branding

There’s likely to be a tension currently facing many talent acquisition teams around the country. 

On the one hand, there’s no shortage of indicators suggesting that this is no time to be investing in resourcing strategies or messaging tools. The purchasing managers’ index this week dropped from a positive 51.5 to a contraction-indicating 48.2. The IMF has cut UK forecast growth from 1.4% to 1.1% for 2025 – even that might prove somewhat ambitious. And the ONS point to a 3.2% decline in the number of vacancies in the economy in the quarter to March. The latter is a pre-tariff metric too.  

Happy tidings.

On the other, those same organisations will know that it’s been some time since they last reviewed EVP and its associated communications. The business is changing, their EVP, not so much. Current engagement levels are unlikely to be stellar. Employees probably need some reminding as to why the business remains a great place to work. And the tariff-inspired global meltdown will have impacted people’s pensions, savings and futures. People can feel powerless and without agency. They are looking to their employer for guidance, direction and positivity. 

So, there’s the dilemma. You need a new EVP but making the business case for one might not win you too many internal popularity contests. 

What’s the work around, in that case? How do you update your EVP by stealth?

Firstly, understand the landscape. What are your competitors doing in this space? A quick look at their careers site will provide an indication as to whether they have invested in this space recently. And you can also make use of your network, reaching out to contemporaries to understand how much of a priority they’ve made of such initiatives. If your talent competitors are updating, then it should help your own business case.

Let’s go further. Interview a dozen recent joiners to your organisation. It won’t take long, but take the time to understand their talent motivations – why did they join you? Which other organisations were they considering? How much line of sight do they have of your existing EVP? Is their perception of you and your careers story at odds with your current messaging? If recent joiners – a decent enough proxy for the external candidate market – aren’t aware of your EVP and, in fact, are joining you for reasons that have nothing to do with that particular proposition, again, it’s a good indication that change is necessary.

What else can you do, on a no-cost/low-cost basis, to ensure your people messaging remains as relevant and topical as possible, without going through a formal EVP update? 

Let’s take your careers site. How long has it existed in its current form? Does it look tired – or is that more your perspective, given you’ve lived with it for the last three years? Take a look at the employee photos featured – how easy is it to update these? You might have in-house resources for this sort of thing, or you could ask those employees featured on your site to provide their own updated shots. Give them a brief – them at home, maybe. Them with their greatest influence. Greatest source of pride. Empower them to tell your story by telling theirs.

Let’s move onto stories – a favourite topic of mine. It’s so important that candidates can read about the experiences of current employees. You can’t be it if you can’t see it. It’s a given. But can we think about how we might do this differently? It can feel as if every organisation in the land uses the same template for stories. My main bugbear? We’re all too quick to develop new stories when it comes to updating the careers site. New people, new stories. But if those people originally featured remain with you, why don’t we return to them? Where has their career taken them? In what ways have they grown?

And such stories shouldn’t necessarily describe a constant upward graph. Careers, just like stories, have their ups and downs. If authenticity is really important to you, let’s embrace this. 

When you’re taking a look at how you might update your careers site, think about how much it has grown and developed over the years. In some examples, that works, in others, a site can end up feeling haphazard and incremental. It has ceased to be holistic and cohesive. There is no central narrative. The EVP has become lost and obscured. Think about how you can regain that control and consistency of story.

It’s important too when you’re gauging the continued relevance of your EVP and its employer branding messaging, to be fully aware of where your business is going. What is the strategic direction of your organisation? And how do your people contribute to that? That sense of direction and contribution is a critical element of your EVP. And if your current EVP reflects a past strategic direction, then it’s simply not doing its job. Worse, it’s likely to be misleading potential joiners. 

Before you know it, you have an EVP audit. You have a topical grasp around the extent to which the current iteration continues to cut through, remains relevant and competitive. 

You have the insight and information necessary to evolve your EVP, if, indeed, that’s necessary. You’ll definitely need external help if you’re going for major surgery, but if it’s more a case of some gentle nips and tucks, then that might be possible in-house.

In fact, I wonder if small, incremental changes to your EVP aren’t the way forward anyway? If your organisation has not gone through major change – perhaps a merger or acquisition or significant business pivot – then just how authentic is a major EVP change? If largely the same organisation is now telling its people to zig, having told them for the past three years to zag, then we risk confusion and inauthenticity. More important, how do your people respond to such abrupt change?

In the absence of such change, I wonder if a wholly new EVP, with no resemblance to its predecessor, feels artificial or even performative? It can feel like change for the sake of change without a solid business reason for such deviation.

The strength of great brands often owes much to consistency, something from which employer branding could take a learning.