How to measure the effectiveness of internal corporate communication?

Average reading time is 4 minutes

<How to measure the effectiveness of internal corporate communication>

Imagine this. An important corporate event is just around the corner. As an internal communicator at work, you and your team have been working hard on perfecting your internal communication plan for this event. You are convinced that your strategy would gather a huge turnout for this important corporate event. However, to your dismay, many did not even know about the event and hence, didn’t turn up for the event. You can’t help but wonder what could have gone wrong. Does this situation sound familiar to you?

Hollinger Scoot has published that 41% of businesses do not have a system to measure their internal communication efforts. Your corporate communication plan may fail at times. Not having a system to measure your internal communication efforts leaves you clueless about what went wrong with your strategy. Well, then let’s explore how should a communicator judge the effectiveness of a communication plan?

3 ways to measure the effectiveness of internal corporate communication

There is no hard and fast rule in measuring internal communication. Each corporation should choose a mixture of ways that suits its own corporate needs best.

1. Monitor Email Metrics
2. Utilise Surveys
3. Experiment with Employee Quizzes

Monitor Email metrics

In the digital era of communication, most internal communication takes place electronically. It’s no surprise that 74% of working adults prefer emails as their primary mode of corporate communication. Thankfully, most email marketing companies such as MailChimp have inbuilt email metrics to help smoothen the process of measuring communication efforts. Open rate is a metric that shows the percentage of employees that have opened the email. Open rate alone would not gather enough details to prove the success of the email as it is common for many to open emails without giving a look at the content of the email.

This can explain why a whopping 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company information and news. Click or Click-through rate is a more effective way to gauge the engagement level of the email. This metric shows the percentage of employees who had clicked on a tracked link in the email. A higher percentage indicates that more employees have been actively engaged by your internal communication efforts.

Utilise Surveys

The world of business analytics has evolved to provide accurate quantitative information such as reach and engagement rates. To find out whether your internal communication efforts have caused the intended behavioural changes to your employees, a survey is an effective tool. Identify the goal of your corporate communication plan. It can be as simple as encouraging employees to recycle more or can be a crucial one such as informing employees about the new working hours.

Structure your survey question in a way that you can gather feedback on whether the employees have taken the actions to accomplish the intended goal. Data from SurveyMonkey, a leading online survey provider shows that 45% of people are willing to spend 5 minutes, at most, on a survey. Their willingness to participate decreases as the survey duration increases. Hence, to encourage a wider pool of employees to take your survey, be sure to keep your survey short and succinct.

Experiment with Employee Quizzes

A downfall of surveys is that employees may not be honest in their answers. Quizzes on the other hand are effective in testing whether employees have been exposed to the relevant internal corporate communication matters. This is especially useful for important communication matters regarding new policies or company updates that are important for employees to know. You can easily monitor whether your corporate communication matters have been successfully communicated to your employees by analysing the percentage of correctly answered questions.

Monitoring the effectiveness of your internal communication plan is a crucial element in ensuring that your internal communication strategy has been effective. With the data gathered, you can then have a better understanding of your stakeholders. You can then tweak your communication strategy to address any lapse in your communication strategy. By doing so, you would be able to provide valuable and meaningful internal communication to your stakeholders.

<Blog – 5 Ways to improve internal corporate communication>

Feel free to contact us for more information or if you would like to view our training schedule for alternative dates or for more information at info@opuskinetic.com.