communicators’ struggles, strengths and successes · 2019. 6. 19. · in the ragan/staffbase...

Communicators’ struggles, strengths and successesHow do internal communicators rate their performance? What are frustrations and hopes for the future throughout the industry? Delve deep with this survey.

Sponsored by:

Introduction .................................................................................... 1

Key findings .................................................................................... 2

Respondents and team structure ................................................ 4

Goals and challenges .................................................................... 8

Considering content .................................................................... 13

Reaching the far-flung workforce .............................................. 19

Measurement ............................................................................... 25

In conclusion ................................................................................ 32

Table of Contents

Communicators’ struggles, strengths and successes

1


Like any communicator, Katy Leedy of Gordon Food Service wants to know that her audience is engaging with the content she creates.

A recent ride-along with a sales rep offered the internal communications specialist a reminder of what a challenge that simple goal can be.

“He was expressing a desire to hear more from our leadership,” says Leedy, whose company has 20,000 employees. “Then I started asking if he’d read the content that is on the intranet or watched the videos that are there. And he hadn’t. They want the information but they’re not going to where we’re providing it.”

Most internal communicators know the frustration of working hard on an email, newsletter, video or other message, only to have employees ignore it. In a new survey by Ragan Communications and Staffbase, 42% of respondents say engaging all employees, or achieving full message retention and prompting desired action, is a challenge for them.

The survey of more than 300 participants dug deep into the work life of communicator. It asked Ragan.com’s readership of communication pros about their goals, challenges and departmental structure. Respondents revealed which channels they use, and who produces internal content from other departments (such as human resources).

Conducted in early 2019, the survey drew participants from an array of sectors, ranging from agriculture and mining to health care and pharmaceuticals. Government, university and defense industry professionals added to the mix.

The questions weren’t always easy—but that makes the results all the more eye-opening. Participants took a hard look at what percentage of employees they reach, who their most difficult audiences are, and whether their content is relevant. Let’s take a look.

Introduction

A QUICK NOTE: THE PERCENTAGES IN SOME GRAPHS EXCEED 100 PERCENT BECAUSE WE ROUNDED THE PERCENTAGES UP.

2


Here are the main takeaways.

• The primary goal of internal communication departments is to engage the workforce and improve culture, with 54% supporting that goal. Keeping employees informed about corporate news lags at 27%.

• Some 54% of respondents’ organizations measure internal communications, while 46% say they don’t.

• The greatest challenges facing internal communication departments are as follows:

• Reaching all employees, or achieving full staff saturation with internal messaging, proves problematic for 47% of communicators.

• Lack of leadership support is an obstacle for 46%.

• Engaging all employees, or achieving full message retention and prompting desired action, eludes 42%.

• Apart from the internal communication department, the No. 1 creator of content is human resources (64%). This is followed by leaders (50%) and employees themselves (40%).

• Sixty-five percent of respondents say they have one central internal communication department for the whole company, versus multiple departments depending on branch or location.

• For organizations without a central communication department, lack of executive support is the greatest obstacle (52%).

• Email is still important in communication channels, with 94% saying they use it. It is followed by the intranet (81%), leadership or town hall meetings (75%), e-newsletters (63%), and face-to-face meetings (63%).

Key findings

3


• The majority (68%) of respondents say they’re reaching half or more of their employees with their internal communications channels. Non-desk employees are the most difficult to reach, with 62% of communicators expressing dissatisfaction.

• The three greatest content-creation challenges for internal communicators are lack of time (48%), outdated technology (36%) and employees’ reluctance to share stories (33%).

• Targeted content remains beyond the ability of a majority. Forty-five percent of internal communication departments can target content.

• Fifty-four percent of participants noted they measure internal communication. Among these, the area most likely to be measured is the most popular topics employees read (68%).

• Respondents noted they were somewhat or extremely effective at measuring the most popular channels employees visit (79%), followed by the most popular topics employees read (76%).

4


A deeper look at the pool of respondents.In the broad range of participants, five sectors predominated, making up nearly half of survey respondents: health care, government, financial services, professional services and consulting, and education.

Health care, pharmaceuticals and biotech made up nearly 15% of respondents. Government workers amounted to 11%.

