Lawrence Ragan

Communications, Inc.

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Auditing Your Internal CommunicationsNervous about auditing your communications? Don’t be. You’ll boost the engagement with your messages and see great results. Here is a step- by-step guide to assess which communication channels work for your organization.

Table of ContentsIntroduction 1

Elements of an audit 3

Bringing in an expert vs. do-it-yourself 3

Cost and time 3

Laying the groundwork 4

Set your goals 4

Conduct a document review 5

Hold a planning meeting 5

Interview senior leaders 6

Hold focus groups 7

Survey your workforce 8

Ask the right questions 9

Review your channels 10

Enact recommendations 11

What next? 12

Moving on 12

IntroductionWhen Sean Williams was with Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, internal communications initi-ated an audit to find out how well the company was getting across its messages through various channels.

The audit revealed that even though Goodyear is a global company operating in 22 countries, its communications were largely focused on the U.S., says Williams.

The finding led Goodyear to change its content strategy and feature more stories from its non-U.S. businesses, says Williams, now owner of Communication AMMO. The company began celebrating its successes and best practices and sales tactics worldwide. As a result, its intranet raked in inter-national traffic, and readership shot up from 3,600 visits daily to more than 10,000.

“This was something we really would not have done had we not done the audit and seen how pathetically low our visits were from outside the U.S. and how much people in the non-U.S. areas were eager for us to cover what they’re doing,” Williams says.

Doing a top-to-bottom audit of your communications channels may be a daunting task, but the payoff can be big. An audit will reveal strengths and open your eyes to time-draining tasks that provide little result.

A full audit report can run from 20 to more than 100 pages and may be packed with data, quotes from surveys and focus groups, and recommendations. The idea of bringing in someone to comb through and report about your life’s work—or of finding time to do it yourself—can be unnerving. The process can take from three months to over a year, and requires executive interviews, surveys and focus groups. It will point out what’s not working and is likely to quote sharp-tongued employees.

Why go through all that? Because an audit provides actionable intelligence that will enable you to improve what you’re doing with the tools you have. You’ll find out where your communications are succeeding and where to invest your time to be efficient.

A story you hAdn’t thought of

For professionals dedicated to informing and engaging a workforce, audits bring huge benefits, ac-cording to Kristina Larson, director of internal communications at Children’s National Health System.

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“While you may find out information that may surprise you or the data may tell a story that you maybe hadn’t thought of, I think that’s the exciting part of the process,” says Larson, whose organi-zation has been through two audits with James Ylisela and Katrina Gill. (The first was through Ragan Communications, the second through Ylisela’s Duff Media Partners.)

At ConAgra Foods, an audit by consultant Shel Holtz revealed an uncomfortable but essential les-son, says Sue Christensen, senior director of communication and external relations. The company’s culture was a nose-to-the-grindstone ethos where employees were nervous about even peeking at the intranet, fearing their bosses would accuse them of wasting time.

According to Christensen, Holtz told them, “I’ve never seen a culture where it was almost frowned upon for people to actually go out into the organization and seek news and information.”

With the audit in hand, Christensen was able to argue for a new approach throughout the organiza-tion.

Similarly, one hospital, excited about digital tools, had canceled its print publication in the past, says Holtz, who worked with the organization. But an audit revealed that the magazine was the best way to reach busy nurses and offline employees who didn’t work at computers all day. They liked to grab the publication on the way out the door and read it on the bus home.

Sometimes it takes guts to take a hard look at your work, but remember the point of it all.

“You have to go in with the idea that you’re going to test your team’s practices against whether or not they get bang for their business value,” Christensen says. “There is no other way to look at it.”

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Elements of an AuditBringing in An expert vs. do-it-yourself

Many communications experts say it’s essential to get an outside consultant’s objective perspective, noting, as Holtz does, that you wouldn’t audit your own taxes. Others disagree, saying it’s possible to do your own audit if you don’t have the funding to hire an outsider.

