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Category: EVP

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Top 7 Mistakes People Make When Building an EVP

Employer branding is still widely misunderstood, and appreciation of its business impact is highly varied. Though, it’s positive to see the renewed focus on developing or redefining Employee Value Propositions (EVP’s), and marketing of employer brands to build the awareness and attractiveness of organisations to compete for critical talent.

In these crazy times, the clash of employee experience versus changing expectations means that creating an EVP that is credible, exciting and relatively constant has become a challenge. Given the complexity and ongoing nature of the work, those embarking on an EVP build project need to be better equipped to ensure their investment of resource and funding delivers a return on investment.

I’ve developed countless EVP’s for Australian and global organisations, and I’ve spoken with many people who have done the same. Today I’m rounding up and sharing the most common mistakes and setbacks that people face, so you can be better prepared for success.

#1 – Know what you’re getting yourself into – get better educated on the topic

An EVP is inextricably intertwined with company strategy. It’s highly complex to uncover and define. It is not your values, purpose or DE&I strategy. It is not a tagline or campaign creative. And it’s not the silver bullet that you’re looking for.

It should be informing your current and future people experience, and defining it is just the start of your employer branding journey…

#2 – Set a clear scope and realistic expectations – get clear on the impact and outcomes of your work

If you’re not all in on this work, then don’t go claiming the impressive benefits and return that organisations like Gartner promise when building an effective EVP.  Get clear on the work that you and your team are able to actually do, and ensure you’re focusing on the actual benefits that this will deliver.

If you’re in TA and your project focus is purely on external attraction, then ensure your success metrics don’t include employee retention (which I commonly see.) However, if retention needs to be a core focus as you’re losing talent at an alarming rate, then make sure you’ve got the right stakeholders onboard who have the responsibility and influence on the related work.

Low appreciation for business impact of an EVP, is perhaps a result of the fact that people are naively promising far greater return than what their scoped project can actually deliver.

#3 – Engage all key stakeholders upfront – you can’t do this alone

If you want to do this right and not just make it an external marketing strategy, you’ll need the right people in the business taking shared ownership.  

Too many times I hear people say that Brand or Comms are being blockers, so they’ll deliver this themselves in TA – asking for forgiveness, not permission. Given that this cuts across the entire employee experience and it’s an extension of your organisation’s brand, you need to work with the custodians of it. Given you’ll need to communicate with employees and the external market, you need to do this with your comms experts and the owners of these channels.

And most importantly, get the business onboard. They need to be in support of this, to ensure it’s the reality their delivering to their people, but also because they’re support in driving a movement is absolutely necessary. Build your influencer army.

#4 – Be realistic about timelines – it takes a long time to get it to market, so impact won’t be fast

I’m going to say it… no EVP project I have seen has ever been delivered to the original time schedule.

There are a number of reasons for this. Once organisations start, they often realise it’s a much bigger project than anticipated. Often it’s the lack of resource to drive the work, on top of people’s day jobs. Some are blocked at the end as they didn’t get the right people involved at the start. But mostly, it’s because people haven’t built in enough time for engaging stakeholders, socialising the work, and gaining alignment on the outcomes of it.

From research > EVP definition > strategy > creative build > internal and external launch – you are realistically looking at 6 months minimum. And I stress minimum.

#5 – Secure appropriate funding – $$ are required for EVP build and ongoing promotion (and it’s not cheap)

Reality is, this is a marketing exercise. And no marketing function works off zero-dollar budgets. Yet, too many organisations are trying to do this with small HR budgets.

Not only do you need money for the research and strategy phase, you need creative development and production budgets to bring these messages to life. But the work doesn’t end there… you need to take your messages to market, both internally and externally. Reaching an external audience of people who are not following your organisation, needs decent marketing budgets to achieve.  

Secure a yearly budget for employer branding, because building a brand is an ongoing investment. If Google and Atlassian need always-on marketing, it’s fair to say that your business does too.

