The Employee Value Proposition. As a construct, it’s been with us for at least the last 25 years.

Frustratingly, it remains, however, ambiguous, poorly explained and under-exploited.

Definitions vary and there remains confusion as to where the EVP starts and the Employer Brand finishes.

Sadly, too, the EVP can, for some organisations, mean so much. It can represent the foundation of organisational inspiration, alignment and communications for so many people audiences – talent acquisition, candidate journey, inductees, employees, leavers, alumni, etc.

For others, it continues to languish as simply the basis for some revised recruitment advertising.

As a practitioner within the space, this jars.

The process towards an EVP involves engagement with a number of different organisational audiences – senior leaders, key internal talent pools, recent joiners, those on the candidate journey and even those with little current engagement with the organisation.

The insights they provide are wide-ranging, rich and hugely actionable.

Whether they are, indeed, actioned to anything like their full extent remains doubtful, at best.

Such insights will touch on the line of sight of an organisation’s current trajectory and the extent to which the perspectives of such from senior leaders and key employee pools align. Or don’t align. They might relate to the reasons for premature departures. Or, alternatively, calcified labour turnover. They might too shine a light on whether your people feel they have a future and a career path within your organisation. Or whether they feel the only way up is out.

If you are doing any work around your EVP – and we’d argue that the returns from this make it an important investment – it’s too important to allow its many potential outcomes to languish in favour of some shiny new recruitment ads.

Don’t let your EVP function purely as the externally visible element of what you have invested in and created.