How can Internal Comms start measuring what really happens? What kind of methods and metrics will really start to prove our worth? Is there a correlation between Employee Engagement and productivity?
Armed with new research results, Mike Klein is back to tackle these questions and more in the fourth Internal Communications Podcast. Listen to it directly by hitting “Play” below, or find it on your favorite podcast apps. Below is a written excerpt from the podcast.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | RadioPublic | CastBox
Numbers are meaningless for Internal Communications
“The problem with numbers is that without context, they’re meaningless. There are so many numbers being thrown around business today, and a lot of these have meaning because of the terminology they’re attached to. There is little meaning attached to a lot of the numbers generated from Internal Communications activities. Words are critical to putting things into context. One of the things I’ve noticed from Internal Communicators is a large number of them swear by open questions and pulling punchy quotes from respondents.”
“To say that 50% of people read something without having any idea of who those 50% are, or how that compares to other announcements or incidents, is pretty arbitrary. The key thing is to look at the trendlines and the words you use to describe the trendlines with become all important in that case. Or you look at the people those numbers represent – look at the demographics, they’re extremely valuable too. Unsophisticated or sophisticated, depending on the platform you’re using even the most basic platform should be able to tell you how many views you got from a location. The map of your readership can tell you a lot more about the impact your stuff is having or not having.
“Do you have a best friend at work?” is not a valid way to measure our worth
“There are a lot of people who believe in something called “Return on Engagement”. I think it’s a real stretch to try to base measurement of the entire value of Internal Communication on RoE, just like I feel it doesn’t work with ROI or other standard measurements. For example, with Employee Engagement, you look at popular Engagement measurement tools. Gallup Q12 ask a number of questions that has nothing to do with what Internal Communicators do, what’s in our remit and what’s in our span of control. ‘Do you have a best friend at work?’ Well, unless you’re an Internal Communications person organizing regular speed-dating for new employees so they get to know new people in the office, you have no control over whether or not they have a best friend at work, yet your performance is based on how employees respond to that question. That’s why I’m a real skeptic of RoE.”
Why Internal Communications has difficulty proving its value
“It’s difficult to prove our value because what Internal Communicators do drives binary outcomes. A friend who was on the previous podcast, Sanjoy Mukherjee-Richardson, was responsible to prepare his company for a hard Brexit by an agreed date. He managed, but if he didn’t, there wasn’t a percentage of preparedness that you would want to reward. It’s either 100% or 0%. A lot of Internal Communication is around all-or-nothing bets – change programs, sales targets, organizational outcomes, it’s ‘yes or no’. You delivered or you didn’t. ROI is great, but only if Internal Communications is aligned with linear measurements. Say you want to increase sales by x%, you could argue that Internal Communications had a contribution to that number. Organizations usually try to measure ROI after the fact – you have to do this huge forensic analysis. Most Internal Communications budgets are microscopic compared to the rest. If you have a $1billion Change Program, how much of that is Internal Communications? That’s where I came into something called The Comms Factor, which talks about how you measure Internal Communications from the front end.”
Directly from the report: The Comms Factor
The Comms Factor is a guess, but it’s no less real than other business metrics that get thrown around the organization. It’s based on an agreement between the comms function and the business of how much the success or failure of an initiative will be credited to Employee Engagement or Internal Communications. As imperfect as it is, it provides an approach for valuing the full range of comms activities in an organization in financial terms comparable to those that drive the rest of the business.
On using The Comms Factor
“Instead of waiting to hear how much credit would be given to Internal Communications, I thought why don’t we decide how much credit we’re due beforehand. Then we’ll look at the financial element of what that amount of credit looks like. If we work on a billion-dollar change program and we get a tenth of 1 percent as a result, that’s a million dollars. That’s more than most Internal Comms budgets worldwide. The amount of credit you can negotiate - particularly if you’re being strategic about it - will more than pay your budget, fund your team and allow you to do the professional development required to drive Internal Comms so it’s even more of a contributor in the future.”
To find out more about The Comms Factor, including the kind of skills necessary to execute and implement it, tune in to the podcast.
Why do internal communications teams struggle to prove their business value?
Internal communications teams often struggle to prove their business value because much of the work they do drives binary, all-or-nothing outcomes. Rather than working with linear measurements where progress can be tracked gradually, communication campaigns are frequently tied to major organisational events, such as change programmes or regulatory preparations. In these scenarios, the objective is either fully achieved or it is not, leaving no room for a partial percentage of success that can be easily rewarded or measured.
Furthermore, traditional financial metrics like Return on Investment are highly difficult to apply to internal communications. Evaluating ROI usually requires an intensive, retrospective forensic analysis long after a campaign has concluded. Because internal communications budgets are typically microscopic compared to the multi-million or billion-dollar corporate change programmes they support, isolating the specific financial impact of communications after the fact is an incredibly complex task that businesses rarely execute properly.
Finally, standard numerical data generated by internal communications activities often lacks critical context. Simply reporting that half of the workforce read an announcement is an arbitrary statistic if you do not know who those readers are, where they are located, or how that figure compares to previous updates. Without looking at trendlines, readership demographics, and qualitative feedback like open-ended questions, raw numbers remain meaningless to the wider business, making it incredibly difficult to demonstrate real strategic influence.
What is wrong with using traditional employee engagement metrics to measure internal communications?
Traditional employee engagement metrics, such as Return on Engagement, are often unsuitable for measuring the true worth of internal communications because they assess factors completely outside of the communications team’s control. For example, popular corporate survey tools like the Gallup Q12 ask employees highly subjective questions, such as whether they have a best friend at work. While these questions might indicate overall workplace satisfaction, they do not relate to the actual remit or daily responsibilities of internal communicators.
An internal communications department does not organise social speed-dating for new staff, meaning they have zero influence over whether employees form close personal friendships. Despite this lack of control, the performance of the communications team is often unfairly judged based on how staff respond to these unrelated engagement questions. Relying on such metrics fails to capture the actual strategic value and output of the communications department, leading to skewed assessments of their corporate utility.
Similarly, relying solely on basic quantitative data, like raw views or open rates, fails to provide a valid measure of worth. Without surrounding context, these numbers are arbitrary. To properly demonstrate value, communicators need to analyse readership maps and demographics to see exactly where their messages are landing. Instead of relying on flawed engagement surveys, teams should focus on trendlines and qualitative feedback, using open questions and punchy quotes from respondents to put their readership data into a meaningful business context.
How does the Comms Factor help internal communicators prove their financial worth?
The Comms Factor is an approach designed to help internal communications teams value their activities in clear financial terms that business leaders can easily understand. Rather than waiting until the end of a project to attempt to calculate Return on Investment, the Comms Factor relies on establishing an upfront agreement. Before an initiative is launched, the communications team and business leaders negotiate a specific percentage of credit that will be attributed to internal communications for the success of that project.
This negotiated percentage is based on how much the final success or failure of the initiative will be credited to employee engagement and internal communications. Even if the agreed percentage is incredibly small, when it is applied to large-scale business operations, the financial representation becomes highly significant. For instance, if a communications team negotiates just one-tenth of one percent of the credit for a billion-dollar corporate change programme, that minor share equates to a value of one million dollars.
Securing this level of financial recognition beforehand provides internal communications departments with a powerful tool to justify their existence and secure resources. Demonstrating value in this manner can easily cover a team’s entire operating budget, fund future campaigns, and secure the necessary investment for professional development. By proactively claiming a share of the financial outcome, strategic communicators can transition from being viewed as an administrative expense to being recognised as an essential driver of business success.