The survey also polled a strong sampling from other industries. Financial services came next, with 10%, followed by professional services/consulting with 9%. Communicators in education represented 8% of the sample. Those working in manufacturing (7%) and utilities (5%) also participated.

Respondents and team structure

11%

5%

15%

26%

10%

9%

Which of the following industries best describes your organization?

Health care, Pharmaceuticals, & Biotech 15%

Government 11%

Financial Services 10%

Professional Services/Consulting 9%

Education 8%

Manufacturing 7%

Energy & Utilities 5%

Nonprofit 5%

Technology 5%

Other 26%

5%

5%

7%8%

5


In several areas, answers vary according to organizational size. Those with larger numbers of employees tend to measure more—and to be more committed to employee engagement. The largest cohort (29%) work in organizations whose numbers total from 1,001–5,000. Twenty-one percent of respondents claim workforces of under 500, and 13% have between 5,001 and 10,000 employees. Seventeen percent report workforces of 10,001 to 50,000. Only 7% have more than 50,000 on the payroll.

< 500 21%

500 -1,000% 13%

1,001-5,000 29%

5,001-10,000 13%

10,001-50,000 17%

50, 000+ 7%

13%

17%21%

13%

How many employees does your organization employ?

7%

29%

6


How is your team structured?If you have one central communication department, you are among the majority. Sixty-five percent of organizations centralize their communication structure, compared with just 21% who report they have multiple internal communication departments based on location or branch.

Another 14% report a variety of different models. These include a hybrid of the two choices above, a single HQ communicator and multiple regional offices, one-person communication teams, internal comms as a part of a greater marketing or communication team, and other structures.

Organizations of fewer than 5,000 employees were more likely to report a single, centralized communications office (69%) than were those that were larger (56%). For those of fewer than 1,000 employees, the percentage was 65.

One central internal communications department for the whole company

Multiple internal communications departments based on location or brand

Other

65%21%

Which of the following best describes how your internal communications department is structured?

14%

7


Even comparatively small organizations can have a global footprint—and a communications structure to reflect that. “For a smallish company,” one

communicator states, “we have 10 global offices and [employees] ... from over 27 nationalities. Many of our communication challenges have to do with time zone management and cultural understanding, on top of some of the more traditional challenges.”

Among those who have spread out communication functions across geographic locations, some deliver the message without a central office to oversee them. “We utilize a broad group all around the company to create communications with no centralized management,” writes one.

On the other hand, sometimes a centralized communications office might simply mean a lack

of personnel. One over-extended communicator confessed to being “ONE PERSON for an organization of 1,000 employees at six-plus sites.”

“For a smallish company, we have 10 global offices and [employees] ... from over 27 nationalities. Many of our communication challenges have to do with time zone management and cultural understanding, on top of some of the more traditional challenges.”

8


Engage and improve culture first.The primary goal of internal communication departments, the survey shows, is to engage the workforce and improve culture, with 54% supporting that goal. Perhaps surprisingly, keeping employees informed about organizational news follows distantly, with only 27% dedicated principally to that mission.

Among organizations of fewer than 1,000 employees, engagement and culture improvement drops slightly, to 52%. The goal of informing employees is significantly higher, at 33%.

Contrast these figures with those of the largest organizations, with 5,000 or more employees. In this cohort, those citing engagement as their top

Goals and challenges

Keep employees informed with corporate news: 27%

Help navigate change: 11%

Guide employees with job-specific information: 4%

Provide employees with opportunities for feedback: 1%

Engage our workforce and improve culture: 54%

Other: 3%11%

54%

27%

3%

4%1%

Which of the following is the primary goal of internal communications in your organization?

9


goal ticked up to 57%; that’s 5 points higher than among those with fewer than 1,000 staffers.

Larger organizations—those with a workforce of more than 1,000—more closely reflected the total average. Fifty-four percent saw engaging the workforce and improve culture as their top goal. Among this group, 25%, or 8 percentage points fewer than the total average, cited spreading organizational news as their top goal.

The 5-point difference between the largest and smallest organizations can carry an impact. Higher engagement levels result in greater performance, says Dr Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist, citing a 2016 Gallup survey of 1.9 million employees in 82,000 business units across 230 organizations in 73 countries.

(“Business unit” is a general term for a store, factory, bank branch, team or department that serves as a functional component within an organization, Harter says.)

