Your EVP is won or lost in the first 90 days.

The moment someone accepts your offer, they've bought a picture.

A picture of what their boss will be like. What their colleagues are like. How flexible it really is, what the benefits look like in practice, and what the work itself will feel like on a normal day.

Then they start, and they find out whether the picture was true.

And they're paying very close attention. Starting a new job is a bit like the first night in a new house. You notice every creak. First impressions form fast, and they tend to stick.

It starts before day one.

The experience doesn't begin when someone walks in the door. It begins the moment they say yes.

That gap between accepting and starting is where most organisations go quiet. The contract's signed, the recruiter has moved on to the next role, and the new starter is sitting at home wondering whether anyone remembers they're coming. Every bit of silence gets read as information.

Three checkpoints that decide it.

Day one. Does this feel like what they said yes to? Is the culture they were promised visible on the first morning, or does it take a week to find their login?

Day 30. Has the promise started to come true? Our Integrated EVP Framework asks three things here. Do they feel like they're growing? Do they feel valued? Do they feel like their work matters?

Day 90. What are they telling their friends? That it was the right move, or that they're keeping an eye on job alerts?

Get those three moments right and the EVP compounds. Get them wrong and it collapses, usually very quietly, and usually in a resignation letter.

The cost of getting it wrong is high.

This isn't a small problem. ELMO's 2024 HR Industry Benchmark Report, which surveyed Australian HR professionals, found that 13% of new hires leave while still on probation.

That's one in eight people gone before they've really started. With the same report putting the average cost of a hire at around $20,000, it adds up quickly. And that's before you count the time it takes a new hire to get productive, which the report estimates at 35 days.

Your new starters are your best recruiters.

Here's the bit most organisations miss. Your newest people are also your best source of referrals.

Think about it. If I've worked somewhere for ten years, my professional network is mostly people I already work with. But someone who joined three months ago still knows everyone at their last employer, and probably the one before that. Their network is full of people just like them, doing the same job, somewhere else.

If those first 90 days go well, they'll happily tell those people. And as we covered in our post on employee advocacy, referred hires tend to be some of your best.

They're also your harshest reviewers.

The reverse is true too. When we've looked closely at negative reviews on Seek, Indeed and Glassdoor, two themes come up again and again.

The first is disappointment in the early months, when the reality didn't match what the person was promised. The second is the quality of their direct manager.

That second one won't surprise anyone who's read the research. Gallup has found that 70% of the variance in team engagement comes down to the manager alone.

So a disappointing first few months with an unprepared manager is the perfect recipe for a one-star review. And candidates trust those reviews far more than your careers page.

The handover is where the promise slips.

Nobody's doing this on purpose. The problem is the handover.

Talent acquisition teams are carrying more open roles than ever. The moment someone says yes, they have to move on to finding the next person. HR picks up the paperwork. The hiring manager assumes someone else is handling the welcome. And the new starter falls into the gap between all three.

The same goes for the hiring process before it. Your candidate experience is an extension of your employer brand. A hiring manager who's warm, prepared and honest in the interview is often the reason someone says yes. The trick is making sure that same person shows up after the offer too.

It's why our work with Levande included hiring manager guides and interview cheat sheets, so managers know how to talk about the EVP and sell the organisation well in interviews.

Small fixes that make a big difference.

None of this needs a big program. A few habits cover most of the gap:

• The hiring manager calls the week before. Not HR, not an automated email. A five-minute call from the person they'll work for.
• A 30-day check-in that asks the real question. Have we kept the promise we made you? What's missing? A quick survey works, a coffee works better.
• A 90-day conversation about how it's going. If they're happy, that's also the perfect moment to ask who else they know who'd love it here.
• One named owner for the first 90 days. When everyone owns the handover, nobody does.

Your EVP is a promise. The first 90 days are when your people decide whether you kept it.

If you'd like help carrying your EVP through your candidate communications, pre-boarding and onboarding, that's a core part of bringing an EVP to life. And if you're still working out what your promise should be, start with what an employee value proposition actually is.