B22 Define your Employee Value Proposition

 Entrepreneurs and business leaders of Growth stage businesses know that a critical element in realizing their vision will be their ability to attract the desired talent and retain them.

Here is is how they can translate that desire into reality

1. Define your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) : That answers the question “Why should a talented individual with a successful career record want to work with us and remain with us”
2. Corporatise the organization: Create an identity for the organization that is distinct from its founders and a culture that is truly the organizations.

Both these together will pave the way for creating a strong employer brand. Corporatising the organization from a people perspective would include most of the activities that flow from the Value proposition.

An employee value proposition (EVP) typically encompasses all attributes that fall under the following categories:

• Compensation and Benefits: The way a company compensates its people for effort and results.
• Career Development: The mechanisms through which an employees skills and competencies and consequently his value is increased
• Company Culture: The organizations vision, values, practices, group norms and the way they manifest as day to day behaviors.

Our experience has shown that an organization has to be competitive in all these categories vis a vis the talent market but stand out in one Category (what we like to call its Signature EVP).

B21 Enabling Employees Develop the Right Attitudes

 We all use the word "Attitude " rather frequently . Intuitively most of us also realise that at the root of all success lies ones attitude towards the situation and the choices that one has in that situation . The same is true for an organization too .

Helping people develop the right attitudes is a challenge that most organizations both start ups as well as established on face .

Here are a few steps that will enable professionals in this endeavor.

People get very defensive when you tell them that their attitudes needs to change or behaviors needs to improve. They normally go into a defensive posture. The probability that you can help change their attitudes gets diminished the moment they go into this frame of mind .

A more non threatening way of facilitating attitudinal change in a formal setting is through demonstrated behaviours.

At a very simplistic level the process is as follows .

1. First help people see for themselves the way they are behaving(Actual behaviour)
2. Enable them get feedback from people that they trust on the behaviors that they actually exhibit . (Making them do it in simulated solutions makes it less threatening. )
3. Demonstrate to them through words as well as actions , the desired behaviors and the impact it has on others as well as themselves .
4. In parallel facilitate the process of seeing the thoughts ,feelings and beliefs that are leading to these behaviors and arising out of them (Both actual and desired ). 
5. Help them look at ways in which thoughts, feelings and beliefs will help reinforce the new/desired behaviors
6. Create a platform where they can practice these new behaviors

To illustrate Just visualize the case of a Sales Manager who believes he is customer responsive but in reality behaves no way like it , or the case of a Production manager who needs to adopt a more inclusive way of working with his subordinates.

PS : An attitude is ones undelying thoughts and feelings that guides ones behaviour ( Actions and words )