In the Ragan/Staffbase survey, several factors could explain the gap between larger and smaller organizations’ rating of engagement as a goal, says Shel Holtz, a nationally recognized communication consultant who is now director of internal communications for the San Francisco commercial construction contractor Webcor.

“One could be that there are fewer people on a staff,” he says. “By the time you finish producing the stuff that you’re going to communicate through the intranet, how much time of the day is left?”

Some smaller organizations could have less sophisticated leadership when it comes to understanding the significance of engagement. Alternatively, he says, in some smaller organizations “the culture is doing just fine because everyone is in the same building, and you don’t need communication to help drive the culture. It’s all right there.”

“By the time you finish producing the stuff that you’re going to communicate through the intranet, how much time of the day is left?”

10


Identifying challenges.The greatest challenge facing communicators looks similar for the largest and smallest organizations, with a variation in the middle range.

What are the top challenges? Fifty-one percent of organizations with more than 5,000 employees listed their top challenge as “reaching all employees (achieving full staff saturation with internal messaging).”

Those with fewer than 5,000 employees, however, saw things differently. They listed their primary obstacle as “engaging all employees (achieving full message retention and prompting desired action),” drawing 48%.

Asked how Gordon Food Service is engaging employees, Leedy, a survey participant, sees room for improvement. “One of our major focuses this year is looking at ways to do that,” she says. “We’re really looking at mobile as a potential driver of engagement.”

Total survey partcipants listed the three greatest difficulties facing their departments as follows:

0 20 40 60

Engaging all employees

Not enough staff

Reaching all employees

Lack of leadership support

Not enough time

Please select the three biggest challenges facing your internal communications department.

0 20 40 60

Lack of leadership support

Reaching all employees

Not enough staff

Engaging all employees

Not enough time

Respondents from organizations with under 5,000 employees.

Respondents from organizations with over 5,000 employees.

11


• Reaching all employees, or achieving full staff saturation with internal messaging. Forty-eight percent of communicators cited this issue.

• Lack of leadership support (46%), suggesting that communicators and executives need to align expectations.

• Engaging all employees, or achieving full message retention and prompting desired action. This is a problem for just over 42%.

Among organizations with a workforce of fewer than 5,000, the dis-connect between comms and executives was even worse. A combined 71% listed lack of leadership support as their greatest or second-greatest problem. Reaching all employees was even higher at 87%.

For organizations without a central communication department, the top challenge is lack of executive support (52%). This is followed by reaching all employees (46%) and engagement (44%).

The problem of insufficient leadership support was slightly better at organizations with centralized communication departments. Of this group, 43%—a 10-point improvement over organizations with more scattered communications—cite a lack of support from

the top, whereas 48% see a more daunting challenge in reaching all employees and achieving full staff saturation.

Sliced differently, the survey offers other insights. Among those who target content, an entirely different issue tops the list: 49% cite understaffing.

Interestingly, executive support was better among communicators whose primary goal is to engage the workforce. In this group, 40% report they feel unsupported. This is 11 points greater among those whose foremost objective isn’t staff engagement: 51% of this segment don’t think leaders have their back.

12


The survey shows that many communicators are overwhelmed. Yet some are finding creative solutions through internal collaboration across departments. “Lack of staffing is a serious challenge,” writes one respondent, “but it has forced a clever innovation—internal comms and external comms are almost fully integrated, and stories linked to change management, culture, and mission are internally focused first and foremost, but are easily marketed or pitched externally for positive media coverage.”

13


Who’s producing content?Who creates content outside the internal communication department? Human resources offers backup for 64% of respondents. Leaders produce content at half the organizations surveyed, and 40% of participants use employee content.

In health care, HR content creation lags 6 percentage points behind that of all other industries, 60% versus 66%. By an 8-point margin, fewer leaders in this field create content; 43% of health and biotech communicators say the top executives are creating content, compared with 51% in all other industries.

Why does HR lag in health care content creation? From the vantage point of a community health care system, “our HR team does not have the resources of a full-time communications professional,” says Christina Trinchero, a communicator at Cooley Dickinson Health Care, which is affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital (part of Partners HealthCare). “The HR team relies on our combined marketing communications/public relations staff to assist with internal communications.”

Given space to comment, several respondents mentioned additional colleagues and teams producing content: marketing, agencies, interns, IT and others.

