So, like, what’s my Return on Involvement ? – Part Three

December 17th, 2014

In part three of our four-part blog, we pay closer attention to Millennial’s and involving them in EVP project design and refinement.

Summary

  • Directing attention to Millennial incumbents and employment potentials requires detailed focus on project framing and engagement
  • Relying on surveys alone as a project information basis will not cut it
  • EVP development is itself a great opportunity to generate inter-generation dialogue, which creates new and exciting outcomes

 

90% of new clients we meet face one of two scenarios – either needing to create and establish an organisation EVP, or assessing and refining an existing EVP and associate employer brand. Both scenarios can be due to ‘change’ events, shifts in overall organisation strategy, or perceived EVP ineffectiveness.

Millennials have an impact on the project footprints of both needs. eBrand’s focus is on empowering the organisation from within to generate an owned EVP; over time this has given us some insights on Millennial engagement and participation.

At one of those notebook closing meetings we mentioned in Part One, we heard this – (but did not endorse it).

“Let’s just throw a survey at them and get some insights – and then we’re done”.

Unfortunately, you won’t be ‘done,’ although your project aspirations might be. Successful EVP rollouts share many characteristics, and a core one is not relying on survey’s alone. Surveys are not a dialogue; they are not an engagement tool – particularly in the eyes of the Millennial. (The potential roles a good survey can play in EVP strategy will be a blog topic in two weeks time).

A successful EVP project must be engaging from day one, and Millennial tendencies make this even more important, as their demand for immediate understanding is paramount.

Framing an EVP project truthfully and effectively to stakeholders is a key step, and it proves that the organization is genuinely mature enough to support its own introspection. We find that Millennial stakeholders respond very receptively to transparency and to the effective engagement of broad consensus as it validates their involvement.

Effective integration of Millennial input into EVP design and development can give a project an incredibly valuable prism for perspective and evaluation. The typical challenges of internally steering an EVP project (workforce tenure fatigue / lack of faith in the organisation / belief of change / questioning of the need) benefit enormously from the channeled drive of Millennial participants, empowered by their belief in improvement for everyone’s benefit.

Millennial abilities as digital natives makes them very effective sense-checkers, evaluating which EVP promises stand up as plausible, or highlighting those which are flawed. Their skills at crowd sourcing, establishing group communication and, in some instances I’ve seen, in mentoring these skills to stakeholders that might be less comfortable (a duty reinforced by their high valuation of consensus) makes Millennial’s comfortable story tellers and effective protagonists for the external employment brand.

Their lack of hesitation in challenging workplace ‘ceilings and obstacles’ can be challenging to manage. I have also seen it provoke great internal ‘questioning.’

I’ve tried to provide a few examples in this post to show why embracing the Millennial challenge can be a very rewarding part of new EVP development or EVP maintenance. Next week, I’ll present a few practical ideas.

 

Author Note

Before I sign off this week – I’m quite conscious that this blog serialization cites ‘common Millennial behaviours’ and therefore it makes ‘common assumptions’.

Developing a great EVP requires you to never take anything for granted, and I want it to be clear that while I do reference behaviours and project outcomes I have encountered first hand – that my generation (Generation X) in turn is guilty of a need to define ‘groups’. Oversimplification of traits and behaviours is dangerous.

The best employment value propositions get people who share common beliefs and values with each other, to work together. Those people will span generations, and as I mentioned in the first blog, each generation that comes sets the table for the generation that follows.

 

The Millennial Series

Comments? Thoughts?