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As we start to rake over the dying embers of 2022, there’s an unavoidable realisation that it’s come around again, that it’s that time of year once more. Eating our body weight in mince pies? Check. Weighing up the delight in being invited to work Christmas parties against the existential dread of actually attending them? Definitely. Considering a range of utterly unfeasible New Year’s resolutions? Yup. And lists. Lists, lots of them. I spent much of the weekend reading through the list of books I’d failed to read this year and which movies had passed me by. 

So, in amongst the list of lists, let’s make the case for one relating to EVP. What factors and trends have most impacted EVP over the last year and what are its opportunities and challenges for 2023?

If there’s one key theme likely to impact EVP more than anything else, it relates to confidence. There’s little debate that we are already in rocky economic times and more of the same undoubtedly lies ahead. Spend any time on LinkedIn and you’re immediately struck by the volume of posts and stories relating to layoffs – impacting both tech and talent acquisition professionals. And whilst the number of live vacancies across the UK remains comfortably over the million, these are anxious times for many. 

How will EVP and its practitioners respond? 

Will a challenging economic outlook mean that EVPs become harder to justify? That budgets shrink? That the relevant teams tasked with curating EVPs contract? That organisations retain an outdated EVP way after its shelf life has expired? 

There’s certainly potential for that. However, EVP has the opportunity to become more confident and more proactive. To make the entirely justifiable case that its outcomes and outputs extend much further than talent acquisition. That by getting EVP both right and topical, it can enhance organisational engagement, pride, purpose and tenure. That it is playing a role in reducing labour turnover and the costs, morale and customer engagement that accompany it. That it is enhancing an organisation’s fairness, equality, inclusion and equity initiatives. That, by improving an organisation’s candidate experience, it is supporting corporate branding and reputational positions. 

Becoming a more confident concept will ask much of how an EVP is measured and evaluated moving ahead. Sad and entirely misleading though it is, organisational leadership can often feel that recruitment is an entirely straightforward function. And with redundancies increasing, such leadership will feel more and more justified in such a conclusion. What could be easier than hiring in a recession? 

By evaluating an EVP purely on its talent acquisition capabilities and contribution, this rather plays to such views. How hard can hiring be in a recession? Sure, the metrics suggest an EVP is helping drive recruitment, but then it would, right now, wouldn’t it?

Better then to make the case as to how much money an EVP is saving in terms of addressing premature departures. (The US’ SHRM calculates that it costs between six and nine months’ salary to replace a departing employee). 

Not so much its role in hiring per se, but what such new talent is enabling for a hiring organisation. (According to Lattice, some 38% of organisations had to turn work down as a result of staff shortages earlier this year). 

Reducing labour turnover and increasing hiring make for positive hiring metrics, they also make for a very clear bottom line contribution. Potentially making for a much stronger business case right now. 

What I’m also starting to see is more desire to portray an organisation’s employees and new hires alongside either customers or service users. Making the relationship between what such employees enable and the difference it makes to their customer and user base. This is being done via photography and video. Increasingly, it speaks to real partnership and real differentiation. It also emphasises the very direct contribution the TA team make to customer relationships and, by definition, business and organisational success. 

What other changes might we associate with EVP moving forward? 

An EVP never functions in a vacuum. Its impact is being constantly influenced by competitor activity and the effects of the market. And the past three years have seen any number of the latter. 

No EVP could come through the initial phases of the pandemic unscathed. How an employer engaged with and cared for its people during lockdown and furloughing arguably shaped their employer brand for the next couple of years. Some organisations reacted with empathy, consideration and care. Others appeared to adopt the opposite position. The labour market then became hugely competitive – influenced as it was by workers leaving the UK because of Brexit and leaving employment because of Covid and its implications. We are now seeing the market change again. Double digit cost of living increases, and GDP growth going in reverse, with a recession either with us now or awaiting us in the New Year. 

Again, the labour market changes once more. 

In the past, an EVP has tended to respond to a triennial cycle. The research, discovery, articulation and communication of it has lasted broadly three years. Three years in which the market has evolved and moved along, as has competitor activity, as well as those people responsible for the EVP. It can often feel like a project for an incoming TA lead. A box, albeit an important box, to be ticked. But in committing to an EVP which will last 3-4 years, how relevant and effective does the EVP remain, particularly towards the back end of that period? 

We simply don’t know unless we are measuring it and measuring via the most actionable, influential and relevant of parameters.  We need consistency from our EVP but not something set in stone for 36-48 months. An element of an EVP should be forward facing. It’s unlikely to still be forward facing four years down the line. 

Tomorrow’s EVP will be nimbler and more intuitive. They shouldn’t take months, even years, to build. If they do, then no wonder there is little enthusiasm to revisit it for years to come. And how relevant is an EVP if the research that predicates it is already a year old? Particularly given the bewildering speed of labour market and economic changes we’ve touched on earlier. 

I firmly believe that organisations have to continue to look forward in terms of their EVP. Brexit, the Great Resignation and other factors like hybrid working over the last few years mean that, for many, finding great talent has never been harder. A recession and cutbacks may be a short-term solution that many are – and will – take, but for organisations to work through and come out the other side of it in a strong position, means the EVP needs to be flexible; to be regularly reviewed and constantly evolved in light of those findings. As an employer brand agency, we’ve probably never had as many discussions about EVP, or ongoing live projects (both in the UK, and interestingly, in different parts of the world) as we currently have on the go. So, in my experience, clients are fully aware of the importance of their EVP and are already taking steps for what is to come.  Mike Heal, MD, WDAD Communications

How will diversity and inclusion continue to influence EVP over the next 12 months? Having spent 2022 working on a wide number of EVP projects, inclusion has been a key part of the conversations which have made up such EVPs. 

Key learnings? This is such a nuanced and sensitive area. Diversity and its relationship with EVP has to be integrated and joined up – some organisations are criticised for adopting a binary approach to diversity, focusing on one particular characteristic at a time, without being holistic. Younger audiences, particularly those from major cities, have grown up in healthily diverse environments – they are often surprised to be asked about the subject. It is something they have grown up to expect not hope for. Diversity also looks and feels different in London, compared to, for example, Glasgow, Dublin and Belfast. Learning about the experiences of a particular characteristic and living with it are wholly different things, about which assumptions are very dangerous. And if an organisation looks diverse and inclusive except when someone looks upwards to senior leadership, then such inclusivity lacks credibility. 

Key take out? I think an organisation’s inclusivity initiatives are key to why people stay there, not why they choose to move there. And if some are sceptical about an employer making what they consider to be too much about inclusivity, then, equally, any tolerance towards racism, homophobia, sexism or ableism will stop an EVP dead in its tracks. 

Finally, and nodding back to the earlier point around confidence, do we risk creating an echo chamber around EVP? While it’s warming to see huge and increasingly global TA/EB/EVP events taking place (and taking place in person), are they simply preaching to the converted? How many marketers or senior leaders attend such events? What is their view about EVP and what it enables and empowers? This possibly speaks again to how our industry could be more confident. More interested in understanding how an EVP can make a broader, more actionable corporate contribution. 

How often do senior leaders genuinely act as EVP ambassadors? Does the CEO have a recruitment video on their career site? Couldn’t and shouldn’t we do far more than this? (Again, this touches back to metrics – the CEO is more likely to get involved if they are convinced that the EVP is responsible for some key bottom line deliverables). Do they make it very clear what the EVP is and why great talent should come and work for their organisation? 

Just like January, I’ve probably gone on too long. What are your thoughts about the direction of EVP during 2023?