Considering contentWho outside of internal communications produces content for the department?

Human Resources

Leadership

Employees

None of the above

Other

0 25 50 75

14


Others note that contributions produced outside the comms department aren’t always publication-ready. “We receive limited content from other departments, but often have to seek it out and heavily edit or draft from bullets,” a respondent writes.

How do you create local content?When it comes to creating locally targeted content, various approaches emerge. These include a beat-like system, relying on local units and responding to requests from local leaders.

Consider Gordon Food Service. The company has employees spread out across the U.S. and Canada, Leedy says. They are scattered among 21 divisions with distribution centers in each, as well as 175 store locations.

To reach them, Gordon has four central communicators as well as divisional “news coordinators,” and it uses channels such as the intranet, digital signage, email, and posters in its trucking centers. Beyond that, information cascades through managers.

Three to five people in each division are tasked with local news, Leedy says. They look at “What are the events going on? What are the struggles or wins in their particular area?”

Here are a few other ways communicators say they keep employees apprised at far-flung worksites:

• One public affairs employee from the team gathers info from various [publicinformation officers]. Human Resources also produces agency-wide content,mostly as a separate effort, sometimes combined with Public Affairs.

• We are a global company. We have a global internal communications teamwho communicate to corporate employees. Communicators in each sector(Latin America, Europe, Middle East, etc.) communicate messages at asector level.

• Because of our 1,000 locations and vast workforce, we do not producecontent on the local level. We distribute content that is relevant at thecorporate level.

15


• Each communications professional is assigned departments that they meet with on an ongoing basis. Stories, news, change communications are discussed with business partners.

• There are specific people who support each location/branch that work on content for those units.

• We are a department of one. We do the best we can to create segmented pieces specific to each audience, but typically use more general messages to all if it applies to all.

• It’s tough. We often rely on leaders at other locations to share story ideas and photos with us. We connect via email for more information.

• We go to all the offices and record video, interview people, talk with them, find out what’s going on, what’s important to them, etc. We have contacts at each office who are supposed to keep us informed, be on the lookout for potential stories (especially the culture in action), and take pictures at events, which are then sent to us to create stories for use on the intranet and in social media.

• We are a health care system with multiple locations but have limited ability to share location-specific content. Our intranet does not allow for groups or targeted messaging, and we don’t have email distribution lists for many of our campuses (HR limitation). We often send messages to leaders and ask them to share as appropriate, or we post on the intranet and hope it reaches the right groups.

16


Content creation challenges.Everyone has the need; nobody has the time. That’s the seeming conclusion from the survey question soliciting the three greatest challenges that each respondent’s internal communication department faces.

Content creation in and of itself isn’t easy, but being pushed to produce without sufficient time is a recurring problem. In a question in which respondents were allowed to make multiple choices, the greatest challenge, they agreed, is lack of time (48%). Outdated technology thwarts the ambitions of 36%. And employees’ reluctance to share stories frustrates 33%.

At Memorial Healthcare, “finding content is relatively easy, and finding the people that we need to speak with is relatively easy,” says Lorilei Barsh, HR communications and brand strategist. “But having the staff to write the content and actually create the content is my biggest challenge. I’m a team of one.”

Yet another communicator states, “Only one staff person doing internal and external comms for 1,000-person workforce—emergent external/media inquiries constantly put internal comms on back burner. Also, highly siloed unionized workforce makes it almost impossible to recruit other content creators.”

0 10 20 30 40 50

Lack of time

Outdated technology

Employees’ reluctance to share their stories

Employee interests are unclear

Lack of targeting ability

In terms of content creation, select the three biggest challenges facing your internal communications department.

17


In your opinion, what percentage of the content offered is relevant to your employees?

Less than 25%: 7%

26 – 50%:19%

51 – 75%: 37%

70 – 90%: 25%

More than 90%: 12%

25%

19%

12%

37%

7%

How relevant is your content?Thanks to social media and targeted advertising, it is becoming a necessity for organizations to provide relevant information tailored to individuals. That raises the bar for communicators, setting heightened expectations that work content will be personally relevant.

Many organizations don’t have the ability to differentiate content among divergent groups of employees.

“We have various target audiences and it is difficult to segment the content and the media channels to tailor the needs of each specific audience,” a respondent states.