#6 – Get Leadership buy in – ensure everyone is onboard as this work isn’t limited to recruitment, it impacts your people strategy (you need greater influence)

Defining an EVP is making a promise for what every person in your organisation can expect to receive. You need total alignment and for everyone to be ‘all in’ on the essence of your EVP, as all future people decisions need to be in support of it.

Your leadership team need to be comfortable that the EVP is reflective of reality, and that it positions the organisation in the way they want it to be seen.

Delivery on the EVP requires the commitment and shared accountability of your leaders and every people manager. But in order to remain competitive, you need to continually question whether this EVP is enough to compete. And if not, you need to evolve and strengthen the employee experience to create a more compelling EVP. To do that kind of work, absolutely requires your leadership team to be on this journey.

#7 – Ensure you’ve got the right resources; capability and capacity – your TA team doesn’t have all the skills you need

Last, but perhaps the most common issue. Make sure you build a project team with the right skills and resource. This work is time consuming and it stretches across many disciplines.

The required skills include research, analysis, strategy, project management, brand, design, marketing, communications, people experience, advocacy, social media, digital, events, measurement and more.

Assuming this capability is not sitting in your talent or HR team, you’ll need to build a project group of internal and external resources. Leverage the expertise in your business (point #3) and look for ways to integrate this work in current operations.

An EVP is not a quick fix solution to your talent challenges, but done well, it can help build an employer brand that gives you competitive advantage.

By ensuring you’ve got the right people bought into the journey, with a good understanding of what’s involved and the amazing benefits, then it’s a tool that will help you stand out in this tough market.

Enjoy this challenging but rewarding project!

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How to Build (or Rebuild) and Deliver a Credible EVP in the Current Market

In my last article, I touched on how the pandemic has brought into sharp focus the need for organisations to re-evaluate the experience they’re providing to employees and candidates.

EVP is just one piece of that puzzle.

To be clear though, I absolutely believe an organisation needs an EVP – a clear and memorable promise of the value you’ll provide to employees in return for their contribution. You can’t market or sell something when you don’t know the benefit it provides your audience. But at the end of the day, it is just a set of marketing messages. It isn’t solving anything.

Whilst execs are wanting (and needing) a provocative EVP to help build a strong employer brand, there are some serious limitations. Your EVP can only be as good as your employee experience and offering.

Although the timing may not be right, if you find yourself in the position where you need to do something right now – how should you respond?

1. Focus more on a creative execution

Find a hook that catches your audience’s attention or your point of salience in the market. Run a campaign to make some noise and attract attention, with the aim of it resulting in an increase in job applications to fill role vacancies.

Note though, this is not an EVP but rather a creative marketing campaign.  Brief your creative partners/agency accordingly.

2. Design a future-focused EVP

If your current employee experience doesn’t stack up to your claims, focus on an EVP that celebrates the future state with the value offer focusing on the journey. Position your organisation in the way you wish to be, and be seen, to begin to build this image. This approach is particularly useful when you’re going through a cultural transformation and wish to attract a different type of employee.

Two caveats

Firstly, this approach brings a risk of an EVP becoming too organisational-focused. I often see the desire for strong strategy alignment overtaking the focus on employee needs and desires. When current and potential talent don’t see value in the offer, they’ll look for an organisation that is perceived to provide them greater personal benefit.

Secondly, there’s a risk of dialling up the level of aspiration too far. By selling a dream that’s far from reality, you’ll create dissatisfaction amongst current employees, resulting in a loss of trust and credibility.

And with employee advocacy being one of the most effective tools in employer marketing, your people must believe in and rally behind your EVP.

3. My preferred recommendation for those embarking on an EVP development journey

Position this project as a marathon, not a sprint. Make it clear that a new EVP won’t solve your people problems overnight – or even this quarter. Warn execs that they likely won’t be excited about what you uncover today in your employee research. You are giving employees an opportunity to tell you how satisfied they are, and let’s face it, life isn’t full of unicorns and rainbows right now.

This first round of research will uncover the new needs of your employees and how well you are delivering on them in comparison to your competitors. You will identify strengths as well as weaknesses.

