Not having a good grasp of your internal communications will have a huge impact on your employee engagement levels and will trickle into other areas of your business, influencing retention, employee experience and the company culture of your business.
So how do you get a good grasp of your internal communications strategy? You need to monitor set KPIs that will show you how your workforce is responding to your content.
60% of IC professionals are not tracking their internal communications efforts. How can you know where to improve if you don’t have a clear picture of what is working in the first place? We all know the saying - data is king.
Having state-of-the-art tools and tech that allow you to easily focus on the aims of your internal communications is essential when measuring the success of our internal communications. Oak’s Adaptive Intelligence and Curated Content give you in-built analytics features and feedback tools so you gather data on how your content is performing and what's working best. So what metrics should you be looking at?
In the blog, we’ll look at how to properly measure the reach of your communications, the engagement rates and what KPIs to look out for and how smart delivery can help you!
Measuring reach
You need to be measuring the reach of your communications, this shows if your messages are actually reaching your employees. It will help you see what employees are utilising what platforms and how regularly they use such platforms. Adoption rates and open rates are great indicators of the reach of your internal communications efforts.
Adoption of channel
Having the tools that give you an overview of what employees are using and what channels are great for assessing which channels are the most popular and where people go to consume your internal communications messages.
You might have a weekly newsletter you create, but how many people are actually signed up to receive it? How often do employees interact with your company intranet - daily or weekly?
Figuring out adoption rates for your specific comms channels is essential. Your adoption rates are the number of employees that are enrolled to use a specific platform compared to the total number of employees that are eligible to use it.
Open rate & acknowledgements
Open rates and acknowledgements show what percentage of people are actually opening and viewing your internal communications. Analysing open rates means seeing who is viewing your emails, newsletters, blog posts on your intranet and any other communications you might use. It’s great for seeing how successful and engaging your communications are.
Understanding the reach metrics
So how do the two metrics complement one another? Adoption rates are the number of people using a specific channel whilst open rates and acknowledgements are the number of people actually opening and viewing a piece of content.
Whilst it’s good to see which employees are using what channels, it won’t give you the full picture of whether they’re interacting with the content. For example, all your employees might be signed up to receive important company emails but they might not actually open them.
See how many employees are using what channels through adoption metrics and then analyse the open rates to see if your employees are actually viewing the content. Once you understand your reach metrics you’ll be able to streamline your communications by using the channels that are the best for connecting with your employees.
Intranets are one of the best channels for communicating with employees, whether your employees are desk based or frontline employees, they can access everything they need in one place. Since implementing an Oak Engage Intranet, Miller Homes experienced a 99% Intranet sign up rate, a 97% monthly engagement rate and their Intranet is accessed daily by 70% of employees.
Oak’s Adaptive Intelligence makes managing the delivery of your messaging across channels a breeze, ensuring the right messages get to the right people.
Engagement
Once your communications are reaching the right people, you need to make sure they’re engaging your workforce. Engagement rates are important for understanding if your internal communications are effective or if you need to switch up your strategy.
Rates of interaction
Interactions with content can be anything from clicking the link to liking and commenting on a post as well as sharing content. Seeing how many employees interact with your content is essential for seeing what content is popular with different segments of your workforce.
This data will allow you to really detail down on what content works on specific channels, whether certain times are more popular to post than others, what remote employees like vs office based employees, which devices people interact on more and so on. It’s essential you have tools that allow you to collect all this data.
Employee response
Interactions are important but even more important are the responses you receive about company news and content. Measuring likes and reviewing comments is great for assessing how your employees respond to certain types of content and if you should be producing more of this type of content.
See if your employees are creating their own content via social channels or on your company intranet, then you can see not only what channels and content are popular but you can get a picture of the kind of culture that comes from each channel.
Timing & trends
Understanding what themes and topics your employees are interested in, the format they consume the most content of, which devices they use and when they interact with content is paramount for having an engaging internal communications strategy.
Do your younger employees comment on every video post on your intranet but your older employees prefer a lengthy newsletter of the week's shenanigans? Collecting data on the habits of each group of employees will ensure that you’re reaching each individual in a way that’s relevant to them.
Through smart delivery, content is tailored to each individual user based on behaviour, relevance and priority. It reduces the noise of irrelevant content, creating a unique space specifically tailored so your employees keep coming back for more.
Measuring the right KPIs
To measure the correct KPIs you need to understand your business goals. What do you want to achieve in your workplace and what will you do with the data? Here are some things to consider:
- How do we want to use internal communications? Is it to improve productivity, influence health and wellbeing or create a culture of engagement? Or all three…
- What should we prioritise communicating?
- How do we empower employees?
- Do we want IC to connect our employees with one another?
- Do we want internal communication to improve retention rates?
- Do we want our internal communications to influence employee experience?
Once you know what goals you want to achieve you’ll be able to select the right internal communications KPIs to inform your internal communications strategy. There are five important areas to consider…
Employee inputs
What resources are in place to help you develop and implement your internal communications strategy? Who is in control of the resources and have they been allocated effectively?
Employee outputs
Is your content informative, engaging and inspiring? Does your content reflect the message you are trying to send? Have you been achieving current goals and if not, then is there a reason for this? Have you managed to drive employee engagement?
Employee satisfaction
What do your employees say about your internal communications? Do they give you feedback about the messages you’re sending? Do they understand and resonate with your comms? Did they receive all the information they need and are you giving them opportunities to share their insights?
Employee outtakes
What have your employees taken away from your messages? How do they feel about it? Make sure you get feedback about how your employees feel, this will help with informing your strategy.
Employee outcomes
What impact has your internal communications had on your employees behaviour? Has it aligned your workforce, are they working towards similar outcomes and is their behaviour impacting the business in a positive way?
Oak Engage is great for managing, analysing your content and ensuring your internal communications strategy is the best it can be. Personalised news enables you to define your outcomes and maximise engagement through relevant content across multiple channels.
Reporting and in-built analytics ensure you can gather in-depth insights and understand exactly how your employees consume content and means you can really have fun with your strategy, knowing exactly what works for various audiences.
Conclusion
Having the knowledge and tools to measure the success of your internal communications is essential for any internal communications professional. Not only will you prove the value of internal communications in aligning your workforce but you’ll be able to craft a strategy that supports the businesses goals and influences the company culture which will support growth, and the employee experience.