Behind the Curtain of EVP Development: Stories from Globant, Luxoft, and GoTo

At a recent campfire event, I spoke with three accomplished Employer Branding Leaders: Crystal Diaz, Isis Rodriguez-Arana, and Alejandro Gamen. 

They shared their experiences and insights on:

• Building an EVP for a newly refreshed brand,
• Creating an agile EVP that adapts to your objectives and different audiences and,
• Working with an established global brand to localize your EVP and messaging

Whether you're just starting out in Employer Branding or looking to refine your current strategy, join us as we explore the best practices for developing a strong EVP and building a compelling brand identity.

Creating a Compelling EVP within a Full Rebrand

A well-crafted EVP clearly articulates the unique benefits and culture that a company offers to its employees, which can differentiate it from competitors and make it an attractive workplace. Crystal, I know you just updated your EVP. Can you tell me how you undertook this process?

Crystal Diaz, Senior Manager, Global Talent Brand, GoTo 

In February of 2022, LogMeIn, Inc., announced a rebrand as GoTo. This announcement followed a yearlong internal company transformation with significant investment in innovation, unification, and global go-to-market efforts.

I saw an opportunity to revamp our EVP as part of the corporate rebrand project and approached a collective of stakeholders from the People and Brand and Marketing teams. With the help of an agency, we created a new EVP and talent brand that aligned with our new corporate brand. 

Our new EVP and theme line is "Work Boldly. Go Brilliantly." The first part represents our invitation, challenge, and how GoTo pushes progress forward. The second encompasses the chartered career path or journey to be and the greatness that awaits. This then flows down into some key EVP pillars. Getting it across the finish line was a lesson in teamwork and transparency. 

With the agency's support, we completed the process through roundtables and many iterations within six months. Anytime you update an EVP and the employer branding strategy surrounding it, it can be tricky because of the perceived red tape and other challenges involved. I felt that being new to GoTo (at the time) helped me bring a fresh perspective.

One key lesson I learned was the importance of engaging our Brand and Creative team. We explored the EVP refresh together, and I brought them along the journey collaboratively to avoid issues down the line.

Looking back, I'm proud of what we accomplished and excited for the new creative expression we’re building in-house that will be rolled out over the next year.

Creating an Agile EVP that Grows with The Company

Not every company goes through a singular EVP overhaul; some consider this a journey of reiteration, and they test and hone it over time. Alejandro, can you talk me through Globant’s process of refining your EVP over the last few years?

Alejandro Gamen, Global Employer Branding Manager, Globant

As for our company’s EVP, we worked with an external agency to develop it. We didn’t want to rely on a single tagline to represent our brand, so we created different pillars highlighting various aspects of our company’s experience.

We conducted internal and external surveys and research to determine what people value most about our company and tested those pillars to ensure they resonated with our audience. To this day, we still continue to refine and polish them as we work on new campaigns every year, refreshing brand aesthetics and messaging to adapt to the changes in the market.

Our challenge when developing our first EVP-based campaigns was that we started working on a campaign without first separating our employer brand designs and key visuals from the corporate ones, so we had a lot of back and forth until settling on a design we were comfortable with. We’re now approaching this differently and separating our employer brand further from our corporate brand to allow more flexibility in our messaging.

Last year, we as a company sponsored the FIFA Men’s World Cup, and this year we’re sponsoring the Women’s World Cup and the FIFA eSports Cup, so these are great chances for us to tie our EVP into seasonal events that align with specific pillars of our EVP that relate to teamwork, diversity, and excellence, so rethinking and adapting our messaging and campaigns to these types of massive events is a really fun challenge and a change of pace from the usual Employer Brand communications.

What I love about our EVP is that it allows us to constantly evolve and shift as a company. Each year gives us a chance to engage with a different formulation of these pillars, and we’re not convinced that we’ll ever settle on just one tagline.

Localizing an EVP in a Global Company

These are very interesting examples, but I would love to learn about the challenges faced when the expectation is to maintain the local flavor while having a global conversation. Isis, I know this is what you are going through as you try to position your EVP to attract talent in the Americas Region. Could you tell us about the challenges you face?

Isis Rodriguez-Arana, Regional Employer Branding Manager - Americas, Luxoft

In the Americas region, we like to be close to each other. Non-verbal language is a great example: when we greet someone, we try to get close to our interlocutor. We like to feel like friends, that we know each other and speak the same language, which is not Spanish or English, but a mentality of being somehow related. So, our audience likes to feel very local.

Working with Branding, either in B2B to B2E is about creating a deep connection with your audience. Now a brand audience is expanding rapidly. Brands are talking globally in multicultural and different contexts. You have an audience celebrating their country won the FIFA World Cup on one hand and an audience experiencing the fears of war on the other. And you can't be indifferent to any.

One of the biggest challenges in a Global company is trying to keep connected and keep the local flavor when communicating a worldwide culture. At Luxoft, we focus on our values and how our employees live them.

I think the success has been that we have our EVP well-founded. We use an omnichannel strategy with talented people in each content team and work with insight into the local context first-hand. I echo Alejandro and Crystal's sentiment that the entire team must be on one page regarding their EVP and messaging. Although, this does not exclude giving each location a touch of uniqueness.

Key Takeaways

Thank you, Crystal, Alejandro, and Isis, for sharing your challenges, successes, and lessons learned as you build out EVPs that resonate with and reflect your company culture. From engaging marketing and brand teams from the start to refining and redefining your EVP over time to suit different objectives and regions, there is plenty to unpack here.

These stories demonstrate that creating a compelling EVP requires a deep understanding of the company's culture and values, collaboration across different teams, and the willingness to continually refine and evolve the messaging.

If you want to be part of leadership conversations like this - connect with me on LinkedIn and message me to join one of our campfire sessions!