How do you share a culture across a continent?

We knew straightaway that this was going to be big

Deloitte, the world’s biggest professional services firm, had huge ambitions for their employer brand. They wanted to shape a consistent and exceptional human experience for thousands of colleagues across North and South Europe (NSE), built around an EVP that:

• Differentiated them in their sector
• Came to life all around the entire employee lifecycle
• Flexed for different audiences and purposes
• Was based on their values, purpose and culture
• Felt authentic to where they were today, but also aspirational for tomorrow.

Delivering an EVP on this scale was going to be a massive challenge. But luckily, we had a running start.

We picked up where their experts had left off

Deloitte’s Human Capital experts had already done lots of research into their own working experience. And their findings had been shaped by their Managing Partner for People and Purpose into three core themes: Purpose, Inclusion and Growth.

We had something to build on. But we wanted to do some digging of our own. In particular, we wanted to meet with some key stakeholders to understand their future ambitions and how these aligned to the EVP. So we sat down with the business leads for:

• Purpose
• Inclusion
• Internal Mobility
• Learning and Development
• Internal Comms
• Brand
• Attraction

We also explored the perceptions of both experienced hire and early careers candidates, to make sure our eventual messaging was going to hit home.

We got the foundations right

We turned the core themes into employer brand attributes, which then informed the overarching proposition.

These foundations were shared around the business for feedback, before getting final signoff from Deloitte’s Managing Partner for People and Purpose.

So far, so solid. But the real challenge lay ahead – bringing it all to life.

Creative development became a shared journey

Deloitte’s corporate brand identity is clearly defined and rigorously policed. Without treading on its toes, we had to create a look and feel for the EVP that had its own identity.

We also had to make sure our creative approach was flexible, adaptable, and something that marketing teams across Deloitte could use themselves. This meant we had to gather and respond to their feedback all the way through. And this was a big project in itself.

To make it happen, we used our purpose-built Employer Brand Metrics platform to engage with Deloitte colleagues across Europe. The platform allowed us to test work and collect feedback as the creative messaging developed.

Creating an identity with impact

At the heart of Deloitte’s EVP is a message around individual contribution combining to make a shared impact. It’s about the collective impact the firm can make when everyone there brings the three attributes to life.

We explored this idea in lots of different ways. We played with montages and layers, ripples and icons – gathering feedback as we went. And a clear winner soon started to emerge.

The final EVP visual approach is based on multiple circles, each of which represents an individual’s story, impact or contribution. These circles come together to create a unified whole that represents the wider impact.

One idea. Many styles.

Given how far this idea needs to stretch, and how many different messages it needs to deliver, flexibility is vital. And, even though it’s early days, we’ve already proved that our approach can go in all kinds of different directions.

And it’s all started to come to life

The EVP roll-out is only just beginning, and there are big campaigns going live in the UK during Autumn 2020. So it’s a little early to assess impact. But we’re confident that we’ve given Deloitte everything they need to go and tell their EVP story far and wide.

So far we’ve created:

• Full employer brand guidelines and a toolkit, both of which are being shared and used across NSE
• An internal comms guide to support anyone writing with the EVP in mind
• Campaign assets for both early careers and experienced hire
• Messaging that’s been used across Deloitte’s UK careers pages
• Messaging frameworks for early careers, experienced hire and technology audiences.

This is just the beginning. There’s a lot more to come for the EVP, both in the UK and across Europe. And we can’t wait to see how big an impact it’ll make.