An Agile EVP can allow you to stand out

How EVPs have tended to be created

A traditional Employer Value Proposition (EVP) has been built on the premise that it will last, largely unchanged, for several years. Typically, three to five years.

There would be no need to change very much because the organisation – what it does and how it does it – stayed the same. The people you needed to reach - and their preferences and motivations – stayed the same too.

So, it made really good sense to create a really robust model, and work with that for the foreseeable future.

I don’t think things work like that anymore.

Organisations need to change faster than before, strategically and operationally. And the EVP needs to keep up with that. You could do that full and robust insight piece every time, but the costs add up, and you’ll barely have had a chance to activate your EVP before you need to pivot again.

I think that’s unsustainable, and that’s why I’ve been making the case for more Agile EVPs.

What else do Agile EVPs offer?

As I’ve been making that case, I’ve been thinking about the other possibilities that an Agile approach allows.

If you follow the traditional route, then you are asking an organisation – your own, or your client – to invest a considerable amount of time and money on the insight and research phase. That’s natural, you want this to be watertight, so that everyone can use it with assurance for as long as it lasts.

If you are asking for that kind of investment, you are also inviting scrutiny, and rightly so. There are going to be a number of people that will have a big interest in all of the applications down the line. It’s right that they should all have a view on what’s going to be a major input.

I asked my favourite AI tool what happens when increasing numbers of people review a creative idea. It came up with this, that I think you’ll recognise:

When more people review a creative idea, several dynamics can emerge:

· Enhanced Refinement: Constructive feedback can improve the idea's feasibility and polish.

Awesome – and after all, that’s what we came to this group for.

· Decision Paralysis: Too many opinions can lead to indecision or delays in implementation.

OK, that’s less good. We’re making an already quite long process, longer. That’s unideal.

 · Risk Aversion: Groups often lean towards safer, more conventional ideas, as highly original concepts may be perceived as risky or unfeasible.

· Compromise: The idea may undergo changes to accommodate diverse opinions, which can dilute its originality.

These are really less good outcomes. This is a problem.

Does a traditional EVP stifle bravery?

One of the main motivations and objectives for creating an EVP is to enable you to stand out as an employer.

But the process that has been created to enable you to do that, is now itself preventing it.

Big insight/development phase = high scrutiny =  inhibiting your ability to be brave, to be original and to be different.

And I think that – in the insights phase, in the development of the proposition, and in the execution of content – we see evidence of this all of time.

Undifferentiated propositions. Bland statements. Content that fails the cover-the-logo test. Instead, they all regress to the mean.

Many employers end up all occupying the safe ground. Which is then the biggest risk they can take.

Because to make up for their boring, samey, safe proposition they need more attention grabbing messaging and creative (expensive!) in more places (expensive!) and they probably need to repeat themselves (expensive!)

So, what’s the alternative?

I don’t want anyone to get the idea that an Agile EVP is about winging it and making up ideas on the hoof.

For one, you’re not going to be allowed to get away with that for long. Marketing, comms, leadership are going to be quickly wanting “a word”.

For another, your EVP still has to express the honest reality of working for your organisation, and there has to be a consistency, rather than a scattergun.

It’s my belief though that the core of your EVP already exists and is straightforward to express. Marketing can tell you your voice, leadership can tell you your direction, HR can already tell you a lot about the culture and how people feel.

That’s more than good enough to create an EVP highly right, and not wrong. It is grounded in your organisation’s truths and external brand; it therefore doesn’t represent a risk to use. And that’s a quick process, which won’t require the detailed scrutiny that can suppress the bold – because there’s nothing new to scrutinise.

It’s just an expression of your brand, expressed for employees.

Surely, it’s not as simple as that?

No. That’s a very generalised message. And general risks the same kind of same-ness that we’re trying to avoid. But it is your secure platform on which to build.

The next step is some deeper listening and testing. That’s just the same kind of insight as you’d employ in a traditional EVP process. The difference here is that we’re just building on what exists, and what’s agreed – so we need not get drawn into the approval/caution loop.

And because we’re building on something, we don’t need to start at first principles. It can be a shorter, quicker process.

AND there can be a change of emphasis.

Internally: The task with people on the ground, whose lived experience you want to be able to represent, can be to find the points of difference, to explore why the experience of working in this organisation is truly different to others experienced.

Externally: The task can be to find the areas that your competitors for talent don’t occupy, and which you can.

Now you have a more robust EVP, one that employs highly targeted insights, but is:

·         Only an evolution of what you first created, so can be rolled out  quickly

·         Taking only weeks to produce, not months. Again, maintaining pace

Can you go further?

I think you need to. So far, we’re just talking to one generic audience. It’s likely there are several different audiences – functions, locations – that you need to address.

In a traditional EVP process, you’d try to anticipate these audiences as much as possible upfront.

Now, our assumption is that they may change, or change in priority at a rapid pace. So, you look at each audience as required. And that allows you do something else: you can research an audience’s motivations, and their perception of you, and respond to that.

You already know all that you might be able to say to them. This enables you to focus on the most relevant or the most persuasive. And that can happen in (close to) real-time, rather than based on what you knew some months or years ago.

You can much more accurately respond to an audience, rather than broadcasting what you believe they would like to hear.

It’s a change of emphasis, one that should allow you to focus more on the audience needs and the language they need to hear.

It’s a bit less broadcast and a bit more conversation.

And it can be more responsive. If there’s no big model you need to stick to, you have the freedom to change the model as you go. Sticking, of course, to it representing the truth of being employed by you.

An Agile EVP, not only gets you moving more quickly, but it can also help break out of same-ness, and talk more directly with the people you need to reach.