I’d love to claim credit for the clever slogan above, but all credit goes to the folks at PoliteMail that were handing out the above stickers by the dozens last month at Ragan’s latest Communications and Culture Conference in Chicago. The message was not lost on the attendees and speakers.
I was not the only one that suggested that in unsettling times, without good metrics you may not be able to keep your ‘Comm’ team or carry on. Budgets are being slashed, layoffs are mounting, employees are nervous, and the usual communications channels aren’t working. Which of course got me wondering how you would quantify the value of having an internal comms (IC) function vs not having one at all. Regine Nelson Internal Communications & Employee Engagement Lead at Couchbase had the best answer ever: ‘Show what happens when you don’t do internal communications well, or at all.’
She’s right. The history of Crisis Communications is littered with examples of terrible internal culture leading to terrible financial ramifications. Just ask Boeing, Wells Fargo, Theranos, … You get the idea. But if you haven’t gone through an existential crisis, how do you quantify the impact that internal comms is having. Here are three suggestions:
- If your organization’s dedicated IC team is a relatively new phenomenon you can always look back to those pre-IC days and compare morale and/or engagement (or any other available metrics) from the pre-IC times to where it is now.
- Or, if there was time in the recent past when IC went through turmoil or reorganization or lost its leadership, you might want to compare retention, referrals, morale or any other metrics that your department now facilitates.
- Conduct pre and post Leader Say Do studies like the Mary Miller, President and Chief Strategist at Miller Comms Inc. did in the example below.
At the time, Mary was in charge of internal communications for a leading manufacturer of infant formula and adult nutrition products that had experienced some serious earnings challenges and wasn’t making its financial numbers. They put Mary in charge of what she calls “performance communications.” And, because Mary is a measurement maven, the first thing she did was conduct a Leader Say/Do study to determine the extent to which employees understood the corporate priorities. Specifically, she asked employees what priorities they heard their leaders were talk about, and more importantly what actions did they see their leaders doing to support those priorities.
The results were not encouraging. Employees were confused as to what priorities were real and what ones were either outdated or had been made up for the purpose of the survey to test people’s knowledge. The data pointed to specific areas of the organization where leaders were giving lip service to the priorities but not acting to implement them.
After the initial results were shared with various leadership groups, Mary launched a coordinated multifaceted communications campaign to get the word out on the very specific priorities that leadership had agreed on to fix their problems and improve the bottom line.
Once the campaign was complete, she conducted a follow-up Leader Say Do study. The results were dramatic, including a 10-point improvement in understanding of the corporate priorities. But far more importantly her integrated communications campaign resulted in dramatic improvements in all measures of success including:
- Net Sales
- Engagement scores
- Best Place to Work Recognitions,
- Reduced turnover rate.
- Employee Volunteer Hours 7,208 8,670 ↑ 20%
- Lower turnover rates,
- And agreement with the following statements:
- “I work beyond what is required to help the company succeed.”
- I am proud to be associated with the company.”
- I have a clear understanding of our company’s. commitment to Patient Focus
You can see her entire Measurement Summit presentation here: The lesson Mary and her leadership learned was that Employee Communications plays an enormous role not just in “getting the word out” but in actually improving the performance of your entire organization. But you’ll only know that if you measure it.
For more information on how to measure your internal comms check out our latest ebook.
