Most Employer Value Proposition projects eventually get to the same questions. What should our EVP say? What are the themes? How do we make it distinctive? What is the story? Those questions matter, but they come too early.
Before deciding what you want to say, you need to understand what kind of deal already exists between the organization and its people. What can people genuinely expect from working here? What does the organization expect in return? What makes that different from other places they could work?
That is the raw material for an EVP.
The next question is whether it is the right deal for the organization you are becoming. An EVP can be completely authentic and still reinforce things the business is trying to leave behind.
So I tend to approach EVP development from two directions at the same time: understand what is true today and understand what needs to be true tomorrow. Here is how I do that.
1. Start with the reality
You need employee research, but that does not automatically mean a large research project. Start with what you already have. Engagement surveys, exit data, candidate feedback, onboarding research, Glassdoor reviews and previous employer brand research can all tell you something. Then use interviews, focus groups or a short survey to fill the gaps.
I am usually looking for patterns around a few fairly simple questions:
- Why did people join?
- Why do they stay?
- What would they miss if they left?
- What frustrates them about working here?
- When does the organization bring out the best in them?
- What do successful people here understand that new employees often don’t?
- What do people tell friends about working here that would never appear on the careers site?
The last few questions often produce more useful material than asking employees what they value. Most organizations will otherwise end up with some variation of great colleagues, development, meaningful work and flexibility. You are looking for specifics.
‘Great colleagues’ is not very useful. ‘People will drop what they are doing to help you solve a customer problem’ is.
‘Autonomy’ is generic. ‘Nobody tells you how to do your job, but you are expected to ask for help before a problem becomes someone else’s problem’ tells you something about the organization.
Keep the uncomfortable findings as well. If employees consistently mention slow decisions, internal competition or managers who need to approve everything, don’t clean that out of the research because it doesn’t fit the employer brand. You will need it later.
2. Add the business perspective
This is the step I see missing from a lot of EVP research.
An EVP should not only describe the organization people like working for today. It should help attract and retain the people the business will need tomorrow. Talk to the people responsible for where the organization is going. You don’t need another workshop about employer branding. You need to understand the business.
What is changing? Where does growth need to come from? What capabilities are becoming more important? What kind of people will make that possible? Which behaviors does the organization need more of? What currently gets in the way?
Employees may value the stability of the organization while the strategy requires it to become faster and more entrepreneurial. People may love its consensus culture while growth increasingly requires clearer ownership and faster decisions.
Neither side is wrong. But simply turning today’s employee experience into tomorrow’s EVP would preserve exactly the tension the business needs to resolve. A useful EVP therefore sits somewhere between who you genuinely are and who you genuinely need to become.
3. Look for the deal
Now put the employee and business perspectives next to each other.
I usually look for themes that pass three tests:
- Is it true?
Can employees give you real examples of experiencing it? - Does it matter?
Is it relevant to the people you need to attract and retain? - Does it help?
Does strengthening this part of the employee experience support where the business is going?
You can add a fourth question if you want: is it distinctive?
Just be careful with that one. Organizations sometimes become so determined to find something nobody else can claim that they end up with something nobody cares about. This is also where you need to make choices. An EVP is not an inventory of everything that is good about working for you. If you have eight EVP pillars, you probably haven’t made enough choices yet.
Try to express each theme as an actual exchange.
Instead of:
Development
say: We will give you problems that stretch you. We expect you to take responsibility for solving them.
Instead of:
Flexibility
say: We give you freedom in how you organize your work. We expect you to use that freedom without making your flexibility someone else’s problem.
I am not suggesting these should become the final copy. The point is to make the deal explicit before somebody makes it sound nice.
4. Pressure test it before you polish it
Once you have a possible EVP, try to break it.
Go back to employees and ask for evidence. When have they experienced this? When have they experienced the opposite? Would someone who joined six months ago recognize it? Would someone in another country or function recognize enough of it?
Also test it with the people you want to hire. A proposition can be completely authentic and still be irrelevant to the talent you need.
For international organizations, this step becomes particularly important. A global EVP needs enough common ground to hold the employer brand together, without pretending that the employee experience is identical everywhere. I would rather have three strong themes that work across the organization with room for local evidence than seven themes designed to include absolutely everyone.
Don’t ask people whether they like the EVP. Almost any reasonably written EVP can survive that test. Ask whether they believe it.
5. Find where the organization contradicts it
This is where EVP development becomes more interesting. Take each part of the proposition and ask what would need to be true for people to experience it consistently.
- If you promise ownership, can people actually make meaningful decisions without asking permission several levels up?
- If collaboration matters, do targets and incentives encourage teams to work together?
- If development is part of the deal, do people have the time and opportunities to develop or have you simply given them access to a learning platform?
- If innovation matters, what actually happens when a sensible experiment fails?
- Look beyond HR processes. Hiring, onboarding, performance and progression matter, but so do decision rights, leadership behaviour, incentives, information flows and the way work is organized.
This does not mean your EVP project needs to turn into an organizational transformation. It means you should know where the contradictions are. Some will be acceptable. Some will need explaining. A few will be important enough to change. Those few are where the EVP can start having an impact beyond employer brand. This is also the connection between EVP and the way I think about culture as a system. What people experience is shaped by many more things than the values written on the wall.
6. Build the evidence before the campaign
Now you can start thinking about communication. For every part of the EVP, collect evidence that makes it believable. Employee stories are useful, but evidence can be much more mundane.
- If you promise development, show how people actually move through the organization.
- If you promise flexibility, explain what flexibility means in practice.
- If you promise impact, show where employees have influenced a product, customer or decision.
- If you promise ownership, show what people are actually trusted to own.
- This is where I find it useful to work at the smallest possible level. Don’t just prove the overall EVP. Prove every important part of it.
That gives recruiters, hiring managers, leaders and employees something much more useful than a set of approved messages. It gives them real examples.
7. Put it into the moments that shape the experience
You don’t need to activate the EVP everywhere at once. Start with the places where expectations are created or tested.
- Recruitment is an obvious one. Candidates should understand not only what is attractive about working for you, but also what the deal asks of them.
- Onboarding is another. If the EVP promises ownership, collaboration or development, new employees should encounter evidence of that early.
- Then look at the moments where the organization itself has the biggest influence on whether the promise survives. That could be performance conversations, promotion decisions, leadership communication, team design or simply the way decisions get made.
- The right places will depend on the EVP.
Activation should follow the promise, rather than following a standard employer brand activation plan.
8. Check whether it is still true
An EVP doesn’t need reinventing every two years because somebody is bored with the campaign. However, it does need checking.
The business changes. Leadership changes. Acquisitions happen. Teams grow. Markets shift. Things that were once genuinely distinctive become normal and things that were once true quietly stop being true.
You can test this without starting another EVP project.
Take each part of the proposition and ask employees for recent evidence. Look at the relevant employee data. Ask new hires whether the organization they joined resembles the one they were promised. Look at where managers find the EVP difficult to deliver. If the proposition is still relevant but the evidence is disappearing, you may not have an EVP problem at all.
That is exactly why we created the EVP Reality Check. It helps separate a proposition that needs changing from an organization that needs to get better at delivering what it already promises.
Do a simple test
Imagine somebody has worked in your organization for 90 days without ever seeing your careers site, employer brand campaign or EVP presentation. Then you show them the Employer Value Proposition for the first time. Would they recognize the organization they just joined?
- If the answer is yes, you have something worth communicating.
- If the answer is no, I wouldn’t start with the copy.
And if you need help figuring out whether the problem is the proposition or the organization behind it, this is how we approach Employer Value Proposition development.