In this new environment, the survey reveals a range of thinking about the relevance of one’s content. Is it good news that 12% of respondents think at least 90% of their content is relevant to employees? Or is it troubling that 7% think less than a quarter of what they produce hits home?

18


“For us it’s over 90%,” Barsh says of content relevance. “That’s because we really pick and choose carefully what we are going to push out to our employees.”

Data helps inform communicators about relevance at Ellie Mae, a cloud-based platform provider for the mortgage industry. “We strive for all of our internal communication content to be relevant to our employees; otherwise, why produce it?” says survey participant Sara Holtz, director of internal communications. (She is no relation to Shel Holtz.)

“We leverage data to advise our stakeholders across the company about the right message, to the right audience, at the right time,” Sara Holtz says. “Based on views and calls to action, I’d say we are successful in this 75% of the time. There is always room for improvement since the needs of the business and our employees constantly evolve.”

Others are less confident. Regardless of how the numbers are sliced across survey demographics, many clearly are producing information that their employees don’t want. In the comments, many communicators recognized the need for more-targeted content. “We aim to have a mix of need-to-know operational news, leadership messaging, ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ and features highlighting our core values and mission/vision each week to pique curiosity and foster readership,” writes one respondent.

A health care communicator recognizes the need for targeting but suggests that communications staffers have limited hours to differentiate content for the organization’s wide variety of employees.

“Our employee base is so diverse now that we’re having trouble accounting for what is pertinent to corporate white-collar PhDs as well as call-center staff with high school diplomas, alongside physicians and clinical staff,” writes one respondent. “The job types, education levels and interests vary so widely that we’re struggling to keep up amidst our small team.”

“The job types, education levels and interests vary so widely that we’re struggling to keep up amidst our small team.”

19


Choosing the channel.Mobile is the up-and-coming channel in internal comms, as communicators scramble to connect on those few square inches of screen where employees seem to spend most of their waking hours. Even so, email is still the most heavily used channel in internal communication, dominating the field.

Email ranks No. 1, with 94% of communicators using it. Mobile trails far behind, at No. 9, with 19%. That makes the channel a little over 1 percentage point more used than print newsletters, at 18%.

The larger challenge is that programs employees link to from the intranet (such as requesting time off, or ordering uniforms or business cards) aren’t

Reaching the far-flung workforceWhich of the following channels does your internal communications department use to communicate?

0 20 40 60 80 100

Email

Intranet

Leadership/town hall meetings

E-newsletter

Face-to-face

Video

Digital signage

Social media

Mobile

Instant messaging/chat

Print newsletter

Other

20


all mobile-friendly, she adds. That’s outside the comms team’s control, but it is encouraging those teams to make those apps mobile-friendly.

This should increase mobile use, she says, “knowing that people are not going to come to the intranet just for the news, but if there’s other stuff that’s useful to them, they might also look at the news.”

After email, the top channels are the intranet (81%) and town hall meetings (75%). Got something to say face to face to employees? Nearly four out of 10 communicators wouldn’t do it that way. Face-to-face communication is no more popular than e-newsletters, at 63%.

Health care sees a higher percentage of digital sign use as a means of messaging staffers: 57% versus 51% for all other industries.

Still, mobile continues to hold promise. “We don’t have mobile now,” one respondent says, “but will launch a mobile app this summer.”

Organizations of more than 5,000 are slightly more likely to employ mobile (20% versus 18% of smaller outfits). However, they are much more likely to use video. Some 73% of these large organizations are shooting motion-picture messages, compared with 46% of smaller organizations.

What percentage of employees do you currently reach with your internal communications channels?

Less than 25%: 8%

26 – 50%: 24%

51 – 75%: 25%

70 – 90%: 23%

More than 90%: 20%

23%

24%

20%

25%

8%

21


Connecting with them all.A hefty majority (68%) of respondents are reaching half or more of their employees through their internal communications channels. Fair enough, but it’s the unreached half of the workforce that frustrates many communicators.

Leedy says the ride-along with the salesperson made her wonder how better to present the information that’s already available.

“Maybe they just don’t know that it’s there,” she says. “We’ve reached out to a couple other channels that are more specific to the sales organizations and asked, ‘What can we cross-post through your newsletter as well to add visibility to what’s here?’”

