The Culture, EVP, Employer Brand & Reputation Breakdown: What's The Difference & Why it Actually Matters

I get it. There are a lot of buzzwords and jargon when it comes to Culture, EVP, employer brand and reputation, and sometimes there's pressure to not just throw your hands up and say, "hang on a god-damn second. I've actually no idea what you're talking about...!?"

When it comes to these words and phrases, allow me to provide some clarity.

Culture, EVP, employer brand and reputation aren't the same thing. Yet I hear them used interchangeably all the time, usually in meetings where someone's trying to sound strategic without actually being specific.

They're related, absolutely, but combining them is like treating symptoms, causes, and diagnoses as the same thing. You end up with expensive confusion.

Culture: What actually happens

Your culture is the lived experience of working at your organisation. It's what happens when the exec team isn't in the room, when the presentation deck is closed, when someone makes a mistake. Culture isn't your values poster (though it should align). It's the unwritten rules, the behaviours that get rewarded, the decisions that reveal priorities. It's whether people genuinely collaborate or just attend collaboration theatre meetings.

Culture evolves constantly. It's shaped by leadership behaviour, the way everyone communicates, systems, policies, and the people you hire and promote. You can influence it, but you can't manufacture it through workshops alone.

EVP: The promise you make

Your Employee Value Proposition is your explicit offer to employees. What they can expect in exchange for choosing to work with you and giving you their talent, time, and effort.

A proper EVP covers compensation, development opportunities, work environment, purpose, and benefits. But it's more than a list of perks. It's a coherent narrative about why someone should work with you rather than anywhere else. I frame it as the "5 Ps", which you can read more about HERE.

Your EVP sits between culture and employer brand. It should be rooted in your actual culture (not aspirational nonsense) and form the foundation of your employer brand messaging.

Crucially, your EVP needs to be deliverable. Making promises you can't keep creates the fastest path to resignation... And replacing those people who join on false pretences, only to leave within a few weeks, sure ain't cheap.

Employer Brand: Depends on whether you're talking about 'strategy', 'identity' or 'activation'

I see Employer Branding broken out into 3 buckets:

• Employer brand strategy = who you are - culture, values, purpose, EVP, accepted behaviours etc. (basically, the above stuff). Your 'heart' or 'core' if 'heart' is to fluffy and cringey for some.
• Employer brand identity = the tone, fonts, colours, style to bring the strategy to life. To match the strategy and form necessary mental associations about you and your core with your target audiences when they see it in the wild.
• Employer brand activation = get the above out there, and in front of you target audiences.

Strategy without identity is a dry doc that sits in a file no one sees or cares about. Identity without strategy is pretty stuff being sprayed out like a horse, post-enema, that has no measures or business impact. Strategy and identity without activation is a nice looking doc sat in a file that no one sees or cares about.

So, from an 'Identity' perspective, This is the wrapper we place around our culture and EVP etc., to communicate it to people in and outside of the business. It’s the visual and tonal identity we use in the content and conversations we share, which reveal what it’s genuinely like to work here - the pros and the cons. Over time, your brand impacts the emotional associations people have about what it's like working for you and why they might want to do so - either now or in the future.

You can control your employer brand through the style and tone you give it, consistent storytelling, content, and delivering on your EVP. However, and this is where a lot of people get confused, it's not your reputation. It absolutely contributes to it but reputation is quite different.

Reputation: The bit you can influence but can't control

Reputation is built from people who’ve had actual interactions with you. E.g., current and ex-employees. What was their time here like? Did they work on big, career defining projects? Did they work with smart, driven and supportive colleagues? Did they have approachable leaders who challenged and developed them?

Or 3rd party vendors. Do they think highly of the people they partnered with? Where they treated nicely? Did they think the people they engaged with were super-intelligent and driven etc.
Although a brand can contribute to a reputation it doesn’t build or sustain it. The responsibility for this stretches much further afield. Good or bad product experience, hyper growth, positive and negative PR, experiences with your actual product or services, the end-to-end employee experience etc.

Why This Matters

When these four elements align, you've got something powerful. Your culture delivers on your EVP, which is authentically reflected in your employer brand. Candidates know what to expect, employees feel the promises were kept, and your reputation matches reality.

When they don't align? You get expensive hiring mistakes, high and early-tenure turnover, poor Glassdoor reviews, a talent team constantly fighting uphill, and business performance taking a nosedive.

Most organisations I've partnered with have the sequence backwards. They start with employer brand (because it's visible and feels urgent), maybe document an EVP (because consultants say they should and then think their document is the EVP [it isn't!]), then wonder why culture and/or reputation doesn't shift.

Start with culture. Understand what's actually true about working at your organisation. Build an EVP that reflects that reality (whilst pushing towards where you want to be). Then let your employer brand tell that story. Then, when people see, hear and feel it - in more interactions than not - your reputation will start taking the shape you want it to.

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Does any of this resonate with you? Are you struggling with any of the themes covered in this post? If you're working on something linked to any of this and you'd appreciate some help, then give me shout. It would be great to discuss a potential partnership.