“The biggest challenge of doing it yourself is that when you’re part of a culture, it’s hard to identify your own blind spots,” says Ryan Williams of Tekara Organizational Effectiveness.

An audit may also highlight issues that are politically awkward to raise internally, but which an out-sider can more easily raise. And an outsider won’t share an employee’s understandable reluctance to tell bosses where communications fall short.

Nevertheless, consultants Steve and Cindy Crescenzo insist it is possible to do your own audit—or what they call “guerilla research.” In the Ragan Communications webinar “How to do a complete communications audit by yourself,” they explain, “If you can hire a professional, do it. But if you can’t hire someone to cut your lawn or clean your house, does that mean you don’t do those things?”

Communicators are tired of being in a rut, Cindy Crescenzo adds. The data from your audit “are going to make you convince your executives that things need to be done differently,” she says.

Cost And time

How long will it take? For a major audit, if the stars align, it could be done in 90 days, Holtz says. “But it won’t,” he tells clients, “and I can tell you right now that won’t be my fault; it will be yours.”

Why? Because the chief executive will cancel an interview and it will be three weeks until he’s avail-able again. Or the focus group has to reschedule because something happened in that region that will taint the attitudes of people. Any number of other factors can stretch out the process to a year or more.

An audit can cost anywhere from $70,000 to $80,000 in a smaller organization, to hundreds of thou-sands of dollars if you’re flying people all over the world to do focus groups and running a survey in multiple languages.

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“But the goal,” Holtz says, “is to produce communications that have a measureable effect on the business.”

lAying the groundwork

Con Edison, a New York utility, pleaded “very guilty of inundating people with all sorts of emails” -a couple hundred a year- and thereby overwhelming this communications channel, admits Ann Cam-eron, director of creative services. HR was filling up inboxes, and the company shared every press release with its staff via email. All this served to weaken email as a channel.

Communicators took a hard look at all this and said, “Whoa. People don’t want this,” Cameron says.

So 2½ years ago, the company launched what Cameron calls “a communications quest, recognizing that we’re all about output and less about outcome.” The cause got a boost last year when the new chairman asked for a hard look at internal communications and how to improve them, “so that gave us a little more clout.”

Con Edison began by bringing in some consultants and holding its own focus groups. As of December 2014, the company had already cut internal email by 20 percent.

set your goAls

Don’t lurch into the process blindly. Think ahead. “An audit starts by defining what you’re trying to measure and the situation that you’re in,” says Ryan Williams of Tekara.

Set specific goals and communicate those to an auditor, whether internal or external.

“Remember, you’re not paying for somebody to tell you everything that’s wrong,” says Karen Scates, marketing and PR manager at GinzaMetrics. “You’re paying for the recommendations and how to fix it. You’re paying for additional knowledge that you couldn’t get from printing it out yourself.”

While Con Edison’s audit will aid communicators, its scope goes beyond that.

“From a very senior level, what are the priorities?” Cameron says. “How do we figure out what is strategic? What do we need to do? What aligns with the basic mission? ... What’s the bigger picture? What are we trying to accomplish?”

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As you begin, consultant Linda Pophal of Strategic Communications says, explore these questions:

• Who are our target audiences? Different audience segments may require different tools and messages.

• What are our goals with each of these audiences?• Why are we communicating with them? • What will the benefit to the organization be? • What are our existing communication tools? • How much are we currently spending to produce, distribute and evaluate each of these tools—

both staff time and out-of-pocket costs?

CONDUCT A DOCUMENT REvIEW

Review past strategic plans or formal communication plans, says Tekara’s Ryan Williams. Many or-ganizations skip this step, but it is necessary to reread human resources, marketing and advertising documents. Make sure you’re familiar with past audits or research.

Children’s National had done audits in 2008 and 2011, allowing the organization to look at what had evolved and improved over those three years, Larson says.

“Certainly the technology has changed, our organization has changed,” Larson says. “What are the new opportunities to better reach our employees?”

HOLD A PLANNING MEETING

To launch an audit, Holtz begins with a major planning meeting to answer questions. Gather stake-holders to find out what they are looking for in communications. Holtz asks about priorities of com-municators and leadership and reviews and clarifies the audit phases. He also goes through the following items:

• Assign roles. Who will be responsible for what?• Discuss who should be included in interviews and focus groups.• Consider locations for these interviews and focus groups. For instance, how many non-HQ loca-

tions will be included? How many front-line facilities, distribution centers, sales offices, and regional HQs will you involve?

• Consider issues that might affect or impede the audit.• Review existing research and existing channels to be reviewed.

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• Discuss of HR and IT roles, such as setting up a separate email account so the auditors can review all all-employee emails. (See “Review your channels” below.)

• Cover expectations for the audit report.• Review dates set for audit milestones.

“I’ll find out what their expectations are, what they think is working, and where they think they’re fall-ing short,” Holtz says.

INTERvIEW SENIOR LEADERS

Executive interviews are crucial, yet they’re the one thing communicators tend to skip when they do their own research, Steve Crescenzo says. This is because they are intimidated, don’t feel they are worthy of executives’ time, or can’t get a spot on the top bosses’ calendars. (Hint: Schedule meetings early. Senior leaders’ meetings tend to run long, so as the day gets crowded, their secretaries ruth-lessly strike out meetings later on.)

Ryan Williams of Tekara usually starts by interviewing the chief executive. He asks:

• What does the future look like over the next five years? • What are the barriers the organization is likely to face? • How can communications solve those problems?

Steve Crescenzo adds that he insists on at least three or four interviews with key executives. These interviews can tell you what management wants from communication, provide insight into how man-agement thinks the organization communicates, and tell senior leaders you’re serious about driving the business through communication, he says.

Don’t be intimidated if the top bosses seem too busy. Communicators have a bad habit of thinking executives are too busy trotting the globe and attending important meetings to sit down to talk, “but they can spare 30 minutes,” Crescenzo says. If the exec cancels, reschedule. Does it happen again? Request another slot. Keep doing this until you get the time.

Incorporate some basic questions into all his interviews, Crescenzo says. These include:

• How would you rate communication at the organization?• How would you like communications to be in a perfect world?• What do you see as the biggest obstacles to communication?

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• What are the hottest issues facing the organization?• What information do you feel audience members should have, but aren’t getting?

hold foCus groups

Bring in focus groups of employees to find out how communications are working for them. Ask what their expectations are, what their information needs are. Focus groups also allow you to gather quotes that drive home the points of your research.

“What do they remember during the last year that really stood out for you from internal communica-tions?” Holtz says. “Is there something internal communications did that really didn’t work?”

Include all your stakeholders, says Larson of Children’s National, which has commissioned two major audits. The organization held focus groups with key audiences segmented by groups, such as physi-cians, nurses and non-clinicians. Children’s National operates from 30 locations, so auditors made sure to invite staff from extended campuses to offer their views.

Focus groups allow the auditor to hold a conversation about communications. In one case, Holtz says, employees at a plant had access to information kiosks but weren’t using them. Why not? he asked.

Because the news was all about what was going on at headquarters and had nothing to do with them, they told him.

Holtz pressed, “If you could sign up to get text messages to tell you about what’s going on in your plant, and what’s going on with the brands that you make in this plant, is that something you’d be interested in?”

As he recalls, the employees said, “We’d sign up for that immediately and check it often.”

Focus groups allow for such back and forth. And they provide a reality check for executives and com-municators’ dreams and perceptions.

At a utility where Cindy Crescenzo did an audit, communicators warned that executives, who had been at the company for decades, probably would be a hard sell on new social tools. She tested this out in focus groups, asking, “Do you think using social and multimedia tools would help tell internal stories?”

