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March 2025

Employer brand/EVP 101

What it is
  • The jargon is really unhelpful. EVP, employer brand – the list goes on. Different people mean different things by these terms and many people are (understandably) completely unclear what they mean
  • It’s more helpful to talk about ‘what defines life in our organisation’ and this includes
    • What defines life and a career in your organisation
    • Why people should join and why they should stay
    • What you believe in and how people behave
    • What the ‘give and the get’ is
  • It’s important to remember ‘who’ your employer brand is for. It should be captured in a way that speaks to your current and prospective employees – because it’s ‘for’ all of them
Why it matters
  • Employer brand has arguably never been more important
    • Hybrid working is more common, so it’s ever more crucial to be clear about what defines life in your organisation and that this is made potent to people who aren’t always together and aren’t always in the office
    • The ‘war for talent’ means you need to attract and retain the right people for your organisation – and they need to be equally clear about why they should join and stay with you
    • Everyone (and not just younger generations) want to be clear and care more than ever, about what the organisation they’re joining stands for
    • Today, there are more ‘moving parts’ to build into your employer brand that need to complement one another. For example, your commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, your impact on the world and sense of purpose
    • If you don’t proactively capture life in your organisation, people will draw their own conclusions anyway
  • The more your organisation grows, the more important employer brand becomes. When smaller, employer brand can be almost ‘instinctive’ and comes naturally. As you become larger, it’s easy to lose sight of ‘who we are’ and it therefore needs to become more ‘managed’
  • It’s important not only to have a framework to communicate why people should join and remind people of how great it is to stay, it’s also important to communicate to your people what ‘the deal’ is. In other words, what you expect of them to deliver on your organisation’s goals
What else is important
  • Your employer brand should be built on the real, authentic strengths of your organisation. But it also needs to encompass what you’re not and need to be – to build in the ambitions of your organisation. It’s fine to frame it as an aspirational ‘journey’
  • Your employer brand needs to capture ‘who we need to be and how we need to show up on the inside, to be the organisation we promise to be for our clients/ customers on the outside’
  • There should be a clear connection between your employer brand and the brand as a whole (they’re two sides of the same coin)
  • Once you’ve captured it, you need to keep reminding your people about it – this will not only help retention but they’ll become great ambassadors for it. Properly managed, it’s a virtuous cycle!
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