How to measure internal communications
In order to demonstrate value, communication teams should be measuring their work and showing how it relates to the organisation achieving business objectives. But measurement is hard! And it can be tough to show a direct line between comms activity and business goals. So here’s a few of our tips for how to get started in measuring your work, and demonstrating your value.
Focus on outcomes not outputs
When determining what your measures will be, focus on the outcomes achieved, not the outputs. For example, an ‘output’ could be readership of an intranet article. But if 600 people read the article and nothing changed, what have you achieved? Go back to the original objectives in your comms plan and consider how you’d measure those. Perhaps it’s a change in sentiment amongst your audiences, people following a call to action, or people demonstrating an understanding of a new initiative.
Choose the right channel
How you measure is important - do you need to delve deep into focus group territory, or keep it light with a quick poll? It all comes down to what insights you’re trying to gather, and how much time your audience has. People reach ‘survey fatigue’ pretty quickly, so also be aware of what other measurement is taking place at the same time.
Ask the right questions
The questions you ask depend on what you want to test. For example, if you want to test a call to action, it’s a simple ‘yes or no’ question: Did you do x? If you’re wanting to test understanding or sentiment, you need to ask more leading questions. For example:
How do you feel about the future of the business?
What is your team’s role to play in delivering the strategy?
Remember that if you do a question such as asking people to rate their confidence or understanding, you need to ask why they chose that rating to really understand where the challenges and opportunities lie.
Don’t wait for formal engagement surveys
Engagement surveys happen once a year - at best - and by then it could be too late to claw back support for a strategy or initiative, or to tackle some of the grassroot causes of poor engagement. Equip leaders with ways they can pulse check regularly throughout the year.
Keep perspective
It’s really easy to focus on the poor feedback, even when it is in the minority. For example, a post-event survey might find 90 per cent of people loved the guest speaker, and 2 per cent had scathing reviews. The 2 per cent don’t speak for the majority, so keep perspective!
Want to know more about measuring communication?
Listen to episode four of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast for more tips on how to measure the effectiveness of your communication.
