Despite the very worst efforts of Covid-19, the idea that employees are central, value-adding and worthy of respect and consideration remains. And whilst we open newspapers and browsers, on a daily basis, to be confronted by fresh cost cutting and redundancy announcements, the very real deliverables of talent acquisition are not going away. Indeed, they continue to be a major subject of focus for those right at the top of organisations. Research from the likes of The Conference Board, PWC and McKinsey underlines the realisation from senior leaders that attracting and retaining talent is a key organisational objective. Pandemic or no pandemic.
Let’s throw another apparent truism into the mix.
Your EVP can and should deliver all sorts of benefits. Again, there is a multitude of both anecdotal and quantitative evidence to support this. For Gartner, employers who effectively deliver on their EVP can reduce departures by 69%. Not to be outdone, LinkedIn suggests that 83% of all organisations feel their EVP has a significant influence on their ability to hire. Organisations with an actively managed EVP increase hiring pools by 50%, according to the Corporate Leadership Council.
But you know all this.
More to the point, what’s the connection between paragraphs one and three?
There’s every chance that such a connection might not be as robust and evident as it might be.
What role has your CEO played in the construction and articulation of your EVP? There’s likely to be an excellent chance that the occupier of the top job speaks freely and openly about the importance of your current workforce and how critical the recruitment of external talent is.
However, were they interviewed during the research phase of the EVP? Are they a passionate advocate of this EVP? Could they talk with knowledge about it?
“In my experience, CEOs and Founders are some of the most brilliant and inspiring brand champions around. The caveat is that “people” and “talent strategy” is not their only concern. And nor should it be, given that’s the purview of the senior HR or People Leader (where one exists). The challenge, therefore, is how best to connect their top tier support with wider employer advocacy to produce and maximise measurable business impact.” Daley Pritchard, Director and Talent Strategy Consultant @PowwowPeople.
“I think this is so important, but quite often missed. The regular disconnect between the CEO and EVP is often evident, and may indicate a disconnect between board level management, and the core culture of their organisation”. Mark Williams, Recruitment Specialist, Talent Attraction, University of Nottingham.
If such questions prompt a lot of negative answers, ask yourself two more. Do you think your CEO knows what an EVP is? Or, indeed, what an effective one might deliver?
“A CEO is often unlikely to even be aware of what EVP means or certainly to perceive its value. The challenge, and the rewards, sit with articulating this value and enabling them to demonstrate this in front of great candidates”. Mark Williams.
It’s not, therefore, beyond the realms of possibility that your most high-profile spokesperson is unaware of your EVP script.
Let’s probe this in more detail. Think about your talent acquisition gateway – your careers website. What role does your CEO play here? Are they featured front and centre, embodied in video, developing the idea of why great talent should come to your organisation, outlining your EVP? A positive employer brand champion? An advocate of your organisation as an employer?
Quite rightly, would-be candidates want to hear from current employees at similar stages in their careers on such a site. Individuals with whom they associate and empathise. But they also want to see the extent to which senior leaders endorse and advocate your why, your where, your EVP. Does such a promise and proposition come from the top? Does it permeate the whole organisation? Does it feel both bottom up and top down? Or do the promises made by an EVP reach only as far as the recruitment process or the talent acquisition micro-climate?
“Once you have outlined the tangible benefits, you can bring things more front and centre. The EVP in one organisation I worked with became central to the people strategy and then we were able to use the EVP pillars through all the streams of the employee lifecycle”. Julie Griggs, Consultant, Greenhill HR and Talent.
If you want to see more of your CEO on your careers site, promoting your EVP, what’s likely to be currently preventing this?
Because, inherently, it feels as though there should be more sense of connectivity around this. The CEO is up at night worrying about the organisation’s ability to attract and retain great talent. Something, clearly, close to the heart of talent acquisition itself.
But, in working on the EVP of any number of domestic, pan-European and global businesses, I can recall interviewing the respective CEO on just two occasions. And as for filming a CEO talking through their EVP for the careers website? An even lower number.
Is this perhaps about talent acquisition’s capacity to construct a business case appropriate for senior leadership? Is it about adopting the C-suite lexicon? Is this about repositioning some of the deliverables we touched on earlier for the purposes of the boardroom?
Should we instead couch the EVP as the source of bottom line savings, insomuch as Universum making the case that organisations with a poor employer brand – and by definition, an under-activated EVP – spend up to £7m in terms of additional annual wages.
