Your EVP & Employer Brand Might Not Be Broken - It Could Be Your Messaging

Companies spend months developing their EVP and employer brands, wordsmithing them to perfection, getting sign-off from seventeen stakeholders. Then they plaster them everywhere - same words, same emphasis, same tired corporate speak.

You use the same language to speak to your finance team as you do to your creative department. And that's like forcing everyone at your dinner party to eat exactly the same meal - Hence the reason I may look peeved if you insist on me eating the cooked carrots.🤢

Different people want different things. Shocking, I know. 😱

Your software developers aren't lying awake at night dreaming about your "collaborative family environment." They want to know about your tech stack, whether they'll spend half their life in meetings, and if they can work in blessed silence occasionally.

Your sales team? They want to understand commission structure, territory rules, and whether leadership actually backs them when deals get complicated.

Your finance professionals probably care about clear career progression, professional development budget, and whether your numbers actually add up.

This isn't about creating entirely different EVPs for each department - that's just lying with extra steps. It's about knowing your solid core truths, then translating them into language that resonates with different audiences.

Think of it like this. You wouldn't explain your product the same way to a technical buyer as you would to a C-suite decision maker. Same product, different emphasis. Same employer brand, different conversation.

So how do you do this without becoming a corporate chameleon?

Start by talking to people in different departments. Not focus groups with free sandwiches where everyone says what they think you want to hear. Actual conversations about what made them join, what makes them stay, what nearly made them leave.

You'll find patterns. Engineers might consistently mention autonomy and tools. Creatives may talk about freedom and impact. Operations people could value efficiency and respect for processes.

Your EVP and employer branding probably touches on all these things. You're just burying the bits each group cares about under generic fluff about "innovation" “collaboration” and "excellence."

Then rebuild your talent attraction and engagement content with this in mind. Your careers page will have different entry points. Your job ads can emphasise different aspects of the same culture. Your interview process can flex to show candidates what they actually care about seeing, hearing and feeling.

The companies getting this right aren't spending more money or creating complicated systems. They're just stopping long enough to ask: "What does this specific human actually want to know?" Then they answer that question instead of reciting their corporate creed.

Your culture, EVP and employer brand should be consistent, not identical. There's a difference.