Employer Brand and Employee Value Proposition

The Employer Branding and Employee Value Proposition (EVP) work sits under our Talent Management and Development pillar of our People Strategy. The work will be led by our Head of Talent & Organisation Development, along with two Talent Partners and a Recruitment & Onboarding Advisor. We also have a Senior Leadership sub-group that meets monthly to discuss priority areas of our People Strategy and they have been heavily involved in our Recruitment & Talent conversations.

We know from previous internal engagement with our people that the opportunity to make a difference through working at Ofwat is an important motivating factor. The water sector is at the forefront of climate change and our work is increasingly in the public eye. We are keen to use our EVP to demonstrate the difference our work makes to customers and to the environment and to highlight the variety of our work.

We also know that our culture, our agile and hybrid ways of working and our SAILOR values are important factors in retention for Ofwat. We are keen to use the EVP to promote 'Ofwat Life' and the different ways in which hybrid working plays out at Ofwat

This year the Talent team have spent time on our internal processes and systems. We have streamlined our processes, delivering greater value to hiring managers and putting candidate care at the heart of everything we do. We have also worked closely with Cabinet Office to optimise the functionality of our Applicant Tracking System. And lastly...g experience and simplified shortlisting & interviewing forms. They have also refreshed the People Hub Recruitment intranet pages.

We also invited the Civil Service Commissioner (CSC) to speak to our People Leaders about the importance of the Civil Service Recruitment Principles. As an arms-length Civil Service body, we are subject to a legal requirement to uphold the Civil Service Commission Recruitment principles and standards. These principles require that appointment is on merit on the basis of fair and open competition and set out various requirements in order to meet this standard (including the way that we advertise and promote our roles). All Civil Service bodies are audited by the CSC against this standard, with results published openly in their annual report. In the most recent Audit, Ofwat was rated as Poor, Static. Many of our improvement activities are focused on improving this rating in future audits.

We have also created two Graduate campaigns in 2021 and 2022, employing in total 20 graduates. Here, we worked with an external partner to create adverts, dedicated webpage, videos, open evening and social media presence.

We have produced our Gender Pay Gap report and an Ethnicity Pay Report.

The external recruitment market remains extremely competitive.

Therefore, we are now in a position to work with an external partner to develop our Employer Brand and our Employee Value Proposition to enable us to attract and retain the very best diverse talent.