10 Metrics and KPIs for Internal Communications
Milton Herman
According to a survey conducted by the International Association of Business Communicators, most (72%) employee communication professionals globally report that internal communications is seen as a key driver of employee engagement with company leadership. . However, far fewer (41%) report having dashboards or reports to regularly measure the impact of activities.This disconnect between the strategic importance of internal communications and the lower prevalence of actionable communications KPIs is worth solving for the profession and enterprise communication to move forward meaningfully in the coming decades.
What is Internal Communications?
Internal communication (IC) generally refers to the successful flow of information among members of an organization, including to foster collaboration. Internal communications professionals specialize in helping company executives and others communicate with different parts of the organization for a variety of purposes, from change management to nearly anything related to employee experience.
Benefits of Internal Communications for Employers and Employees
Investing in internal communications can help on many different company priorities. Examples:
— Successful internal communications increases employee teamwork and productivity:
According to a survey conducted by the McKinsey Global Institute, employee productivity jumps by 20-25% in companies where employees feel connected.
— Internal communication improves employees’ overall experience at work:
When employees understand the impact their work has on the business, they feel that they are valued. They are even more motivated to reach further to meet (and exceed) expectations.
— The way top executives and managers communicate with team members has a significant impact on employee engagement:
Investing in the steps required to build an effective employee communications program is an excellent way to get employees engaged with an organization’s vision. Workers feel valued and understand that their role has a bearing on the company’s success.
→ Read More: How to Define Internal Communication Goals? SMART Goals
Why Track Internal Communications?
While obvious to many in the industry, it’s worth pausing to consider why measuring the impact of employee communications efforts is so important. Here are a few — but my no means all — reasons to have a plan in place to measure success.
— It gives an indication of employee engagement with the company.
Investing the time and resources for tools to effectively measure internal communications can serve as a great proxy for other teams in terms of the level of engagement among different parts of an organization.
— Internal communications efforts can be tied directly to company goals.
When employees are engaged in their work and communicating effectively, they are much more likely to reach a company’s stated goals.
— Measuring communication KPIs can identify the type of content, information and knowledge that employees want.
Along with determining what types of content employees respond to best, enterprises can also eliminate the forms that are least effective (or use them less often).
— It surfaces low-hanging fruit.
Spending time on the channels where employees are interested increases effectiveness.
Here are 10 frequently used internal communication metrics:
1. Employee Engagement Rates
This is one of the most important gauges used to measure the effectiveness of internal communications. Actively engaged employees are happier in their work and they are more dedicated to their employer. They feel they are respected for their contribution to the company’s success and they respect their managers and co-workers.
Employee surveys on the subject of overall work satisfaction and effective communications can get a baseline of how workers feel about communication in the workplace. The company intranet can help to measure employee engagement with key performance indicators (KPIs) such as readership, participation and social metrics like the number of likes, shares, and comments a piece of content or community generates.
Internal Communications – Measurement to Mastery
Enhance your internal communication strategy and learn the impact of communication done right.
2. Open Rates or Intranet Read-Receipts
A leadership note or communication on new safety procedures can be clear and inspiring, but it won’t matter if the majority of employees don’t read it. A 2019 survey found that company-wide emails were only opened 21.33% of the time!
Open-rates and other email metrics are useful, but leveraging read receipts on a company intranet can be far more important in terms of measuring whether an employee actually acknowledged receiving and reading important updates.
3. Page Visits and Logins
When developing a plan to measure communications in the workplace, it’s important to capture unique page views and other easily observable metrics for day-to-day optimization. Tracking how often employees log into the company intranet, how long they stay there whether they participate in communities and more gives employee communications professionals an idea of the level of effectiveness of an internal communication strategy. Keep in mind that the majority of corporate employees (87%) don’t feel that their employer “communicates effectively” with them.
Enterprises will also want to track when employees are logging into the intranet. For maximum engagement, it’s easy to schedule company-wide announcements or news announcements for times when traffic is likely to be high and the update is the least distracting to productivity.
4. Adoption Rates for New Apps
When introducing a new employee app, tracking the adoption rate is critical. This is the number of employees who have downloaded the app and are engaged with it online. A cloud-based company intranet can help with this important task..
It’s an industry best practice to give workers some notice before introducing any type of digital tool, introducing them to its features and benefits before the actual launch via important documents on an organization’s intranet. If adoption rates are low even after a well-planned rollout, having a data-driven content strategy to combat the trend with real-time KPIs can help.
5. Employee Feedback
Using features built into an intranet to encourage employees to ask questions and give their opinions about what is happening within the company is always a great place to start. Whether it’s a regular employee survey or commentary on specific pages, it’s important to facilitate two-way communication in addition to top-down and personalized company updates.
Insight often comes from unexpected places, so connecting frontline workers and others can yield outsized benefits in other areas of an organization like customer support, product and more.
→ Read more: The HR Guide to Effective Employee Engagement Metrics
6. Employee Turnover Rates
Employees who feel engaged at work are not likely to leave their job. For this reason, an important internal communication KPI to measure is employee turnover rate.
While this metric is hardly a function of internal communication professionals alone, it’s a good gauge for employee communication effectiveness overall and internal communications specialists frequently help move the needle on turnover.
7. Sales and Customer Satisfaction
If internal communications are working well, enterprises should see a corresponding increase in sales and customer satisfaction levels. Once employees have the information they need to do their work well, they can give the customers they are dealing with a much better experience.
As always, it’s important to recognize employees for their efforts and for reaching their goals with the company.
8. Employee Advocacy
Employees who are happy and engaged at work are more likely to take the next step to become brand advocates.
Adjusting internal communication strategy to encourage team members to repost company content on social media is becoming table stakes at many companies and can also serve as a good testing ground for external marketing messages.
→ Read More: 6 Tips To Build a Strong Employee Advocacy Program
9. Mobile Usage Rates
It’s important to determine not only how often team members are reading company content, but also where they are accessing it. We know that people are spending a lot of time looking down at their smartphones every day. For some people, this device is almost like an extension of their own body.
Tracking mobile-specific UX metrics can surface insights to optimize the employee experience.
Internal Communications – Measurement to Mastery
Enhance your internal communication strategy and learn the impact of communication done right.
10. Employee Profiles
Employee profiles allow team members to share details about their educational background, skills, and interests with their colleagues. When a photo is included with the profile, it helps to put a face to a name, especially in a large company.
To monitor employee engagement, consider measuring how completely each profile is filled out by all team members and whether they are updated regularly. