Internal Communications teams routinely douse fires and move mountains, but they don’t always get the recognition they deserve. IC departments now have more tooling and data than ever, but the data will not craft its own narrative. Luckily, there’s no one better at translating and conveying complicated information than a talented Comms team.
Communications metrics are a direct way to show how well your work supports business goals, and translating impact is essential. So, let’s take a look at some ways to measure and communicate the impact good internal communications can have on an organization.
Connecting Internal Communications Metrics to Organizational Goals
Why should anyone else care about Internal Communication Metrics?
Metrics in a vacuum aren’t of value to the broader team, but that’s ok, because they almost never actually exist in a vacuum. Finding the intersection between comms and cross-departmental goals can be a noteworthy challenge, and most teams are already mired in day-to-day execution. The good news is, that intersection we’re looking for nearly always exists, whether it’s a singular piece of valuable “aha” data, or a broader Key Performance Indicator (KPI).
Strategy and performance measurement expert Graham Kenny illustrates this relationship in a 2023 article for Harvard Business Review, showing how KPIs are more effective when they account for internal communications’ impact on workplace culture and engagement.
“KPIs need to reflect the fact that value creation is a two-way street, and that both sides of the transaction need to get something out of it…It’s critical to understand the decision-making criteria (strategic factors) that key stakeholders use to support your entity and what you want from them in return.”
Departments often reference metrics that relate to their own goals, but a narrow focus makes it easy to overlook company-wide priorities. In the wrong context, those metrics may be of little interest to executives concerned with overarching company goals. In the right context, they could be of great interest.
Most executives recognize that internal communications are essential to business success, but translating that value requires metrics that align with their chief focuses: high-level strategy, and bottom line outcomes. A report titled "Internal Communication in the Eyes of C-Suite Leaders” by communication non-profit IC Kollectif claims, “Executives now see internal communications as an essential management tool for improving their financial bottom lines.”
The same report also reveals some tension and caveats surrounding that belief:
“C-suite executives need their CCOs [Chief Communications Officer (CCO)s] and communication teams to demonstrate they’re bonafide business people with an expertise in communication. How can someone provide strategic counsel if they are not an expert on the business, the industry, and the drivers of it.”
The Storytelling Formula for Metrics
Demonstrating that strategic focus through data ultimately boils down to empathy, strategy, and good storytelling. If that sounds daunting, here's a quick step-by-step formula you can use:
- Identify the goals senior leaders consider essential.
- Uncover the greater narrative behind those goals.
- Find the intersection where those overarching goals align with your departmental goals.
- Weave those two narratives and their outcomes together.
- Choose and/or collect unique data or insights that relate to this collective goal.
Translating Metrics into Strategic Alignment
“CEOs believe internal communication is tightly linked with Core Business objectives and they recognize the chances of successfully implementing strategic initiatives are greatly diminished if employees do not understand or know how to help support key objectives.”
Source: The CEO Communications Audit
This Concordia University 2023 Study further explains the upward trend in internal communication investments, linking it directly to improved organizational resilience.
C-suite executives must focus on attaining high-level business goals. When everyone uses metrics aligned with those overarching goals, it’s easier to know whether you’re tracking toward or away from them.
Decoding Metrics and KPIs
Metrics and KPIs are both measurements, but they are not the same. KPIs track progress towards overarching, strategic business goals. Metrics track specific processes or activities that contribute to the KPI.
Both metrics and KPIs can be highly informative when used correctly in their proper place. But when used interchangeably, confusion can be the result. Thinking of KPIs as being strategic and metrics as being tactical may help.
Let’s say a SaaS organization’s strategic goal is to improve employee retention by 25% over the next year. Critical metrics to track would be the number itself, and the initiatives that contribute toward it. In this scenario, an Internal Communications team might be working very closely with HR/People Operations.
Examples of communications metrics supporting the organizational goal of a 25% improvement in retention might be: employee advocacy rates, survey responses, event attendance rates, announcement engagement, and onboarding material engagement.
Key Types of Internal Communications Metrics
We can break most sets of metrics, including comms metrics into two buckets: qualitative and quantitative.