At this point, as a leadership group, you can collectively make a decision about whether these current strengths are what you want to be known for as an employer. If they are, that is AMAZING! But if this proposition isn’t compelling or differentiated enough, then you need to be clear on what you want to be known for, then make a decision on what commitments you’re willing to make to close the gap on the aspired state.

You also need to craft an EVP that provides an authentic and credible view of your organisation today. By leaning into your (sometimes harsh) realities, you will appeal to those who are excited by where you’re at and what you’re doing, and repel those who are looking for something different (which is important, as you’ll quickly lose them anyway).

Now you can also build a degree of aspiration into your EVP as you know with confidence (and can evidence) that’s the direction and focus of the business, which will soon become a reality.

As other business stakeholders work on improving the employee offering (delivering on the commitments made above), focus on communicating your EVP – find creative ways to stand out from all the noise and get noticed in this cluttered market.

Talent are motivated by something more than a good hybrid-working policy. After facing so many challenges in all facets of life, they couldn’t be bothered with pointless projects, useless meetings, and corporate politics that hold no real value. They want to devote their time and brainpower to things that are actually meaningful and perceived to provide a positive return to them. Your focus in this next phase should be on marketing your organisation to create greater awareness and consideration of your organisation as an employer. Show talent that you are worth their time.

The home stretch

And now we are onto the last leg of the marathon. Once you have improved your employee experience and offering in the areas that matter most to your critical talent segments, re-do your EVP research. Only when you have built out a more compelling and differentiated product (your employee offering) can you truly achieve the EVP that your organisation is hoping for.

A solid foundation of research is so important in crafting an authentic EVP to communicate why your organisation is a great place to work. When embarking on an EVP development project, it is important to understand the views of your leadership team, but to also ensure that they can distinguish between aspiration and reality.

There will likely be challenges and speed bumps along your journey, but being armed with this knowledge, you can set more realistic expectations about what your EVP project is (and isn’t), and how and when it’ll solve your employee attraction and retention issues.

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Is Now the Right Time to Refresh Your EVP?

It’s a really interesting point in time for those embarking on EVP refreshes. Since the pandemic hit, I’ve been in a fortunate position to have run a number of employee research projects, across a number of industries.

What I’ve seen is a significant increase in support for teams to invest in building out their EVP – for many organisations, this is the first foray. For others, it’s a much-needed refresh as both employee experience and employee drivers have changed significantly over the last two years.

Talent acquisition and retention has fast become one of the biggest issues for organisations, as the impact of empty seats on business performance has become very real. Previously seen as a ‘nice to do’, today many are viewing these projects as critical. The problem is the EVP is again seen as the silver bullet (a term used to describe it at every conference a decade ago) – where it in itself is being relied upon to solve recruitment challenges. 

EVP is just one piece of the puzzle

In one of the toughest recruitment markets in decades, organisations need to find ways to somehow get an unfair share of talent applying to their roles. When there are more jobs advertised than ever, coupled with the lowest levels of unemployment, companies need to find ways to stand out from the pack in order for their jobs to even be noticed, let alone considered.

EVPs are being touted as the solution, and while yes they can be part of the solution, there are bigger challenges being faced by those leading the development of them within organisations.

For one, I’m seeing a massive difference in employee needs and the reality of employee experience. Organisations have spent the last half decade focused on building out great employee experiences. The competitiveness of the tech industry paved the way for how perks and benefits can be done, and how culture can be a true differentiator. But the pandemic has limited people’s ability to leverage and benefit from many of these experiences.

We are trying to return to normal, but reality is, it will never be normal again. The struggle is real in getting employees back to the workplace, rebuilding culture and bringing some joy and excitement into our work (as let’s face it – virtual trivia isn’t exactly filling my glass!)

Our fundamental values have changed

We’ve faced an existential crisis, and we’ve had two years to stop and think about what is truly important to us. As a result, our needs and wants have changed significantly.

