Communications coherence – are you making your people mentally toggle between vision, internal comms and employer branding?

I’m doing some EVP work right now for an organisation whose directional strategy is changing. They are looking to reposition themselves within their industry in order to take advantage of systemic sector shifts. That they are looking to reexamine their EVP at the same point is no coincidence. 

They want their messaging to key industry, consumer and corporate stakeholders to have a clear and coherent relationship with the narrative they are serving to people audiences. Perhaps more, they want their existing people to be motivated by where their employer is going, and external candidate audiences to be inspired by this new direction and the chance to play a part in influencing this. 

This sense of anchoring an EVP, and its associated messaging, to corporate messaging feels both obvious, if not nearly simplistic, as well as perhaps under-exploited within our industry. Even some beautifully thought-through and constructed work can feel ring-fenced and insular – with the people messaging platform having little in the way of shared DNA with consumer or corporate positioning. 

Let’s look at an example of communications coherence. It will be interesting to see whether the departure of Tim Cook makes a difference to Apple’s strategy and direction. But, right now, so much of what they do and how Apple presents itself feels joined up, feels coherent, feels as one. Product design, packaging, the wonderful retail experience, the brand itself – they all feel focused around simplicity, elegance, excellence, with human experience at the centre. The words of Steve Jobs – “start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology” – as relevant today as they have always been.

All this feels like an organisation at one with itself (and at one in terms of the message it is delivering) with the constituent parts of the business in sync and moving in the same direction, not one wrought by confusion, duplication and contradiction.

A quick look at their careers site builds on this – “We aren’t merely creating products. We’re creating something magical for the person who uses it”. People joining the organisation have to be inspired by what their work does for the end-user – how will they delight and create magic for Apple’s customers, regardless of their specific role? 

They continue: “Our values are part of everything built here – including careers”. The people messaging, the reasons to join Apple are not incidental, not an afterthought, but a core element of their communications delivery. The focus on the customer experience is made clear to all Apple employees – even before they become Apple employees.

What are the downsides to not aligning an EVP and people messaging with the corporate position? 

We are all bombarded with a bewildering array of messaging each and every day. We have a very finite bandwidth, interest and tolerance for such messaging. The more noise we’re exposed to, the less communication we hear. If an EVP is saying one thing about my organisation, internal comms something else and organisation mission and vision yet another take, the chances of effective message cut through is somewhat futile. 

Less is more when it comes to retaining a core message about what an organisation is for and about. 

There should, then, be little wonder, but perhaps a lot of concern, in the Gartner statistic – “just 16% of employees report knowing what makes up their organisation’s EVP”.

It’s hard to think of a more demoralising thought that comfortably less than a quarter of employees really grasp their own organisation’s EVP. 

There are no comparable numbers on the percentage of candidates who truly understand the EVP of a potential new employer, but it is unlikely to be anywhere close to the rather modest 16%.

It feels like an inconvenient truth that, as a profession, we have some way to go if large swathes of our core audience remain blissfully unaware of our best efforts. 

We stand a lot more chance of communicating an EVP successfully to audiences, both internal and external, if we are not asking them to mentally toggle between employer brand, internal comms and corporate vision.  

Which brings us back to our central argument – how much more powerful, how much more meaningful, how much more memorable will an EVP be if it has a clear coherence with and relationship to what an organisation is saying corporately? 

And this is far from a dry, academic, theoretical communications argument. 

Having a clear idea about the relationship between one’s own efforts and initiatives and how they are making a tangible contribution to an employer’s organisational goals and vision, should be seen as a huge stimulus. The closer the relationship between EVP messages and those of the employer in question, the closer the link feels between individual input and organisational difference. 

What we do each day should matter, should make a difference. Clarifying the nature of that difference should be the work of an EVP and people communications. 

We’ve all come across the example of the NASA caretaker helping to put a man on the moon. There’s a more recent Disney example of this sense of empowerment involving a cleaner tidying up a family room within the resort. The cleaner came across some Disney toys strewn about the room. The cleaner turned on the TV to the Disney Channel and arranged the toys on a chair in front of the television, so as to appear as if the characters were watching intently. The children were so enthralled by this scene on their return, that their parents mentioned this to guest services. The cleaner hadn’t been told to do this but saw an opportunity of creating more magic.

Through EVP, we have an opportunity to make the link between personal input and collective progress very clear before an individual joins. The more aligned an EVP is with mission and vision, the more powerful, the more focused and the less confusing the noise your people hear is.

It’s interesting too that the organisations featured above, Apple and Disney, are associated (or certainly associate themselves) with the magical. But this is a tangible magic that their people feel able and empowered to deliver on behalf of a great brand.