Most employer value propositions don’t fail at launch. They fail without much notice over time, once the bunting from the launch party has been cleared away and the email footers have faded to become wallpaper.
The toolkit remains as fresh and shiny as it was on day one. It just stops being opened, is quietly forgotten and the aspiration and reality become unrealised and irrelevant.
This is a pattern we see repeatedly in our work at TMP Worldwide. The data we collect across campaigns reinforces it.
The Outthink Employer Brand Index is our proprietary benchmark of employer brand performance. We’ve evaluated more than one thousand organisations globally, each scored by a strategist across 10 indicators running from search visibility and social reach to content, employee experience and candidate experience. This means we’re constantly comparing what employers claim with what they can actually show.
Across the hundreds of UK organisations we’ve evaluated, the distance between what’s claimed and what is experienced is wider than most talent leaders would expect.
The distance between what’s claimed and what is experienced is wider than most talent leaders would expect
Employers tell, but they don’t show
Of the employers scoring highest in the values and proposition segment – meaning their proposition is clearly explained and their values are stated on the careers site – 43 per cent score low when it comes to content.
That indicator looks at how compelling recruitment content is and whether it authentically showcases real employees, is regularly updated and appears in a variety of formats.
These organisations can articulate exactly who they are, but they lack the evidence to back it up. Nothing brings it to life in a way employees or candidates would recognise. The result is an emotional gap. That is why most EVPs fail in practice.
By framing the EVP through the actions and experiences of real employees, you can safeguard against an empty proposition. Let your employees tell the stories of their career journeys, which automatically adds authenticity and credibility to the conversation.
Let a manager describe what they expect in someone’s first 90 days in their own words rather than the company’s. Show the texture of an ordinary working day, captured by the people living it, in a relatable, easily understood format.
There is no shelf life, only a widening gap
There is no explicit shelf life for an EVP, and no standard review cycle we’d recommend.
An EVP decays the moment the distance between what it claims and what the organisation visibly does grows wide enough for a candidate to notice and question this. Sometimes that takes five years. Sometimes all it takes is one Glassdoor review.
Of course, where the organisation has been structurally altered – via a merger or acquisition, the emergence of a significant new competitor, a radical change in the cultural fabric of your sector (did someone mention AI?) – that’s a trigger to rethink your story.
While we’re on the subject of AI, the Outthink Index highlights something worth pausing on. Of the organisations we assessed against our AI indicator, 60 per cent give candidates no visible guidance on how AI features in their application or selection process.
This is the single biggest shift in how candidates prepare for a job application, and most employers have said nothing about it. That lack of information is its own gap between claim and reality, and candidates are already reading it, conscious of who’s being clear and transparent and who has yet to take a clear position.
By framing the EVP through the actions and experiences of real employees, you can safeguard against an empty proposition
Three ways to keep your EVP honest
If you want your proposition to hold up, these are the practices worth building in.
1. Audit the evidence, not the messaging, once a year
Take each of your EVP pillars and list what a candidate could find on your careers site or social media channels that support it. If a pillar has no artefact behind it, it is a slogan.
2. Give your people the means to tell their own stories, not just permission
Brief a group of employee ambassadors, give them parameters to work in and track how much of your careers content originates outside the marketing team.
3. Agree what the EVP is actually for before you touch it again
Volume hiring, hard-to-fill specialisms and retention all pull a proposition in different directions. Name the priority, then judge every asset against that one thing. You can always introduce Talent Value Propositions under your main EVP to appeal to specific role types or regions.
An EVP is not a message to be optimised. It is a claim to be evidenced. The organisations getting this right are the ones that show, not just tell.
Curious how your employer brand compares? Check out the interactive Outthink Employer Brand Index on our website.
This article is part of a new content partnership between HRZone and TMPW, bringing you research, practical insight and expert perspectives on the changing talent landscape.
Explore more from TMPW on employer brand, candidate experience, recruitment and the future of talent.
Read an article by Sara Naveda, Head of TMP Worldwide: AI isn’t the problem with your hiring process. Your silence is.
