Data-Driven Internal Communication

If you don’t measure, you don’t matter

Why are 60% of communicators not measuring internal communications*? Most likely it is a combination of not being sure where to start, not aware that it is imperative to prove the business value, and not aware of the technology that enables internal communication measurement.

Below are some tips to help you jump-start access to internal communications metrics which will support measuring employee engagement.

Use up-to-date technology

Conduct a channel audit. Identify where you need to update your channel technology (such as email and intranet) to software that delivers the real-time metrics and analytics you need.

Set goals

Why are you sending your communications? What are you looking to achieve? What behavior do you want to change? When answering these key questions, make sure the goals are aligned to your organization’s business strategy.

Identify KPIs

Select the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will allow you to accurately take an internal communication measurement, based on your goals.

Three internal communications metrics groups

You should look at internal communications metrics from three different angles:

1. Granular: Opens and clicks are indicators, but they do not provide the insight you need. Drill down on the types of clicks, such as content and section popularity, downloads, and event registrations, etc.
2. Organizational: Use data to break out metrics by employee groups. This will allow you to measure employee engagement across the organization. These fields could include departments, pay grade, offices, regions or countries.
3. Benchmarks and trends: While industry benchmarks are interesting, it is more important to create your own unique benchmarks tied to your goals. Review trends over months, quarters and the financial year to get a truly accurate view of peaks and troughs in employee activity.

The future is multichannel measurement

Having access to individual channel metrics is the first part of your journey. To understand your channel effectiveness you need the ability to measure globally by campaign across all your channels.

Review your access to measurement in each of your channels, and select the metrics that you will use to measure engagement. Your aim is to be consistent in your choice of metrics across each of your communication channels.

By doing this you are not looking at channels in isolation – you are getting consistent insight into engagement across all channels, allowing you to make decisions based on these insights. For example measure adoption and engagement, collaboration and rich media consumption (video, podcasts), device consumption (desktop or smartphone).

Collate your most influential users and top contributors, plus content, posts, pages and comment trends and popularity.

Taking this multichannel approach – using all your channels to communicate, and measuring across all your channels – will empower you to improve your communications going forward and show real business impact to stakeholders.

*Source: Newsweaver/Melcrum study 2014