In part two of this case study, HOYTS Chief People Officer outlines how she got stakeholder buy-in for a refreshed employee value proposition (EVP).

Last month, I spoke about how we repositioned our employee value proposition (EVP) at HOYTS to drive stronger culture, strategy and customer outcomes. In this part-two article, I’d like to talk about how we worked to get stakeholder buy-in to do this.

Too often, EVPs are framed as HR initiatives. That’s the first mistake. If you want executives to care about the EVP, you have to stop talking about it like it’s a side project.

We learned that the EVP becomes powerful only when it’s embedded in the business – not treated as an optional add-on. That meant making a few key shifts in how we presented it to the broader leadership team. 

Firstly, we didn’t ‘launch it’ as if it were a big, flashy campaign – akin to how we’d promote a new film in the cinema. We integrated it. Quietly, consistently, and in a way that made it feel commercially necessary.

We’d just come out of a turbulent pandemic period. We were navigating a challenging talent landscape and repositioning our external brand. Our frontline teams needed renewed energy and connection. So we used that moment to refresh our internal promise as well.

To ensure maintained enterprise-wide buy-in, we were deliberate about how we approached it with our senior leaders.

Here’s what has worked so far – and what I’d recommend to other HR leaders facing the same alignment challenge.

1. Don’t make it feel like another “new thing”.

Executives are inundated with frameworks and initiatives. The last thing they need is another acronym to remember. 

We positioned the EVP not as a new strategy, but as an evolution of what we were already doing. 

The language in our existing templates, guides and processes simply shifted to reflect our values and EVP pillars. Performance conversations, interview guides, onboarding materials – these were already in use. We just refined the messaging.

This light-touch integration helped avoid resistance. Leaders weren’t being asked to do more. They were being supported to lead with more clarity and consistency.

Read HRM’s article on overcoming stakeholder resistance.

2. Lead with their metrics, not yours

If you want the executive team’s attention, speak in their language. 

For us, that meant tying EVP to:

• Reduced turnover, particularly in the first 12 months.
• Increased referral rates from existing employees.
• A higher revenue per FTE.
• A stronger customer NPS (which lifted to a consistent 50-60, well above the retail benchmark).

These were data points our leadership team already tracked.  So instead of trying to get them to care about engagement in the abstract, we showed how the EVP helped achieve their existing business goals.

“You don’t need to convince your executive team to care about the EVP. You need to show them that it helps achieve what they already care about.”

3. Use emotion – but ground it in impact.

The shift that helped us embed the EVP was focusing less on what we give employees, and more on how we want them to feel.

We grounded the EVP in emotional outcomes – belonging, pride, connection – because we know those things drive performance. But we always brought it back to impact.

We used feedback from engagement surveys and focus groups, especially among our young, frontline workforce. We asked people across our cinema sites and head office how they felt they served our business goals.

In some cases, we uncovered disconnects, like teams feeling like their work didn’t scale up to our ultimate goal: giving our guests (customers) a strong experience. That insight helped us frame the EVP not just around what we offer, but how people see their role in delivering the customer promise. 

For example, we showed our website development team that, rather than working behind the scenes, they were actually the first touchpoint for many guests – a critical part of our customer journey and brand experience.

To the executive team, we made it clear that improving the employee experience would lift customer experience. That was a message that resonated deeply across the business.

4. Start small and be consistent

You don’t need to launch an EVP with bells and whistles. At HOYTS, we embedded it quietly over time. 

We linked it to our recognition program, our values-based awards and our everyday comms. We asked managers to describe what values looked like in their team, and we encouraged teams to localise those behaviours in ways that felt authentic. We recognised employees using EVP language, making the connection between action and values explicit.

We also wove EVP concepts into our engagement surveys, onboarding experiences and manager training – subtle but consistent reminders of what we stand for. These touchpoints helped reinforce the EVP without requiring a formal training module or toolkit.

Over time, it became the way we talked about performance, behaviour and culture – without anyone needing to be trained on what EVP means. It was no longer something separate from the work. It became part of how the work got done.

You don’t need to convince your executive team to care about the EVP. You need to show them that it helps achieve what they already care about.

Speak their language. Align it with their goals. And make it feel less like a program and more like infrastructure. That’s when you stop managing an EVP and start leading with it. 

Jodi Paton is the Chief People Officer at HOYTs. This article first appeared in the August-September 2025 edition of HRM Magazine.