The last few years have taken their toll, on people and business. Although some employee engagement data would show otherwise, in all my research I have heard first-hand how people have lost energy and engagement with their work – probably a bit of loyalty and connection to their organisation and its purpose too. As people are not physically surrounded by their work, connection and belonging has reduced, and the employee/employer relationship has become more transactional.

In work and life, people are focusing on what has been taken away from them – what they miss. For new starters in the last two years, they never had the chance to enjoy the ‘good old days’ of organisations, so there are definitely weaker forces keeping them in their seats. They have been sold an EVP that was built on the pre-pandemic organisation, and sadly for many, this is not the experience they are receiving.

On the flipside, organisations are struggling too. In many industries, the pandemic has impacted their bottom line. They have been forced to adapt and transform in order to survive. Whilst they’ve had to be more flexible with employees, productivity has taken a hit. Yes, while there has been some who have taken advantage, there are many who have worked harder than before. People are feeling burnt-out after working much longer hours, as the lines of work and home are blurred.

Unfortunately, these extra hours aren’t always paying out as increased productivity – lack of tools, technology, collaboration and on the job development, means people are working harder to get the same work done.

Heightened by the pandemic, most organisations are currently on “a journey” – be it transformation, reinvention, growth into new markets, automation and digitisation, or culture. They are needing more bang for their back, so are looking to HR to build a high-performance culture. For employees, this means giving more.

Here lies the disconnect

You need high levels of EVP satisfaction to see increased levels of discretionary effort and intent to stay, which leads to high levels of organisational performance. But employees are feeling dissatisfied with delivery on our EVPs, as the experience they are having today isn’t as good or satisfying as it was pre-pandemic.

Execs know they need a compelling EVP. But when playing back objective research data on current state employee experience and beliefs, project owners are being faced with disbelief, resistance, hesitation or concern – or all of the above. Reality is, employee experience and engagement has taken a hit, it is not the same, and employees are less willing to advocate for it. In a time where people have the power, they are pushing for what they want.

Whilst organisations are wanting and needing something shiny, sexy and new to attract talent, the reality is (in many cases) their proposition is actually weaker than before.

In my next article, I walk through the key considerations for building (or rebuilding) a compelling EVP that delivers an authentic and credible view into your organisation.

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Why Employer Branding is Key to Gaining a Competitive Advantage

Why Employer Branding is Key to Gaining a Competitive Advantage

Getting the right people into the right positions is the ageless hiring challenge. In today’s candidate-driven market, the best employees have no shortage of options when it comes to choosing opportunities. The struggle nearly all companies face today is standing out from the crowd.

Even if you offer a competitive salary, there’s no guarantee that a candidate will think you’re the right fit. There are many drivers that influence a candidate’s decision to apply for a role – and creating a compelling employer brand that highlights these factors is critical to attracting top talent.

Why you aren’t coming across as unique

The truth of the matter is, most organisations’ EVPs don’t do anything to differentiate them from their talent competitors. Look at your EVP – does it reference any of the following?

  • Work-life balance/flexibility
  • Career progression opportunities
  • A great culture
  • Learning and development experiences

The reality is, in 2020, nearly every company offers some degree of the above.

It’s easy to talk to these benefits when you know, in practice, how good your company is at them. But when everyone is saying the same thing, these EVPs begin to blend into each other as noise. The result is candidates have little means to assess whether your company’s offering truly meets their current needs.

Most of the time, EVP issues don’t stem from proposing the wrong things, but not going far enough into what that specifically means in their organisation. It is critical for companies to not only uncover what is important to their audience and how well they are delivering on this, but also how well their talent competitors are doing the same.

Take for example, flexibility as a benefit. In one company, flexibility is about allowing people to go to a doctor appointment or take leave when they need it. In another it is about being a fully remote workforce, with no standard working hours and unlimited leave. However, both companies typically use a limited narrative that simply references “flexibility” when attempting to attract employees.

