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GUEST BLOG: How to measure internal communications

Cyrus Gilbert-Rolfe, MD EMEA at SocialChorus

The workplace is undergoing a seismic shift. Businesses are now not only judged by their revenues or products, but also on the culture they build. The relationships companies have with their customers, the communities they have built around them and, importantly, their employees matter – a lot.

In light of these changes, CEOs and company leaders are starting to make the employee experience a key priority. 84% of communicators agree that increasing employee engagement is a primary objective. Yet, most HR and communications practitioners are not measuring the impact of their communications says Cyrus Gilbert-Rolfe, EMEA Managing Director at workplace communications experts SocialChorus. Itโ€™s important to look at who drives the change, and how they know if they are making an impact.

Deloitteโ€™s 2018 Global Human Capital Trends reports that 85% of survey respondents believe people data is very important, but only 42% of those respondents are ready to learn how to use the data. Unfortunately, itโ€™s not getting much better. Why is the measurement of internal communications such a challenge for communicators? And why are so many communicators unable to overcome this challenge?

There are a few reasons behind this conundrum. Many internal communicators donโ€™t have a measurement strategy or practice in place and many donโ€™t often get to choose their own technology, inheriting legacy tools that have limited or no measurement capabilities. Furthermore, without the experience or the right tools, communicators are unsure of how and what to measure.

Hands down, the best way to improve your communications is to measure its performance. And once you understand the metrics behind your internal communications, youโ€™ll know exactly whatโ€™s working and whatโ€™s notโ€”and ultimately how to capture the attention of all your employees.

For many internal communicators, evaluating metrics is a weak spot. In our recent Mobile now, intranet later guide, we discovered that only 56% of survey respondents tracked website analytics, 44% looked at email clicks, and 19% didnโ€™t track metrics for employee communications at all. While more than two-thirds of internal communicators shared their metrics with their companyโ€™s executive teams, a staggering 70% reported that their leaders didnโ€™t even ask for their metrics. Internal communications data was given very little attention, and sometimes completely ignored.

If you canโ€™t measure your communications, how can you improve it? You donโ€™t need to be a data scientist, but you do need to learn the basics of defining your metrics for success, theorising new ideas, testing them, analysing, and then reporting those results to continually improve the important work youโ€™re doing.

Every enterprise and every communications team are unique. Your metrics for success will be specific to your goals and situation. And this is where measurement will narrow your focus on your desired outcomes and resources. Itโ€™s imperative that you set clear targets and objectives that are also actionable to work toward improvement. There are five steps that will help you in establishing your internal communications goals:

  1. Identify your companyโ€™s goals to ensure alignment.What are your companyโ€™s objectives? If you arenโ€™t clear, interview the executive team. Be sure that you know your company-wide goals.
  2. Establish objectives for your communications.Start with your current campaigns. Which channels seem to perform the best? Which employees do you need to reach most? How will you define success?
  3. Review what data is available and how best to use it. Break down your campaign activities so you can plan how best to communicate and measure them. Which channels are best to use for this particular campaign? What are the metrics specific to the channelโ€”such as clicks, views, shares, etc.? Every channel has a different metric, and so youโ€™ll need to start to track them.
  4. Determine your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Identify KPIs to track the progress of your initiatives in relation to company-wide objectives. A KPI must be a measurable value that demonstrates whether an enterprise is achieving its goals. For example, as a communicator, your KPIs could be increasing employee engagement by 20% in a year or reducing employee attrition by 10%.
  5. Choose the cadence to measure success.Once you know what metrics youโ€™re tracking, record them over a period of time either using some type of dashboard or a simple spreadsheet. By measuring and understanding the leading metrics for each channel, youโ€™ll increase your communicationsโ€™ engagement over time. Youโ€™ll be able to make informed decisions going forward, and youโ€™ll truly be the important link between your leadership and your employees driving business goals.

As you work toward improving employee experience and driving organisational alignment, youโ€™ll recognise what workers need to thrive. When you put your data to work, you can personalise your communications and deliver the relevancy employees seek.

One-size-fits-all communications doesnโ€™t work anymore. Employees want and expect targeted, relevant content and information coming from internal communicators. When you take steps to measure the value of communications your entire company will benefit.

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Cyrus Gilbert-Rolfe has been working on the adoption of emerging technology for decades now. He spent the early nineties at investment bank Lehman Brothers in a succession of jobs leading to the rollout of what was credited in the Financial Times as the first intranet in the City of London. He moved into the tech arena with Internet pioneer Netscape, where he lead their commerce division across Europe. Since then he has worked in a series of early stage tech start-ups focused on eprocurement, XML, webservices, RFID, and mobile location analytics based in Boston, San Francisco, London and Portugal. He has also worked for some of the industry giants, including Microsoft and EMC. Today, Cyrus leads the international growth strategy for SocialChorus, based in the London HQ but responsible for all of the European, Middle Eastern, and African markets. Cyrus lives in Brixton with his wife Clemency, and is father to two grown up children.

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