The case for Agile EVPs

Why Agile EVPs?

I started thinking about agile EVPs, because I started to become a bit frustrated with some of the messaging and ideas I was hearing about the process of creating an EVP.

A frequent message appeared to be that a properly researched and tested EVP takes 6, 12 , maybe 18 months to research and define. That message seemed to come from larger – and usually more complex – employers. After all, they often become the flag-bearers of good HR practice.

That message then has two consequences:

1.????? For smaller organisations – it can signal that developing their own EVP is something that is out of their league and for the big-players only. “I haven’t got that kind of money to invest, I’ll just have to muddle through”

2.????? But even for their peers – it can signal that EVPs are necessarily, time-consuming and expensive … and possibly even quickly obsolete ?I can’t wait that long, I’ve got big priorities that I need to address right now”

I didn’t like either of those ideas. So, I wanted to start a conversation about a different way to address defining your EVP. Whether you’re doing it for the first time, or in need of a refresh. And whether you are a bigger or smaller organisation with bigger or smaller recruitment and engagement needs.

(And of all the conversations I’ve wanted to start over the years, these feels like it’s getting a bit more traction)

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Does the process ever need to be that long?

Does it need to take 6-18 months? That can certainly be the right way to go, but I’d say only in a limited set of circumstances. Those being:

a)????? ?If you’re a complex organisation, doing very different things in different places. Then you’re going to want to talk to different people on different terms.

b)????? Despite those differences, you still want to be tightly linked to one core brand. And that would usually be because the rest of your brand is coherently presented like this.

If both of those things are going on. Then reaching your EVP is going to take time. You’ll need to very carefully understand, and then be able to plot, all the differences and commonalities. It’ll be a matrix in several dimensions. Understanding that and then making it useable is a challenge.

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So why might projects be scoped as taking that long?

Otherwise, I think the only reasons that the process would take that long would be:

·???????? If you set off without a clear destination or method in mind. That might not be the worst idea – it’s perhaps a deliberately agile principle – but it could also lead you down some dead ends too. That could prove frustrating, it could try the patience of whoever is ultimately waiting to employ the EVP

·???????? You come to rely too heavily on research Perhaps there is an assumption or hope that with enough insight there’s a point at which everything comes into total focus. I agree that depth of research can be reassuring. Sometimes you need to do more than strictly necessary to satisfy those who might ask tough questions or seek to pick holes. But there comes a point where the returns of more research diminish fairly quickly. You need to be brave enough to say, “I understand enough” and where any further work is mostly going to confirm what you already know. (NB if this is happening, change the focus. Stop asking all the broad question, ask more pointed ones. “We think it’s like this. Are we right?”)

·???????? You’re doing this in-house

In which case, you’re learning fast – and gaining a huge amount of valuable experience – but each step will take a lot longer than if working with and expert or handing it to them. Maybe as well this is a side-desk project - it’s quite possible the centre of your desk occupies an increasing amount of your time!

·???????? There is a final option, and I hate to suggest it, but perhaps the project is being artificially inflated? I’ve no evidence this is happening. I simply observe that it’s currently quite easy for a cynic to suggest that might be the case. And too often those cynics are people that hold influence or budgets.

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What could be done differently?

I think there’s room for Agile EVPs. The model looks something ?like this:

·???????? Very quickly (weeks, even days): 95% right, and not wrong Meaning you can start activating your employer brand almost immediately. You get the benefit, and the strategic confidence to act, without the wait.

·???????? In short order (weeks): 99% right Meaning you can start on bigger ticket items like careers sites or a volume campaign, you can start to confidently align social presence and employee advocacy

·???????? Not too long after that (months, three tops): 99.9% right Meaning you now know how to present your EVP for different audiences and can tailor your message to talk to the needs of the people you most need, in a way in which your competitors aren't.

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What do I mean 95% right, and not wrong?

Your organisation already has a well-defined brand, one that talks to the people that use your service or buy from you (or invest in you or have some other interest in you). You have a brand and a proposition for all of these people and stakeholders, it just remains to turn the focus to those that work for you or might work for you.

And there is a lot of information in marketing, HR, leadership and from the already-captured voices of all of your employees to shape that, right away.

It won’t be a perfect expression of the total value of working for your organisation. But it will be good. It will be useable, and it won’t be wrong. That means there isn’t the risk of contradiction down the line. You can get out there – now – and activate your employer brand and start to gain all the benefits you want from your EVP.

At the same time as activating your brand, you can also go and do the deeper research. That research is going to enable you to be far clearer on the promise you can make and for more accurate as you start to tailor that promise for different audiences. You can keep improving and refining that EVP all of the time.

There doesn’t even need to be a defined end point.

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A further role for Agile EVPs

If organisations themselves are becoming more agile, then it’s evident that the EVP should be too. Let me expand:

Increasingly, organisations change faster than previously. There are different priorities, challenges and opportunities for organisations, more frequently.

Therefore, it’s likely their people need to do different things to before. Or make different prioritisations or decisions or aim for different targets.

The EVP will need to keep pace with that, to help make current sense of it

The EVP will need to tell the developing story of why the organisation is changing, and what its new future looks like. The embodiment of that story, as told to employees, needs to keep pace.

So, it’s no use having an EVP that took a year, and you expect to have a shelf-life of five.

If you haven’t moved on in that first year, you certainly will you have over the six.

Added to this, as organisations change, they may need entirely different cohorts of people. You need to tell a new story to a new audience – who perhaps have a distinct set of motivations.

You can’t hope to fulfil your organisational objectives without being able to meet those motivations. What you learn and understand as part of developing your EVP becomes ever more crucial to organisational success.

Agile EVPs are needed now

There’s a need for EVPs to be agile, perhaps almost continually, while still keeping coherence and consistency.

It’s a tough challenge, but with a change of mindset about how EVPS are defined, then that challenge can be met.