Successfully communicating what your company is really about is a major undertaking that requires collaboration between HR, the business and leaders. Companies need to have candid honesty and call out what they are good at, and not good at. By being true to who you are as an organisation, you’ll attract more of the right people, reducing candidate drop-out and talent attrition.

Keep in mind if your offering in a particular area doesn’t stack up to competitors, no advertising campaign or brand positioning will fix this – candidates will find out the truth very quickly!

That’s why it’s important to define specifically what you want to be known for, and improve that part of the employee experience. This is same principle as improving a product to meet the needs of specific buyers.

Communicating value with your employer brand

Even when your EVP – your core message statement – is pitch perfect, it needs to be brought to life, embedded and communicated consistently across all employee touch points to be believed and celebrated. But how can you do this, while making sure you remain sincere and engaging to your talent audience?

One way to approach this is to apply marketing and communications tactics to your employer branding efforts. Written content, photos, video, etc. can all help to showcase a company’s authentic story to differentiate them as an employer. This content needs to provide proof points and evidence for how your EVP is lived within the organisation.

Today, many companies are using innovative techniques along the candidate journey to provide an inside look into their business. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, for example, has developed a recruitment process for their call centres where they play simulated call recordings and show videos of real employees working in call centres to reduce job shock.

A currently-unnamed global trading company is also soon launching a virtual reality experience that provides an opportunity of experiencing being on a trading floor, allowing candidates to move through the office space, interact with everything within it and hear from employees during their work – showing the realities of working in that environment.

Employer branding doesn’t have to be overtly innovative. It may even just be as simple as taking Netflix’s approach, which is making sure their amazing and unique company culture is explicit in every single one of their job ads. What matters most is that your messaging is coherent, authentic and aligned to the EVP.

Successful employer branding

What separates great employer brands from “good” or just “okay” employer brands? The truth is, most “ordinary” companies simply can’t compete with the unicorns of the world in terms of employer brand strength. So relying on top company lists and rankings is not going to help most organisations understand how well their employer branding efforts are paying off.

Although no company likes to come off as having any weaknesses, I’ve found that those that are most successful in building a distinctive employer brand are candid about what they are good at and not good at. It is futile trying to be attractive to the widest pool of candidates possible. All you need is to be able to appeal to the single candidate, or niche of candidates that best suits the position. By being true to what it is, a company will attract more of the right people to the business, reducing candidate drop-out and talent attrition.

The companies that succeed in their employer branding efforts also stay on top of outcomes. Unless you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve, you won’t know what progress you’re making.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to measuring employer brands, as the objectives you set for your brand should be unique to your organisation. However, for many organisations the focus is on attracting top quality people, so common metrics used to measure success are applications per role, cost per hire, quality of hire, time to fill, offer acceptance rate, etc.

An advanced tactic would be developing a holistic employer brand strategy that stretches across the full employee lifecycle, and in this case, the focus would be on measuring the employee experience and whether it stacks up against the promise (EVP).

A final thought

The 2020 COVID-19 outbreak may see a drastic change in the talent drivers for many industries. People whose employment has been impacted will naturally prioritise job security and high paying wages over other things, as they have been financially suffering throughout the pandemic. Those who have spent more time at home with their families recently could be looking for better balance and flexibility from their work life. Alternatively, people may be craving the chance to leave their home each day and be around others in a busy and fun work environment again.

In the near future, we may see a real divide in what people value most. Pinpointing the state of your industry and key talent segments could be what gives you the edge to develop a unique EVP.

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Hello world!

We are passionate about creating greater awareness and understanding of the value employer branding can bring to organisations, so we will regularly create content, publish articles and case studies, present webinars and participate in virtual fireside chats.

We hope to push the collective thinking of the global employer brand community, empowering them to build on what they’re doing today, and arming them with confidence and evidence for what they can do tomorrow.

We focus on the trending topics within employer branding but provide more nuanced, deeper perspectives than what exists today. Our aim is to provide practical insight and tools that everyone can use.

If we can help accelerate the transmission of good ideas even a little bit, that could be a big deal across this small but powerful industry.