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Surprisingly, it was the senior leaders who were enthusiastic — and the employees who fretted about wasting time and retaliation for posting their views.

One executive said, “I think it would push the more open and honest communications that are needed.”

But an employee offered a counterpoint: “As far as comments, I think you need to keep it anony-mous; otherwise it’s career suicide.”

Stunned communicators asked if this meant they shouldn’t try to adopt social tools. Not at all, Cindy Crescenzo told them. It just meant staffers needed training, and the organization had to launch a marketing campaign for the new channels. Better to learn that in advance, rather than fall flat out of the gate.

SURvEY YOUR WORKFORCE

Surveys provide hard data across large groups of employees. But they have to be handled correctly to provide useful conclusions.

Cindy Crescenzo once replaced a consultant who left midway through a project, she says. A partner who was working with her told her not to worry about the internal survey. They had already tried one, and it failed.

“We barely had any response,” she recalls being told.

She asked to look over the survey anyway. Turns out it had 102 questions.

“No one’s going to fill that out,” she says. “Of course your response rate is low. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before you begin.”

Instead, suggests Ryan Williams, use short questionnaires of five to 10 questions, but survey more often. “Like a tweet, it should be short and to the point,” he says.

Make sure you get broad representation in surveys and focus groups, says Sean Williams. And secure permissions from all the needed authorities. At Goodyear, a worldwide company, communicators once neglected to get a German unit’s union approval for the survey, so the union told employees not to participate.

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Yet when the audit comes out, the first thing people ask in a global company is, “What do my people say? I understand the big picture, I want to know about my plant, my country, my region, the people who are in my business unit,” says Sean Williams of Communication AMMO.

ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Don’t muddy up your survey with jargon or leading questions. Often communicators writing surveys will list five or 10 channels and ask, “Which do you prefer to get your information on?” Sean Williams says. Instead, ask about past preferences and measure behavior.

Find out which communications vehicles your employees use—and how frequently. Which channels do they use daily? A couple times a week? Less than once a week? Never?

“Then you can get to what people are actually doing, and not what they think they should be doing,” Sean Williams says.

Cindy Crescenzo offers an example of how to rewrite a question to make it neutral:

Bad: We have recently redesigned our intranet to be a world-class site. Do you find the site easy to navigate?

Good: Is the redesigned intranet site easy to navigate?

Christensen at ConAgra Foods asks this: “Are these communications vehicles useful to you in getting your job done?”

Your survey and other information-gathering must do more than measure channels, says Sean Williams of Communication AMMO. Measure knowledge and comprehension as facilitated by the supervisor.

Try asking, “To what extent does your supervisor help put company performance into context for you?”

Ryan Williams suggests turning your communication objectives into a questionnaire (you must use outcomes to do this, he says) and mixing questions that ask about feelings, behaviors and demo-graphic descriptors. This allows for interpreting and generalizing your findings. For example:

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• How many emails do you send daily? • What age range do you belong to? • How do you feel about the amount of email you receive?

Some internal communicators check the pulse of the organization as an audit progresses, using single-question surveys and questionnaires in employee newsletters.

REvIEW YOUR CHANNELS

A channel review is a top-to-bottom inventory of your means of communication, whether they are the intranet, print publications or email. The auditor reviews all output and asks how many times you send messages, how often you interact with employees or they interact with you, where and when they do it, and why they do it, Tekara’s Ryan Williams says.

Did the communications fulfill the organization’s objectives? Did you get a higher performance, or did you keep people safer on the factory floor or in the infectious disease ward of a hospital?

Review communications and information, Holtz says. Your channel review should also include a deep dive into the intranet, and a review of all print publications.

For those trying to do this on their own, this is where you may need to find internal expertise, Tekara’s Ryan Williams says. There’s someone in finance who can help you calculate your efficiency. Others in HR might be able to help you understand your impact on employee engagement. Marketing can help you understand the reputational impact of your external programs.