Or that a bad hire can cost anything from 30% to 300% of first-year salary, according to a REC study?
Or echoing David MacLeod’s point that becoming an employer of choice delivers up to 18% higher productivity and 12% better customer advocacy.
“It’s true that talent leaders have been slow to move beyond their internal performance lexicon of, for example, time-to-hire, interview-to-offer ratios, or followers and social media engagement. The problem is, this doesn’t cut through at the top level. The full talent picture, therefore, can remain untold and unknown to those who would value its success the most. If – and it’s a big ‘if’ – talent strategy is to occupy a space beyond transactional role filling, talent leaders should absolutely be championing the true business cost of not connecting the talent dots, whether that’s the real world cost of poor hiring decisions or the significant financial impact of EVP, which absolutely has a central role to play”. Daley Pritchard.
“Frame the conversation around tangible benefits or else it can look like (an)other employee engagement fad and the board won’t get it. Why are we doing it? Will it save us money to articulate and breathe our EVP”. Julie Griggs.
“These metrics are, or should be, well known in TA, but the C-Suite don’t always understand the impact of bad hires. However, when you come across an organisation that does have senior leadership front and centre, you know, as a candidate, that this is a company likely to care about you, with consistency throughout the process and employee lifecycle”. Mark Williams.
Interestingly, perhaps this is about thinking of the EVP as the Employer, rather than the Employee, Value Proposition. What sort of promise is the employer making to prospective hires? How can they grow? How can they develop? How can they be exposed to stretching projects and experiences?
Such a proposition originates from the employer, the whole employer and particularly the individual at the top of that employer.
And if that organisation is making a promise or a proposition to potential hires, shouldn’t that promise come from the person in the top seat? And be seen to come from that person?
And if we’re aiming to be authentic – perhaps the single most over-used term in the industry – then we need to ensure that an Employer Value Proposition emerges from the whole organisation. That it represents the whole organisation. That it is diverse, not only from an ethnicity, gender and sexuality perspective, but also from a multi-hierarchal one. That it features input, comment and contribution from graduate joiners, experienced professionals, through to the CEO themselves.
“Being honest about the journey you are on, and not pretending to be the finished article is much more of a powerful message, and from all levels of an organisation shows everyone is on the same page, everyone shares the same challenge and has the opportunity to contribute”. Mark Williams.
It’s a little trite and meaningless to make the claim that there has never been a more important time to review, recalibrate and re-craft an EVP for the times we’re living in, but it wouldn’t perhaps be too far off.
Indeed, perhaps, it wouldn’t be too far off to suggest that we become more ambitious for our organisation’s EVP. That it flexes its muscles, its influence and its potential to a far greater extent. That it breathes the atmosphere not only of HR, TA and resourcing. But that it is shaped, influenced, endorsed and delivered by all stakeholders. From the recent joiner, the new apprentice, right through to the CEO.
Think how much more internal traction, profile and momentum an EVP would have were the CEO and their senior leadership team to actively and visibly get behind it. To endorse it. To reference it. To suggest that part of the reason they themselves remain with the organisation rests in the contents and essence of this value proposition.
“One of the challenges is the language we use and avoiding too much HR/TA speak. A CEO I worked with actively refused to embrace employer brand or EVP as phrases. So, instead we re-shaped the discussion around organisational direction, how we do things around here and discussed the benefits and then they started to engage in the discussion”. Julie Griggs.
“If the person at the top of your business does not see the value of the employer brand or thinks it is something that HR or Recruitment take care of, move to another business. If they won’t jump on board in earnest, your valuable efforts are wasted. It has to come from the top down”. Adele Swift, National Recruitment Manager, Handepay.
Such leaders understand the importance to their organisation of attracting and retaining talent. But are we doing enough to encourage them to play a more direct role in promoting and disseminating the very reason why such talent should consider your organisation?
“I think these sentiments are key. Now is a time when hierarchy is more blurred than ever, as all employees are experiencing some level of turmoil due to the current climate. It can bring people together, and if that can be articulated through an EVP that is the lived experience of all employees, the true value of that is endless”. Mark Williams.
It feels hugely ironic that the potential of an EVP as a talent magnet is diminished by the lack of connection it often has with the very people who are publicly expressing a concern about their organisation’s inability to hire.
Let’s be more ambitious about the EVP going forward. Let’s ensure it has traction both internally and externally and the promise it extends to such audiences is made by those right at the top of the organisation.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 