EVPs: The Fallacy of Complete Knowledge

Enyclopedia

Data is everywhere. Anyone can gather insights. Knowledge has been democratised.

And let me be clear, all of those go into the “Good Things” bucket.

But there’s a consequence of this as well.

I believe that there is a strong sense that – because you could find out almost anything – then everything must be know-able.

And - following on from this - definitely a belief that the effort taken to acquire the knowledge is outweighed by the value of the knowledge.

And there’s the trap.

I’m going to digress.

Let’s think about education. A lot of people will have had direct or indirect experience of it in the past 20 or so years. I have a 17 and 14 year old in education, I was a school governor for about 15 years and chair for the best part of ten.

There’s huge pressure on schools to perform. The focus has slightly shifted, but it is still very much on academic achievement. What grades kids get, and how well they progress from one stage to the next.

Under that much scrutiny, school management need to know what’s going on in each classroom, each day. They can’t physically be in each class, but they can scrutinise the planning and outcomes for each of those lessons. They’re asking for a lot of time and energy to gather that knowledge.

The value of the knowledge is that with better planning and understanding, should come better, more engaging, more personalised lessons.

But there’s a point isn’t there where you’re spending more time accounting for your decisions, than making the best possible decisions. Then the value isn’t worth the effort.

(And to digress slightly from the digression, the upshot is that UK education now performs better, but in a narrow range of subjects, and usually by making the already good kids better. You can decide on the value of that.)

A Fallacy of Complete Knowledge

I think that’s useful example of this kind of fallacious thinking. The idea that everything is knowable to the nth degree of detail, and you should always look for more.

It's always been the case, those encyclopedia were out of date before the ink was dry.

And that same idea has been at the heart of Employer Value Proposition and employer branding for some time now.

The idea that everything is knowable and that you can continue to keep searching for truth until you define everything to the finest possible detail.

And – you can. Many have.

But it’s a lot of time and effort while the world moves on around you.

The Reality of Creating an EVP

So, I joined in a discussion on an Employer Brand forum as soon as I heard some say:

“A full EVP build feels like overkill”

Because I really wanted to understand what they mean.

As the conversation went on two other key phrases leapt out at me:

There's a need for something "like an EVP, but not the usual big project"

that can be done "without building from scratch and creating a lot of downstream busywork to 'embed our EVP'"

It highlighted to me that EVPs, to many people’s eyes, have become an academic and theoretical process, and not a practical one.

A Practical EVP

EVPs mayhave become an exercise in knowledge gathering, rather than being focussed on their use cases. Those use cases should be:

·         Better targeting your recruitment by matching motivations of your target audience to the reality of your workplace

·         Adding consistency and meaning to your internal communications

·         Shifting the market perception of you – as an employer – to one that more closely reflects your truthful reality

Until now it’s been understood that to do all of those things you first need all the knowledge. What has happened in practice is that either:

·         Reality moves on too fast for an EVP to keep pace

·         Brand/HR/TA teams don’t have the time/budget to create that kind of EVP

And in many cases, both are happening at once.

So, they’ve had to work with what they’ve got … and found that works pretty OK.

Creating EVPs at Pace

Why wouldn’t working with what you have work?

If it’s based on your organisational brand – and that should reflect a lot of what you’re about, what you can expect, and the reasons you should join. But consumers have many different motivations to employees, and so it must also be based on

·         the insights you already possess about your people and their experiences at work

·         what leaders have said and plan about the offer to your people

·         some sense of the operational reality

Then that’s quite enough to put together an EVP that ticks all the boxes. It’s:

·         Distinctive

·         Attractive

·         Realistic

·         Consistent

The Value of Agility

And what that means is that you can activate far, FAR, faster. I’d also argue that, with a simpler structure to work with, you can devote more headspace to the audience.

I’d definitely say that you can take more risks. You haven’t involved as many people, or made as big an investment. That should afford you some freedom that you can exploit. Try things in small ways, and if they work, double-down. If they don’t, try the next thing.

But just because you can get to a good place quickly, I don’t think that means you need to stop.

Instead of a front-loaded all-at-once process, I feel your EVP can be a living object. You can continue to add targeted insight, and it will continue to grow and become richer and deeper. You can get to the same place you always would with a more traditional EVP, just at your own pace.

You add richness just-in-time, not just-in-case.

Which for me leaves two questions:

What about the “busywork” to embed the EVP?

I’d argue there’s much less work needed. All we’re doing is turning the existing brand and insights to a candidate/employee stakeholder. No wheels have been reinvented, only repurposed.

There’s certainly no need for any kind of big toolkit or internal “launch” event. Where other people need to make those communications that might typically come from an EVP, I believe we can tell them much more simply: “do what you’ve always done – just emphasise these points”.

“These points” being those that you know make you stand out, that make you a distinctive choice over your competitors.

Whither the external consultant? Do they still have a role?

I think so. They just have to demonstrate they are there to help you be nimble and effective and not to try to rinse you for the biggest possible project.

They need to demonstrate that they’re a partner to you. And with a role that is about being the expert, external influence.

Your value is showing you’ve done it before, you know the pitfalls, you know the shortcuts. You’re outside of the organisation, you can give an objective view on what is and isn’t distinctive and attractive. You’re there to focus and hone ideas down to the simples, most powerful proposition.

You don’t need total knowledge to build an EVP. What you do need is a total focus on what’s important to you right now.