EVPs Don't Work. 🍕🍕🍕
EVPs Don't Work. 🍕🍕🍕
Creating change starts by creating choice.
Let’s pretend that you’re in the grocery freezer section to buy a pizza. Even accounting for topping selections, you are about to be overwhelmed with options. You as a customer want the best pizza, but how do you choose?
Do you want the big-name brand that has a rising crust that feels slightly more like delivered pizza? Do you want a pizza with a crust that’s thick and chewy or something thin and crispy (it takes all kinds)? Do you want the one that seems to be the most “authentically Italian” (Clean up of a can of worms, aisle nine)? Do you want the healthy version with a cauliflower crust or the one with vegan cheese? Do you want the one that gets made faster because it's designed to be cooked in a microwave? Or maybe it all just comes down to price and you’ll end up picking the store-brand because it’s cheapest?
Each one of these pizzas claims to offer the “best value.” The best tasting. The fastest. The healthiest. The cheapest. The most “real.” It is their value proposition; how they present themselves as the best option. It then becomes up to the consumer to decide if “best” means “tastes the most like delivery pizza” or “will be ready to eat the soonest.”
At its heart, a value proposition creates a more clear choice for customers. So why don’t employer value propositions seem to take the same approach?
For a candidate looking at two companies of similar sizes offering roles with similar titles, there is often little differentiating information. How are they supposed to understand the differences between PwC and KPMG, between JetBlue and Spirit, or between Target and Walmart?
Which company offers more autonomy and which focuses more on supporting its employees? Which company offers the maximum reward for results? Which offers the most work-life balance or most opportunities for professional development?
When you look at job postings and career sites, the places where candidates are trying to inform themselves, there isn’t much-differentiated information on which to base that choice. They all talk about how much they care about their people, but without much specific detail. They reference their amazing culture, but not how that culture is maintained or how that culture leads to specific behaviors. They talk about how much people like working there, but with few explanations as to why.
One of the underlying assumptions behind creating clear choices is that no one brand can be all things to all buyers.
The fastest pizza doesn’t spend much time trying to say how the pizza will taste like it came fresh out of a wood-fired oven. The rising crust pizza doesn’t waste box space explaining how healthy it is. And the healthy one doesn’t talk about speed.
In hiring, we never talk about the trade-offs. How being innovative also means being chaotic. Or that collaboration can slow down decision-making. Or that internal competition can lead to an unsupportive culture.
An employer value proposition isn’t just some pretty words to make you sound “good.” It exists solely to make the candidate’s choice more clear. They're supposed to help the candidate understand why this company is different from other companies.
Where is the language that says, “You choose us because you get paid the most.” or “You choose us because we offer you the most status.” Or “You choose us because we offer you the most autonomy.” That is where an employer value proposition is supposed to live but in the real world that's not what we see.
This isn’t transparency for moral reasons. Your recruiting changes and gets better because people choose you over others. And a new job is too important a choice to jump at on a whim. When people can’t see the bad, they have no reason to hear you talk about the good.
Why have EVPs become so weak? We’ll break down the causes next week.
🧮 It’s a whole lot easier to create real change in an agile environment. So here’s a case that you could start by instilling a culture of agility. »
🧮 Too many people have poor-fitting jobs, and that has a lot to do with how people search for jobs and how companies hire. »
🧮 You might not realize it, but there is a fight going on in your marketing department between “direct marketing” (the people who get people to convert) and brand marketing (the people who grow the available audience of targets). Replace “direct marketing” with “recruiting,” and the arguments might sound very similar. That’s why this (fairly deep) deck is amazing at showing the difference between the two ideas and how they must work together (though you will have to mentally replace the word “customer” with “candidate.“) »
🧮 Fast Company thinks being more transparent with your salaries will keep candidates from ghosting you. And they might be right. But isn’t the answer to focus on making the candidate want to work there, first? »
🧮 Strategy beats technology, even when it comes to generative AI »
🧮 Talent management in the age of AI starts by rejecting titles and focusing on skills. (I’m sure this isn’t exactly the advice they give senior leadership. Just sayin’) »
🧮 This MIT Sloan article on making employees your allies is focused on labor negotiation, but honestly, couldn’t we all stand to build more allies within the organization? »
🧮 5 behaviors innovative leaders display. It’s not clear that by displaying these things, you’ll be seen as an innovative leader, but it can’t hurt. »
🧮 Check out the Employer Bland podcast »
🏛️ All 2,200+ articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
Also, this week’s Employer Brand Breakdown was a DOOOZY!
A Directory of US-focused Employer Branding Agencies and Consultants in a Side-by-side Comparison.
105 free (or almost free) ways to activate your brand »
Employer Brand Breakdown series »
Biotech Recruiting limited run email course »
Proof employer brand works »
Biotech Recruiting Chat series »
Employer Brand minute series »
The Brand Plan podcast »
The Talent Cast podcast »
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]
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I am a huge believer in EVPs that provide differentiation and clarity on the value of the employee experience offered by an organization. Not only does the EVP need to help candidates gain clarity among organizations competing for talent, the EVP needs to provide the same authentic clarity to the organization's workforce, the employees who need a reason to believe every day at work and in every conversation they have with potential employees. The EVP must ring true in order to have power. If it does, it will have enormous power to retain and get the best from employees.
Could not agree more. For some time now, we've been advocating that if EVP, the way it's thought of and approached today, continues, it's not helping people make better job and career decisions, which is the opposite of what a value proposition should do. In our view, it's not the concept of a value proposition that is at odds with job seekers; it's that people search and define value differently, and if what they experience is all high-level, feel-good-about-ourselves content, then they have little to go by. The result is a lot of poorly fit applicants, not because applicants are bad, but because fluffy in, fluffy out. Keep 'em coming James. Love it.