As a part of this process, Holtz recommends an inbox analysis. Set up an email account where the person doing the auditing can receive all the emails employees are getting in a separate box, re-moved from personal emails.

At one retail company, Holtz says, “We found emails going to store managers represented the key chokepoint for communication. Store managers had a lot to do. They had literally dozens of emails a day saying here’s something you need to communicate to your employees.”

Employee communications, HR, operations, executives and others were bombarding the managers with email, meaning managers were missing essential emails.

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For those looking to improve their email, Newsweaver, in conjunction with a panel of industry thought leaders, has developed an internal communications grader. The IC Grader poses 10 ques-tions to test your use of the channel. Questions include:

• How do you brand your email communications?• How do you encourage employees to interact with your content?• How do you update the employee data used when sending emails?• How do you personalize email content sent to individuals?• How do you measure engagement with your internal emails?

ENACT RECOMMENDATIONS

The channel review maps out and identifies chokepoints in the information flow, and the auditor will offer a revised model of how information should flow if the organization adopts his or her recommen-dations. A qualified auditor has the expertise to recommend changes or point the way to new tech-nologies and practices. If you do your review internally, you may have to research these matters.

At ConAgra Foods, an audit included a communications cost analysis, Christensen says. The com-pany asked, “Of the channels that are most valuable to people — or least valuable — what are we spending on putting those things out?”

It also helped the company identify areas that served as barriers. It was an eye-opener that employ-ees were afraid even to spend company time looking at the intranet - a matter that never would have been discovered without an audit.

The intranet portal had been around since 2004, and its Yammer network was neglected. The com-pany revamped the portal and integrated it with Yammer, which it relaunched among its employees. ConAgra Foods went to a user-generated news model, with employees encouraged to write up their own news, rather than communicators chasing stories.

Communicators were redeployed to train people on the platform, which grew from about 1,000 users to 11,000, or two-thirds of the people in the company who had email addresses. Engagement now runs at 7,000-8,000 people per day on the platform.

“We were very careful to teach people how to use it in getting their work done versus just sharing information,” Christensen says.

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Nowadays, more plant workers than salaried employees use Yammer for collaborating and sharing information.

At Children’s National, an audit brought the recommendation that the organization report more gen-eral health care news in addition to company news, Larson says. Staff wanted this.

“Health care is one of the most rapidly changing industries at this point in time,” Larson says. “That was really important to them.”

WHAT NExT?

Your audit can shape your communications for several years. But it doesn’t have to end with that one major report. You can augment the findings with your own ongoing bite-sized bits of research.

In the two-year gap between major audits, Goodyear used its online polling feature and periodically asked questions such as, “Do you understand company strategy?” says Sean Williams. After town halls, his staff of five or six would split up the list of attendees and call up every one of them for quick feedback.

That way, when the bosses asked if the message had gotten through, Sean Williams could say, “Yes, town halls work, and here’s how we know it.”

Alternatively, communicators could establish that versus three months ago, people didn’t feel as well-connected to the strategy as they used to. It could pay off to refresh relevant stories, or repost the clip of the CEO speaking at an analysts’ conference.

MOvING ON

Whether you bring in an outside auditor or do your own review, the process can raise sharp issues, but it provides lasting benefits to your communications. Plan ahead. Ask the right questions. Involve the right people. Be open-minded about your channel review. And above all, prepare for a renais-sance in your communications.

At Newsweaver we know that there is a knowledge gap for organizations around understanding where their internal email communications currently rank against industry standards. As a result we teamed up with a panel of industry experts and thought leaders to discuss the issues of benchmarking internal email and internal communications standards, and from that research the Internal Communications Grader was created. The IC Grader will score the effectiveness of your internal email communication and after just a few minutes you will receive a benchmarked score along with a customized, downloadable report - giving you tips for improving your email comms performance and results. So how does your use of email measure up against internal communications best practices in your industry?

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