/ scale up space, at one end of the market (senior roles) there is a total oversupply, massive amount of candidates, anywhere from 200-600 applying for every role. This is driven by an ageing population, redundancies (often made at the more senior end for greater cost saving), and the cost of living crisis, which is prompting people to look for a new role to gain a greater pay raise than they could achieve normally and smaller amount of jobs. A perfect storm of sorts.

At the other end there are no candidates. Only 5-25 people apply, driven by a belief in startups, side hustles, content creation culture and working multiple part time roles that fit into their life.

A strong EVP is super important, more so in the younger demographic, but since COVID the desire for this has gone up significantly and does factor, not only in their decision to work for someone, but to even entertain or apply for a role.

According to our survey, 54% of employees believe a wellbeing program offering is a very important feature when considering their next employer. Have you seen businesses' wellbeing offering become a more important aspect of EVP over the course of your career? If so, why do you think that is?

Steve: Interesting data, I see this in the corporate space, but not so much in startups or SME. Yes it is very important if they get it right, but most do not.

We don’t see people wanting a wellbeing program that is defined by someone else that could never meet everyone’s needs. They want the freedom to be able to create their own wellbeing program that changes constantly as their life does. I see people being fed up being told what to do by their employer and have more control over themselves, these programs need to be about empowerment, less about a bunch of discounted offers and services.

Agata: Today's work environment is not only fast-paced but also highly competitive, and sadly the stress-inducing pressures also extend to non-work related aspects of life (cost-of-living crisis, high mortgage rates etc.). Job-seekers often face the challenge of managing work-life balance and are interested in knowing what their future employer offers in that aspect.

For Australians specifically, work-life balance is very important. Several research and employment survey results highlight that. Organisations increasingly recognize that providing a wellbeing offering is crucial for supporting employees' wellbeing and job satisfaction.

Wellbeing offerings promote work-life balance, improve employee satisfaction, and foster a positive work environment because a healthier and happier employee can be their best self at work and at home.

Those programs often extend far beyond mental or physical support (it's not only about fruit in the office or access to an EAP). The wellbeing programs are often designed as a holistic solution, and most importantly - one that can be bespoke to an individual. Not everyone may benefit from a stress management seminar, but flexible working arrangements, financial advice, access to subsidised partner offers, and more can make it attractive and, most importantly, very responsive to individual needs.

Hannah: At the start of my career employers were focussed on health and safety. The aim was to prevent the risk of a cost of physical incidents in the workplace and employees certainly had low expectations of their employers as a source of improving their wellbeing. At this stage, work and life were still seen as two separate entities and many employees had no appetite to share with their employer what was going on outside of work.  It was the era of leaving the rest of your life at the office doors.

In the early 2010’s we saw organisations begin to focus on more than just physical health and safety, realising that supporting better physical and mental health could be a source of competitive advantage.  As the rhetoric on DE&I began to become mainstream, so did the idea that we needed to encourage people to be their authentic self. However, the 2010’s were a time of “one size fits all” wellbeing, offered through the lens of reward and benefit e.g. offering an EAP or offering discounted gym membership, office fruit bowls and workplace yoga classes.

What really changed the game was when COVID hit. This was transformational for employee wellbeing. Employers stepped up to take care of their employees in a way they never had done before, and lockdown forced all organisations to WFH.  This created a boundaryless world, we couldn’t unsee what we saw – as people juggled work and life simultaneously. Working age health shot to the top of the public health, business, and policy agenda simultaneously and the workplace quickly became one of the priority settings for health promotion in the 21^st century.

Employees now had an expectation that employers cared and that there is no such thing as work/life balance, just life! We’ve now moved to an era of workplace wellbeing as an imperative ingredient to enable individuals and organisations to achieve and sustain high performance. Not only should work do no harm to an employee’s health and wellbeing but if organisations get it right it could actually nurture it!

Employees now expect a model where wellbeing is integral to all parts of a business culture, it’s no longer just about wellbeing benefits. Organisations cannot ‘do ‘wellbeing to its employees, instead they can create an environment conducive to all employees being about to make the positive choices they need for their individual wellbeing, whatever that might mean. We now know that one size doesn’t fit anyone and we have to think about wellbeing through the lens of intersectionality, life moments that matter and positive role modelling.