Only 20% reach 90% or more of their workforces—fewer than the 24% who reach between 26% and 50% of their staffers. Twenty-five percent are reaching between half and three-quarters of their employees. Another 23% better that by reaching 76% to 90%.

Several respondents, while checking various survey boxes, confessed they don’t measure. “This is a guestimate,” stated one.

“I answer ‘more than 90%,’ but there is really no way of knowing,” writes one. “Right now, we have zero measurement tools. However, all employees have access to the messaging that we distribute (digital signage, emails, town halls and so on). We know that at any given time, employees receive the messages because they show up to the events or respond to the emails.”

Another sighed: “We reach 100%, but this does not mean they all read or take action. Very targeted messages work well, but once you send them to the general population, we lose the attention of many, even when messages are relevant to all the population.”

22


Getting the attention of non-desk employees.Slice the data any way you like. Non-desk employees are simply hard to reach. Asked, “Which of the following audiences is the most difficult for your internal communications department to reach?” respondents across the board selected that segment.

Sixty-two percent indicated that their non-desk staffers might be operating in the dark. The figure blows away even the percentage who say remote workers are hardest to reach (27%).

Among smaller organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees, the number drops to 52%, but it jumps to 68% for their bigger comrades. For those larger than 5,000 employees, 75% say they have trouble reaching those who are out and about on the job all day.

Amanda MacLeod, sustainable communities marketing officer for the Municipality of the County of Cumberland, Nova Scotia, says the organization has faced new challenges in recent years with the absorption of two towns into the municipality. This swelled the staff from under 40 to about 100.

0 20 40 60 80 100

Non-desk employees

Employees who work remotely

Other

Part-time or per diem workers

None of the above

Desk employees

Which of the following audiences is the most difficult for your internal communications department to reach?

0 20 40 60 80 100

Non-desk employees

Employees who work remotely

Other

Part-time or per diem workers

None of the above

Desk employees

Respondents from organizations with under 5,000 employees.

Respondents from organizations with over 5,000 employees.

23


“One organization, three locations does stretch a communicator’s creativity in reaching everyone,” she says. This is especially true of “the public works employees and public recreation employees [who] are active in our community.”

As for health care organizations, consider the doctors and nurses out on the floor all day. Nearly nine in 10 communicators in the field are scrambling for ways to reach this elusive workforce. Weed them out, and the percentage for all other industries drops to 58.

In the comments, respondents specify contractors, students, faculty, physicians, factory workers, weekend staff, call center workers, and “employees without easy access to intranet” as tough to reach.

Does your internal communications department have the ability to target content?

Mobile user respondents answering “yes”

Organizations under 5,000 respondents answering “yes”

Total cohort answering “yes”

Organizations over 5,000 respondents answering “yes”

Health care respondents answering “yes”

0 25 50 75

Can you target?Asked whether the internal communication department can target content to multiple employee segments, locations, branches or groups, 45% offered a thumbs-up. Thirty-four percent sometimes can, while 21% say “no.”

“We are very good at segmenting our audiences,” Barsh says. “So if something’s only going to apply to you, we only send it to you and your population. I’m not a fan of just pushing out content for the sake of content.”

24


Among mobile communicators, the figures for those who can segment were far higher. Nearly 61% answered “yes.” Roughly 20% each responded “no” or “sometimes.”

“For the intranet, it’s more challenging,” Leedy says. “Through email we can target pretty specifically by going into our employee database and pulling lists.” This includes groups such as managers, all warehouse, all transportation, all sales and others, she says.

Interestingly, the numbers of those who can target content collapsed among the largest organizations. Of those boasting more than 5,000 employees, just 38% can segment, versus 45% who can sometimes do so and 17% who never can.

25


Do you, or don’t you?Surprisingly, just 54% of organizations measure internal communication. Forty-six percent say they don’t, leaving them guessing whether their messaging is successful or a waste of time. The percentage of organizations that are measuring is “woefully inadequate,” Shel Holtz says.

“One hundred percent should be measuring,” he says. “How do you tell [executives] whether what you do is working? Are you going to go sit in front of the executive committee of your organization and tell them ... that you had a couple of nice emails from people? Come on. They sit in those executive team meetings every day going over numbers. If you don’t have meaningful numbers that demonstrate that you’re delivering value to the organization, you’re going to be toast.”

