Employee Value Proposition Quotes

Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group talked about businesses having soul. He believed soul was what made a business great, or even worth doing at all. “A business without soul is not something I’m interested in working at,” he said. He suggested that the soul of a business grew out of the relationships a company developed as it went along. “Soul can’t exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, ‘Here’s a value proposition that I believe in. Here’s where I’m coming from. This is my point of view.’ At first, it’s a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation.

Soul can’t exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, ‘Here’s a value proposition that I believe in. Here’s where I’m coming from. This is my point of view.’ At first, it’s a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation. Like breaking in a baseball glove. You can’t will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it. Well, you have to use a new business, too. You have to break it in. If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul. Look what happens when a new restaurant opens. Everyone rushes in to see it, and it’s invariably awkward because it hasn’t yet developed soul. That takes time to emerge, and you have to work at it constantly.

Turning our attention back to products and services, consider once again the case of Rypple, the modern employee feedback tool mentioned in the previous section. There we saw how juxtaposition and polarization were used in combination to quickly drive the value proposition home for the target buyer. By saying, “People love feedback but they hate performance reviews,” we not only named the enemy but also created contrast with the desired outcome (i.e., the love of feedback).

These 11 questions best elicit true business objectives: 1. What is the ideal outcome you’d like to experience? 2. What results are you trying to accomplish? 3. What better product/service/customer/employee condition are you seeking? 4. Why are you seeking to do this (work/project/engagement)? 5. How would the operation be different as a result of this work? 6. Why are you considering this project (to improve what)? 7. How would image/repute/credibility be improved? 8. What harm (e.g., stress, dysfunction, turf wars) would be alleviated? 9. How much would you gain on the competition as a result? 10. How would your value proposition be improved? 11. How would you most easily justify this investment? A few of these questions honestly

One thing is certain: An employee value proposition premised on a fifty-week-a-year schedule, where employees are expected to show up at a fixed location five days a week and work forty hours a week at a single workstation, will be a non-starter for creative, talented, and self-starting knowledge workers in the future. But if companies present them challenging work, opportunities to innovate, as well as choice, community, flexibility, and autonomy, their organizations might become much more desirable places to be.

Yes, we can promote best practices, processes, and protocols—but the real magic is having employees who understand that their jobs are about improving the quality of people’s lives and managers who understand that the quality of our employees’ lives is part of that value proposition. That’s why Sodexo stands out in an industry that has traditionally competed fiercely on costs.

StoryBrand Culture Honors the Story of Its Team Members When you leverage the StoryBrand Framework externally, for marketing, it transforms the customer value proposition. When you leverage it internally, for engagement, it transforms the employee value proposition. All engagement rises and falls on the employee value proposition. Increasing compensation is one way you might add value to employees, but that’s just the beginning. You can also raise value by improving the employee experience: advancement opportunities, recognition, meaningful work, camaraderie, and flexibility. All those things add value too.