The Power of Aspiration: When Employer Brands Must Look Forward

When careers are longer, progression is less linear, and certainty is increasingly elusive, aspiration isn’t a luxury in your EVP, it’s a necessity. Whether you're scaling fast, rebuilding trust, or reigniting internal energy, the question isn’t whether to include aspiration. It’s how much, how boldly, and how credibly.

The strategic use of aspiration in employer branding, as fuel for engagement, transformation, and growth.

A topic that I’ve been discussing a few times recently has been aspiration in employer brand.

The questions really is: how much of your stated EVP should be today’s truth and how much should be tomorrow’s aspiration?

And like all genuinely good questions, it starts with: it depends.

But before I get into all the permutations, I’m going to take a little side-road first – by posing a counter-question.

I’d say that’s become almost universally accepted that EVPs should contain aspiration. Why is that? Where has it come from?

Why is aspiration more important now?

It’s most likely the case that – in the UK, at least -  a genuine job-for-life has gone: The idea that one could join an employer after education and intend to stay there for most or all of your career. There are still some exceptions like policing – and it is still possible in some other roles, but the odds feel more stacked against it. Why?

Most people will live longer, and that means we need to work much longer too. So, the employer needs to exist for that whole time AND needs to have a role for you throughout that time too. Things change – probability works against you here.

The cost of living continues to accelerate. And that accelerates people’s need to move on. So, your employer not only needs to have a role for you, but there also needs to be some kind of progression too. And where once there would increments each year that boost earnings with tenure – that simply doesn’t happen in many professions any more.

Why this has happened would take political, social and economic insights that I don’t have.

But it’s all part of the erosion of employee security that I’ve described before. Fleetingly, in the middle-late part of the last century, there was an acknowledgement that people need to work to live, and so there was a duty on employers to provide stable work with good benefits. Furthermore, in the event of a downturn, there existed a sense of responsibility to keep as big a workforce as possible.

Perhaps this was the natural reaction to two world wars. But as we got further away from there, somehow, in the drive for organisational and governmental efficiency and the pursuit for ever higher GDP, that’s been lost. There’s a far greater sense of fragility and uncertainty. When employers are offering far less, there’s a need from employees for more.

And hence the need for greater aspiration.

Back to the main issue at hand, and some permutations. I’ve come up with four different use cases for when you need more aspiration in your EVP.

Fast Growing

If an organisation is in high-growth mode, it’s hard to say what it will look like tomorrow. For a scale-up, the end destination is – by intention - not necessarily clear. There will be some things you’d love to do, but you can’t quite crack how to make it work, or to get enough people to buy or invest in it. Meantime, sometimes it’s the sidelines that ignite. Or the step-you-took-to-get-to-where-you-wanted-to-be turned out to be a pretty good place to land in its own right.

It’s fairly pointless to bring out a crystal ball.

What you can say with confidence is that:

·        The journey will be interesting – and interesting means learning

·        That, as you come in, you have the chance to shape that journey and the end destination

And that is a powerful and attractive statement to be able to make: Our future depends on you.

It’s not nearly distinctive enough by itself but add it to the things you can put a pin in, and you’ve got a compelling story.

Poor Reputation

It could be that your brand has taken a knock, and that’s been visible externally. It could be the public-facing brand. There may have been poor service, shoddy delivery, even actual newsworthy scandal. It could equally be directly attached to the employer brand, be that from whistleblowing, poor Glassdoor reviews, redundancies.

None of that stops your need to recruit. In many cases, it accelerates the need. You need fresh ideas, different skills, you may even actively be trying to shift the culture.

What you have now isn’t going to bring in the right people – instead you’re going to attract people without too many options. But if it’s out there, you’re going to have to be honest about it.

And the state you’re in, is the context you need to describe where you want to be. The journey form A to B, in the shortest possible timeframe is your aspiration.

The challenge is a big part of your message – for now – and it’s likely a unique description, it’s a position you can entirely own.

Internal Statement

There can be all sorts of different reasons for wanting to make an internal statement. The organisation may be a bit stagnant, it may need to refocus on different priorities, things may have felt rather turbulent for employees in recent times.

Being positive, looking further towards the light and focussing less on the tunnel, having a touch of Boosterism about you. They very well can make people feel better; it can engage and energise them. But I’d say that has a limited lifespan.

But if you can set a positive, realistic aspiration – that balances the need of the organisation with those of the employees –  that can have a longer lasting effect. It needs to be a plan, not a slogan. It needs to be something that you return to, and keep talking about, and keep measuring the effects of.

There are two almost immutable features of nearly every employee I ever speak with:

1.        A genuine desire (for at least the opportunity) to do good work

2.        A huge capacity for cynicism about the employer, their motives and competence

That means it’s a fine line to tread – a vision of better way to work, without overpromising.

But if you can find that aspirational line, it’s a great place to be.

Where the employer brand has wider influence

Not for too many employers, but some – the perception of the employee experience is core contributor to the overall brand.

They might be cliched examples, but it doesn’t make them any less true. For organisations like John Lewis, Virgin Atlantic, Innocent, Patagonia – their employees and leaders are front and centre of their consumer brand.

So, making bigger statements about what you want to be able to do for your people enhances your core brand too. It shows your ambition to be better, for your own people and everyone that deals with you.

So, it’s in your interest to push as hard as you can with the employer brand to support the continued organisation health.

Credibility

As I’ve touched on in all these use cases, aspiration can’t be jam pie in tomorrow’s sky. It’s got to be a meaningful representation of what you will look like tomorrow.

There’s simply no excuse in EVP creation to make claims that you cannot substantiate. You don’t need to prove it exists now. You do need to prove that it can happen, why it would be important to you, give some kind of roadmap for how you’ll get there. And when you do get there, what it means for the employee experience.

Conclusion

Aspiration is about offering a credible, energising vision of what’s possible — for your people, your culture, and your organisation.

Whether you're rebuilding, growing, or simply re-engaging, the right dose of aspiration can turn your EVP from a statement into a story. One that invites people not just to join — but to shape what comes next.