Measurement

Yes

No 54%46%

Does your organization measure internal communications?

26


Among those whose primary goal is engaging their workforce, 57% measure. That exceeds by 9 percentage points those who measure but don’t list engagement as their primary goal.

Smaller companies—presumably with fewer resources—are far less likely to measure than the average. Only 30% of companies under 1,000 measure, versus 66% of those with more than 1,000 employees.

Similarly, 66% of organizations with more than 5,000 employees say they are measuring, versus 46% of smaller firms.

Targeting content seems to carry with it an implied question: So how are we doing? Or so one gathers from data showing that 60% of those who

target also measure their results, versus 30% of those who don’t perform such tallies.

Those with centralized communication departments are 12 percentage points more likely to measure, with 58% of them checking the numbers. Only 46% of those with non-centralized departments measure.

What makes up measurement varies according to the organization. One participant relies on intranet metrics, Yammer metrics and occasional focus group surveys. Another conducts newsletter surveys and tracks open rates for their email. Another reports using Google Analytics to measure website traffic (unique page views, time on the page, etc.), but confesses, “We could do better.”

“We are not able to measure all platforms equally and [we] struggle with bringing the analytics together from the different platforms,” one respondent remarked.

Yet another says the firm “need[s] to create a dashboard that the owners of the company can look to in order to see progress or where we need help.”

“We are not able to measure all platforms equally and [we] struggle with bringing the analytics together from the different platforms.”

27


What do you measure?For those who measure, the top metric is “the most popular topics employees read,” which garnered 68%. Next, drawing 64%, was interaction and engagement with internal communications content, or outcomes. Sixty-two percent measure whether content is received by employees, or outputs. Only 52% measure the most popular channels employees visit.

The deeper question is how the measurement helps communicators prove they’re advancing the organization’s strategic agenda. Practitioners often have very different ideas of what it means to measure internal communications, as demonstrated by the figures above. One stumbling block is that internal communicators have traditionally seen their work as difficult to measure, because it is hard to make statements based on the type of data gathered.

For example, it is important for communicators to know, for tactical reasons, open rates and click-through rates, Shel Holtz says. If nobody is reading emails, perhaps communicators should try a different approach to subject lines. Yet this doesn’t address the strategic question of how of internal communication contributes to the goals of the organization. Measurement should help communicators to prove to leadership that their efforts matter to business, Shel Holtz says.

“Ultimately, you should have, in planning your communication, an objective that serves the organization’s goals,” he says. “I guarantee you, nowhere

Which of the following does your internal communications department measure?

The most popular topics employees read

Interaction and engagement with internal communications content

If content is received by employees

The most popular channels employees visit

Other

0 25 50 75

28


in the strategic plan or the business plan for your organization is there anything about getting impressions or huge open rates. That’s for us internally to look at to measure if the stuff is even getting to people. But when you’re reporting to the leaders of the organization, you’d better be talking about support for the business plan or understanding the business plan.”

Priorities differ among organizations with more than 5,000 staffers. For these communicators, the top vote-getter is popular topics at 76%.

Others mentioned employee satisfaction surveys, open rates, most popular days and times for engaging with content, post-town-hall surveys, and other matters.

Regarding what is surveyed, one respondent enthused: “Everything! I’m very data driven. Additional would include attendance at internal events, open feedback, usage, length [of time] on page, etc.”

“Also measure additional channels and tactics, such as CEO messages, monthly conversation guides, etc.,” stated another. “Plus, we get big-picture metrics annually re. employee satisfaction with 1) amount of information shared, 2) quality of communications.”

“I measure output for client consulting (what have you done for me lately?),” a respondent writes. “We focus on outcome, engagement and impact metrics. Again, we could do better with improved technology.”

Couldn’t we all?

29


Now rate your effectiveness.How effectively do organizations measure? The results vary depending on what area we’re talking about.

Ellie Mae does better than an average job of gauging employee engagement, Sara Holtz says. The metrics obtained help her counsel other departments on how best to reach their internal audiences.

“We know and advise on what works and what doesn’t in terms of views, clicks, responses, participation and activation,” Sara Holtz says. “However, there is always opportunity for data improvement since knowing and keeping up with the most up-to-date data at times takes resources not always available to small departments.”