Quantitative metrics are generally numerical, calculable, and provide concrete information about communication performance. A good example of a quantitative metric for comms would be the number of read receipts, views, or replies for a given announcement.
Qualitative metrics are generally more subjective, but no less valuable. While historically, coding qualitative data was challenging to achieve, techniques like sentiment analysis can provide crucial insights into a topic. Comments on a new policy or announcement would be a good example of a qualitative metric for comms.
What metrics might be helpful for my peers?
High-level, KPI aligned metrics, like those we discussed above are crucial to seek and share across departments; however, there are still several examples of data you might have access to that would be priceless to cross-departmental peers.
- Open and read rates for critical announcements
- Internal content engagement rates
- Comments and engagement rates
- Read receipts
What is a read receipt?
Read receipts allow senders to track who has opened their message and how many recipients have or have not opened it. However, they do not provide information about how much of the message the recipient read. Also, read receipts cannot determine if an attachment has been opened or read.
If a message is critical, like in the example of an emergency or a stock blackout period, senders can require recipients to confirm they’ve read and acknowledged the contents. In those cases, even very narrowly focused internal comms metrics can be essential.
Response and comment rates
The number of valid replies a business receives back from campaigns like surveys, emails, internal messages, and quizzes is the response rate. The same logic applies to internal communications.
It’s easy to calculate the business’s response rate to establish an organizational baseline. Simply track response rates over some time. Longer periods and more tracked messages yield more accurate data.
There are proven ways to improve response rates:
- Write a compelling subject line or title. Short, straightforward, and presenting a benefit, problem, or reason works best.
- Show (don’t tell) why the message is important.
- Deliver real value so when recipients see a message from you, they open it eagerly.
- Timing is critical, and every team is different. Tracking the time messages generate the most responses is helpful.
Employee engagement and advocacy
Employee engagement is an indirectly measurable emotional attachment to their organization’s aspirations and culture. Employee advocacy is a directly measurable, practical strategy that focuses on inspiring employees to act as ambassadors. The engagement level of employees influences the advocacy strategy.
Measuring employee advocacy and engagement is more complex than other metrics because both require multiple measurements to gain a complete understanding. Although employee advocacy programs can include both internal and external aspects, most metrics focus on online activity because data is readily available, employees generally find online activity more accessible, and more consumers are searching online.
Crucial employee advocacy metrics are:
- Percent of employees sharing content
- Percentage of employees who have participated in the past 90 days
- Content with the most shares
- Content engagement rate
- New candidate referrals
Tracking these advocacy metrics is essential for understanding how effectively employees are amplifying your organization’s message and where opportunities exist to enhance involvement.
Communicators can simplify choosing the most impactful metrics to track by considering the overarching strategic goals their company is working to attain. The communications metrics that shed light on the organization’s progress toward meeting or exceeding those goals are the ones that will capture interest and support organizational goals.
For example, town hall attendance increased by 20% at Evolve after launching Haystack. Town hall attendance is often a crucial indicator for senior leaders because it provides a quantifiable measure of engagement
Intranet engagement
Organizations can measure employee interest in company initiatives and changes by monitoring engagement across the content in their company intranet. The company’s intranet is also an excellent place to reinforce communications messages by making the same information archivable, searchable, and available anytime.
Using a tracking feature that works for both desktop and mobile is helpful because it reveals variations in usage habits that may be beneficial for teams, but the information doesn't directly impact the bottom line.
What Internal comms metrics aren’t helpful to share?
Some communications metrics are of value to internal comms teams, but in isolation, they provide little useful information interesting to a broader audience.
Emails sent or messages posted are inputs, not outcomes.
Measuring the outcome of a successful campaign produces a KPI that’s much more valuable to decision-makers working toward a goal than knowing the number of messages required to generate that ROI.
You might need to know how many emails were sent in order to ensure the right audience was reached. That’s actually critical information for the team sending them, but not the broader organization.
Key Takeaway
While there are numerous metrics that apply across most organizations, the collection of metrics that will matter most to your organization are unique. Focus on building and demonstrating value by sharing communication metrics that provide the most insight into activities impacting the core areas senior leaders across the organization are working to influence.
