Why EVP Activations Fail: The Missing Link

Here's what usually happens after an EVP project wraps up - Someone updates the careers page. Someone orders new merch. Someone refreshes the social media banners. Job done. EVP activated. 🎉

Except... it's not, is it?

Because whilst everyone's busy updating touchpoints, nobody's in the room with your TA team asking: "If we now value X, what does that mean for the questions you're asking candidates?" Nobody's sat with your TLOD team working through: "How does this show up in our onboarding? Our performance frameworks? Our leadership development?" And most critically, nobody's having the conversation with your mid-management about whether they actually understand what these new values require from them. This is why it's crucial to have the linchpin role nobody really talks about.

When you're deep in culture work - leading the research, watching patterns emerge, seeing the identity take shape - you start noticing things. The insights that matter most aren't the ones that end up in a glossy deck. They're the ones that need translating for the people who'll actually bring them to life.

The TA team who need to rethink their interviews. The onboarding designers who need to embed new values into month one. The learning team building frameworks that either reinforce or contradict what you're saying about high-performance.

This translation work - helping different functions see the implications for their bit of the people experience - is where culture work lands or dies.

I worked somewhere once that stated they valued innovation. Great. Except their operational mantra was "deliver right first time."

If you know anything about innovation, you'll quickly see the problem. Innovation is about iteration - trying, failing, learning, and going again quickly. Steve Bartlett talks about "out-failing the competition" as a strategic advantage (when not creating apocalyptic clickbait for his podcast titles 😳). But he's bang on the money with this one.

You can't say you value innovation whilst punishing people for muck ups. You can't claim to want high-performance and a growth mindset without your managers understanding their role in creating psychological safety. The gap between what you say and how you actually operate will kill your culture work faster than anything else.

Real activation goes much deeper than refreshing your visual identity. It's behavioural. It's psychological. It lives and dies at the point where your mid-management are on the hook for leading by example.

This is why someone needs to be the connector - floating between teams and leaders with fresh insights, constantly connecting the dots, helping people see how the work translates into their area of responsibility.

It's messy. But it's the only way culture transformation actually lands.

And if nobody's doing this connective work? Then I'm afraid your new values risk being just expensive wallpaper for people to roll their eyes at 🙄