How effectively is your internal commubnications department able to measure the following?

0 25 50 75

Interaction and engagement with internal communications content

The most popular channels employees visit

The most popular topics employees read

If content is received by employees

Extremely effective

Somewhat effective

61%

18%

59%

24%

50%

29%

68%

0%

30


Here’s how respondents rated their effectiveness in measurement:

• The most popular channels employees visit. Seventy-nine percent of organizations claimed they measure this somewhat or extremely effectively.

Sliced differently, here are the numbers for the majority who are somewhat or extremely confident in measuring popular channels: mobile users, 84%; organizations of more than 5,000 employees, 82%;

health care organizations, 82%; organizations with central comms departments, 79%; those that can target content, 80%. Among those whose primary goal is engaging the workforce, the number is 81%.

“We could do better with interaction and engagement with better tools,” writes one frustrated communicator. “We currently don’t conduct surveys to determine the most popular channels among employees, which is a travesty.”

• The most popular topics employees read. Nearly as many—76%—say they measure this somewhat or extremely effectively.

Organizations with more than 5,000 employees are more likely to rate themselves somewhat or extremely effective (77%), versus those with fewer than 5,000 on staff (74%). Of those who at least sometimes target information, 80% rate themselves somewhat or extremely effective in this area, beating by 30 points those who don’t target.

“Through our annual communications survey plus Google Analytics, we have a good understanding of both those areas.

• If content is received by employees (outputs). Here’s where the numbers start to slip. Nearly 63% of respondents say they are somewhat or extremely effective in measuring this area.

Those whose primary goal is engagement clearly fare better, with 67% in the top two categories—13 percentage points ahead of those whose goal isn’t to engage.

31


• Interaction and engagement with internal communications content(outcomes). Just 57% say they measure this somewhat or extremelyeffectively.

Large organizations—those with more than 5,000 employees—scored far better in this category, with a combined somewhat and extremely effective percentage of 70%. Companies, utilities, universities and others of under 1,000 employees ranked themselves at the worst level, with only 33% choosing the top two categories.

Shel Holtz suggests that the reason for this may be “resource driven”; that is, “Smaller budgets, probably leaders who are less interested, and

probably lower-level communicators in a lot of instances who don’t know how to measure that stuff.”

At Memorial Healthcare, measurement has improved over the past two years, as the system enhanced its email metrics, Barsh says. Print, on the other hand, “is pretty much impossible to figure out.”

“The problem is “smaller budgets, probably leaders who are less interested, and probably lower-level communicators in a lot of instances who don’t know how to measure that stuff.”

32


The communication industry is changing. Where once professionals simply reported corporate messages, now engagement is the primary goal for most, far outpacing the dissemination of news.

Still, reaching all employees—or trying to do so—challenges nearly half of communicators. Nearly as many feel a lack of leadership support.

Employee-created content is becoming more common. Two-fifths of communicators rely on employees themselves for content. Excluding the comms department itself, only human resources and leadership create more content.

The results considered the popularity of particular channels. An encouraging three-quarters of respondents feel they are somewhat or extremely effective at measuring the most popular channels that employees visit and consume. Despite new tools, email is still the most popular, outpacing the intranet and town hall meetings. Some 94% say they use it, followed by the intranet (81%) and leadership or town hall meetings (75%).

Mobile is a growing trend in internal communications, and it is promising because it addresses gives communicators a tool to measure, target content and increase reach. The survey reveals that mobile landed ninth at 19% in a list of channels used to engage employees. Email topped the list.

Other questions revealed room for improvement. The poll shows that a mere 54% actually measure their internal communications, hindering communicators from understanding what is working in their messaging, and what’s missing the mark.

Over the past decade, technological innovation, deeper metrics and a heightened emphasis on engagement have disrupted—and strengthened—the industry. Communicators of the future must master their new role as facilitators of a conversation between the organization and the people who work for it.

In conclusion ...

Hey SharePoint, let’s just be friends.

SharePoint and Office365 will remain foundations of enterprise collaboration in the future. Staffbase is the ideal new partner for

modern internal communications professionals, and still connects easily with SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Active Directory through

standard integrations.
https://staffbase.com/en

communicators’ struggles, strengths and successes · 2019. 6. 19. · in the ragan/staffbase...

Documents