Validating an EVP with depot, library, childcare and office teams at the City of Sydney.

The City of Sydney had developed an EVP and wanted to confirm it with its own people before using it. We ran consultation in the places they work, including sausage sizzles at depots.

Result

Validated

An EVP confirmed with employees, with clear guidance on how to express it for different parts of the workforce

Challenge

Confirming an EVP with a diverse workforce, including depot crews who are hard to reach through standard surveys

Solution

Confirming an EVP with a diverse workforce, including depot crews who are hard to reach through standard surveys

Company

City of Sydney

Industry

Local government

Services

EVP validation, employee consultation, all-staff survey, First Nations consultation stream, activation planning

The City of Sydney is the local government for the Sydney CBD and surrounding inner city, with a workforce of around 2,000 people. That includes office-based professionals, depot crews who work outdoors, childcare educators, and the teams in its libraries and community centres.

The challenge.

The City had already done the initial work on its employee value proposition and wanted to confirm it with its own employees before using it. It was important that the EVP reflected how people actually experience working there, and that it held up across very different jobs.

That is harder than it sounds. Many of the City's people work on depot sites, in childcare centres and in libraries, and they are not at a desk with time to complete an online survey. The City's priorities were employee engagement, retention and performance, as well as attracting new talent, so the EVP needed to work for every part of the workforce.

What we did.

We ran consultation in a mix of ways, so that every group had a way to take part that suited them:

Focus groups and workshops with employees
Interactive online workshops
An all-staff survey, integrated with the EVP work
Face-to-face interviews in childcare centres and libraries
EVP activation sausage sizzles at depot sites, hosted alongside the City's HR team, so that outdoor teams could talk to us in their own environment and on their own time

We also designed a First Nations stream. It gave the City a clearer understanding of how the EVP landed for First Nations employees and where the nuance in the way it should be expressed was different.

The outcome.

The City now has an EVP that has been tested with its own people and confirmed, together with a clear understanding of the differences in how it should be expressed for different parts of the organisation. The consultation also gave the City a lot of useful insight about engagement and retention.

We are now working with the City on an activation roadmap, so the EVP is brought to life across the employee experience in a planned way.

If you're considering something similar, you can read more about our employee value proposition consulting.

For more on the thinking behind this work, read Your EVP already exists, and your people know what it is.