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You Can’t Mandate Discretionary Effort. Here’s What Earns It...

Writer: Kristan Strate
Kristan Strate
12 hours ago
5 min read

It's budget season. Somewhere in Western Canada right now, an owner is staring at a spreadsheet, trying to decide whether a 3% or a 4% increase will keep the team from walking out the door. Here's the uncomfortable part: that number matters, but it probably won't decide who stays. And it definitely won't decide who gives you their best.


Pay is the price of admission. What happens after people walk in is a different conversation, and it's the one most budgets skip.


Pay gets them in the door. Something else gets their best effort.


Gartner defines the employee value proposition (EVP) as the value employees and the labour market believe they get from working for you. Their research has long grouped that value into five areas: rewards, opportunity, the organisation, the people, and the work itself. Most small business budgets fund one of those five on purpose. The other four happen by accident.


That matters because of something researchers call discretionary effort: the willingness to go above and beyond. Helping a colleague who's buried. Volunteering for the extra task. Quietly finding a better way to do the job. You can't mandate it and you can't buy it outright. People decide every single day whether to give it to you.


The Corporate Leadership Council (the research group now part of Gartner) studied 50,000 employees and found the most committed put in 57% more effort, performed 20% better and were 87% less likely to leave. The kicker: emotional commitment, meaning how people feel about their manager, their team and the organisation, drove effort far more than rational commitment like pay and benefits.


Gartner's human deal, translated for a 40-person company.


A few years ago, Gartner noticed something awkward. Organisations had spent real money modernising their EVP, yet engagement had stayed flat since 2016. Their diagnosis: the traditional EVP treats employees as workers. Their fix, the "human deal," treats them as people, recognises that work is part of life rather than separate from it, and accepts that value comes through feelings, not just features.

The gap is real. Gartner found 82% of employees say it's important to be seen as a person, not just an employee. Only 45% believe their organisation actually does that.


The human deal has five attributes, each tied to a feeling Gartner says employees should walk away with. Here's what they look like::


Deeper connections (feeling understood). Managers who know what's going on in someone's life and respect what they'd rather keep private. The cost is mostly time.

Radical flexibility (feeling autonomous). Gartner found leading organisations go beyond when and where people work to include who they work with, what they work on and how much. More choice over working conditions lifted the share of high performers by 18 percentage points. On a jobsite or shop floor, think shift swaps, compressed weeks or a say in project assignments

Personal growth (feeling invested in). More than half of employees say it matters that their employer supports their growth. A stretch assignment, cross-training or an hour a month of real coaching counts.

Holistic well-being (feeling cared for). Not another app nobody opens. Gartner found most employers offer emotional, physical and financial well-being benefits, yet few employees use them.

Shared purpose (feeling valued). Connect the daily work to why the business matters, and ask your people before deciding what you stand for.


Gartner reports employee satisfaction when the EVP is considered and actioned rises 15% when it includes the human deal, along with stronger intent to stay, better wellness and a greater likelihood of recommending you as an employer.

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The return: effort, trust and retention.


Here's where it gets interesting for the budget conversation.


According to Gartner, organisations that effectively deliver on their EVP can cut annual turnover by up to 69% and lift new hire commitment by nearly 30%. And when candidates find your EVP attractive, the pay premium you need to hire them drops by 50%. A strong EVP doesn't just keep people. It makes hiring cheaper.


Trust is where most organisations leak. In Gartner's 2024 research, only 33% of employees said their organisation consistently delivers on its EVP promises, just 16% could say what their EVP actually includes, and only 38% expected things to improve. Gartner put it bluntly: companies are spending on raises, promotions and benefits, and employees aren't noticing.


The single biggest lever? Your leaders. Employees who believe they can count on their leader to deliver on EVP promises are five times more likely to say the organisation delivers. Your managers aren't just communicating the deal. They are the deal.


And Canada isn't off the hook. Gallup's latest data puts Canadian engagement at 21%, ten points behind the U.S. and Canada regional average. That's a lot of discretionary effort sitting on the table.


Where to put the money this year.


Let's be candid: pay still matters, maybe more than ever right now. Gartner's 2026 rewards research shows employees are prioritising financial stability and security. So don't cut the increase to fund a ping-pong table. Make every dollar work harder instead. Here are five no-nonsense tips:


  1. Audit before you add. Gartner found well-being hasn't meaningfully improved in three years despite heavy investment, and suggests trimming underused programs in favour of flexible options like a lifestyle spending account. Reallocate first.

  2. Budget for your managers. Time, training and permission to have real conversations. They deliver the deal, or they don't.

  3. Tell people what the deal is. Gartner found every additional channel employees hear about the EVP through makes them 24% more likely to believe you deliver on it. Job postings, onboarding, one-on-ones and team meetings all count.

  4. Pick one human deal attribute and do it well. Ask your team which one matters most before you spend a dollar.

  5. Close the loop. Share what you heard and what you're doing about it, including what you can't do and why. That's how trust gets rebuilt.


The bottom line.


If next year's people budget is a single line for a percentage increase, you've funded the floor, not the ceiling. Discretionary effort lives in the rest of the deal: the manager who checks in, the flexibility that respects someone's life, the growth that shows you're invested in them.


If you're not sure where your EVP is leaking a conversation with the team at Synergy HR is a good place to start. Find us at www.SynergyHRC.net.


Sources

•     Gartner (2021). Gartner HR Research Shows Organizations Must Reinvent Their Employee Value Proposition to Deliver a More Human Deal. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-05-25-gartner-hr-research-shows-organizations-must-reinvent-their-employment-value-proposition-to-deliver-a-more-human-deal

•     Gartner, Smarter With Gartner (2021). Make Way for a More Human-Centric Employee Value Proposition. https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/make-way-for-a-more-human-centric-employee-value-proposition

•     Gartner (2024). Only 33% of Employees Say Their Organizations Consistently Deliver on Promises. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-17-09-gartner-hr-research-reveals-only-33-percent-of-employees-say-their-org-consistently-delivers

•     Gartner. Employee Value Proposition insights (69% turnover reduction, 29% new hire commitment, 50% lower compensation premium). https://gartner.com.au/en/human-resources/insights/employee-value-proposition

•     Gartner (2018). Employees' Willingness to Go Above and Beyond / EVP attributes (work, people, organisation, opportunity, rewards). https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-06-27-gartner-says-majority-of-us-employees-show-high-intent-to-remain-at-current-job

•     Corporate Leadership Council (2004). Driving Performance and Retention Through Employee Engagement (57% effort, 20% performance, 87% less likely to leave). https://www.stcloudstate.edu/humanresources/_files/documents/supv-brown-bag/employee-engagement.pdf

•     Gallup (2026). State of the Global Workplace: Canada Country-Level Data. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/704834/state-global-workplace-canada-country-level-data.aspx

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