One of the questions that came up at our Writing for HR webinar last week was: As communicators, how can we measure if we’re doing a good job, other than through open rates and click throughs?

Measuring ROI in employee comms is hard. A lot of what we do is affected by things outside of our control. You can have great internal comms but if someone is made to come back to the office five days a week when they value flexible working, that will have a huge impact on how they feel about the company.

But if you’re going to make the case for extra budget or team members, you do need to show how you’re going to turn that investment into business benefit. And by doing that, you can completely change how you're viewed within your org and the value you bring.

So what and how should you measure?

Always start with objectives

If your CEO came up to you tomorrow and asked you to take her through how the team was adding value to the business, could you answer?

You can’t show your worth if you’re not clear on why you exist. So start with examining what your role is — and what it isn’t. What does success look like for comms at your organisation?

Once you’re clear on what you’re there to do, talk to your stakeholders and make sure this matches their expectations. There might be some educating to do as you start to shift the perception about why you exist.

Think like an agency

Employee comms teams tend to be small and stretched. So, once you’re clear on your objectives, it’s time to look at how you and your team are spending your time. Think like an agency and for two weeks have everyone track what they're working on. Now compare that with your objectives and identify everything you can stop immediately. It might be that newsletter no one reads or that meeting you go to every week with no clear output.

Make sure you chat with your team in advance so they know this exercise is about shifting from a tactical team to a strategic function (and not checking who’s pulling their weight).

Set a benchmark

If you can, do a company-wide audit so that you can get a benchmark to improve on. A survey can test things like:

how informed employees are
where they get their information vs where they want to get it
which sources of information are most trusted
which communications are the most appealing
whether there’s the right amount of information
perception of leadership
whether employees feel heard
how easy it is to collaborate across departments

Next, audit your channels. Look at things like:

time spent on the intranet
how many people read company-wide emails
the best time of day, week or month to communicate
number of active Slack users
how people consume your content — e.g. desktop vs mobile

And finally, look at the quality of your communication. Is it well-written? Is it creative? Do you hero employees and customers over policies and processes?

All this will give you data on what’s working and what needs improving. You might find that people aren’t clear on the strategy, or they trust their manager but not their senior leaders, or that only parts of the company are using Slack, inhibiting collaboration.

Go deep

Surveys are great for numbers but then you need to dig deeper. This is where focus groups come in. Look for insights from the data and then go out and test them.

If managers score poorly as a trusted source of information, find out why. If people don’t value the monthly all-hands, get ideas about what would make them better. Quotes and stories will make your data richer.

Another tip is to have everyone in your team speak to five people they don’t know each week. They can be short 15-minute conversations and follow the same format. You’ll be amazed by what you learn.

When I worked at a pensions company, I learnt on one of these calls that when we talked about bonus payouts in relation to a product, employees thought we were talking about staff bonuses. A really important distinction to clear up!

Remember: delivery’s not enough

It’s important that the article gets published, the town hall happens and the weekly newsletter goes out. But if we haven’t changed anything as a result, we might as well not have done it.

Every time you communicate, you need to be clear on the objective and then how you’re going to measure whether you were successful. You need to answer:

Did the communication get to the right people? Measure emails sent, intranet articles published, videos uploaded, screens updated, event sign-ups.
Did they read, watch, listen, attend? Measure video views, links clicked, podcast listens, all-hands attendance.
Did they understand it and their relevance to them? Use post-event surveys, comments on social posts, quick polls, phone-arounds.
Did they take the right action? Measure take-up of an employee benefit, new products pushed in your contact centres, engagement survey completed.

Share the headlines with your stakeholders

Everything you measure should be captured in a report for the team to analyse and make improvements. But you also need a dashboard for your stakeholders. Remember your CEO asking you for an update? Your dashboard is your quick and visual method for showing your progress.

The contents of your dashboard will differ from company to company but it should show the progress you’re making on those objectives you agreed to. Don’t waste your senior team’s time with intranet views and click throughs: keep those for the project manager who wants to see how well their campaign went.

Instead focus on things like:

Did understanding of the strategy increase after that series of roadshows?
Has the investment in Slack increased collaboration and cut down on unnecessary meetings?
Have the new brand messages landed?
Do employees feel more heard since the CEO started virtual open hours?
What was the most impactful communication in the last quarter?
Did a particular internal or external event skew employee sentiment?
Did an increase in strategy comms have a positive impact on revenue?

Measurement can feel overwhelming, especially for a small team. But it is the key to making the shift from order taker to strategic partner.

If you want help using measurement to raise the profile of your team, get in touch.

Why and how do we measure employee comms?