Your EVP is built. So why isn’t it working?

Most organisations that come to us with an EVP problem don’t have a strategy problem. The thinking has been done. The pillars are written. The brand line exists. The problem is that none of it is actually being used.

The EVP lives in a folder. The managers haven’t seen it. The careers page still looks like it did two years ago. And the team that commissioned the work has no idea how to pick it up and run with it.

That’s not unusual. It’s one of the most common situations we encounter – and it’s entirely fixable.

Three ways an EVP quietly dies

If your EVP isn’t working, it’s almost always for one of three reasons.

1.  It was built for your organisation, not by it. When the research is done by an external team and handed over as a finished product, it often doesn’t feel like something the internal team owns. It was done to them rather than with them. So it stays as someone else’s document rather than becoming a living part of how the organisation communicates.
2. The knowledge left with the agency. This is the one nobody talks about enough. When an EVP project ends, the people who know how to apply it – how to write a job ad that reflects it, how to brief a manager on it, how to build content from it – are often the agency team, not the internal one. Six months later, the team has great research and no idea what to do with it.
3. Managers were never part of the conversation. Managers are the people who actually bring an EVP to life. They talk to candidates in interviews. They onboard new starters. They have the day-to-day conversations that either reinforce or undermine what the employer brand promises. If they weren’t involved in building it and nobody has equipped them to use it, the EVP stops at the comms team’s desk.

These aren’t strategy failures. They’re activation failures. And they’re different problems with different solutions.

The InHealth story

InHealth provides NHS diagnostic imaging and screening services. 3,500 employees. Over 800 locations across the UK. Specialist clinical roles to fill in a competitive market, alongside support staff across a huge number of sites.

When InHealth came to us, they had a challenge that will sound familiar to a lot of HR and employer brand leaders. Previous employer branding work had been done – but it had gone unused. The knowledge had stayed with the agency. The team who needed to activate it didn’t feel equipped to. And the organisation was still fighting internal myths about limited progression and career development, even though the reality was very different.

The brief was specific: build an EVP that works across six very different audience personas, attracts external talent, shifts internal perception – and can be owned and activated by a small comms team and over 500 managers, without ongoing agency support.

That last part is the one that changes everything.

What a different approach looks like

Instead of researching and handing over, LEAP Create ran four co-creation workshops with the InHealth team. Not presenting to them – building with them.

Workshop 1 mapped the candidate and employee journeys and built audience personas from real people, not HR archetypes.

Workshop 2 captured genuine employee stories – 10 or more to start with – and built a messaging framework that could flex across all six personas.

Workshop 3 brought managers into the process as participants. They left with a quick reference card, a team meeting deck with speaker notes, and a story capture guide – practical tools they could actually use.

Workshop 4 was a live content creation session with the internal team. They built assets together, in the room, so by the time the project ended, the InHealth team already knew how to do it again without LEAP Create in the room.

Ten weeks. Four workshops. One EVP system the InHealth team now own completely.

What the client said

The test of whether an EVP activation has worked isn’t whether the creative looks good. It’s whether the people inside the organisation believe it – and can use it.

“Working with LEAP was different from the start. They truly felt like an extended part of the InHealth team. We weren’t being handed something to implement. We were building it together. By the end of the project, we genuinely felt like the EVP belonged to us. It came to life as a real representation of our people and our culture.”

Zosia Hedges, HR Director, InHealth

“From the very beginning, LEAP focused on understanding our people. They connected with what really matters to us, created space for collaboration and importantly, challenged us creatively in the process. Instead of a predefined solution, we shaped the EVP together and the result feels authentic and unmistakably InHealth.”

Helena Smith, Senior Brand & Communications Executive, InHealth

The InHealth team can now posts content regularly without agency support. The manager toolkit has been shared with over 500 managers. The EVP is live across all channels.

That’s what activation looks like when it’s built in from the start.

Why this model works differently

The conventional agency model – research, create, hand over – works fine for a campaign. But an EVP isn’t a campaign. It’s an ongoing system. And a system only works if the people running it understand it.

The Self-Serve EVP Programme is built around a simple principle: by the time LEAP Create leaves, you shouldn’t need us anymore. The team that commissioned the work should be the team that runs it. Managers should know the EVP well enough to talk about it naturally. The content system should be one your people can sustain.

That’s not how most agency models work. It’s a deliberate design decision – and it’s why the organisations that go through this programme end up with something that actually gets used.

Is this right for your organisation?

If any of this sounds familiar, it might be worth a conversation.

The programme works best for organisations with 250 to 10,000 employees who have a dedicated HR or communications function. You might have EVP research that was never activated. An EVP that launched, ran for a while, and then went quiet. Or you might be starting from scratch and want to build something your team owns from day one.

You don’t need to have done the research first. If you haven’t, LEAP Create can help with that too.
What you do need is a willingness to build rather than be handed something – and the commitment to have two or three people involved in the co-creation process.

If that’s where you are, book a discovery call and we’ll explore whether this is the right programme for your organisation right now.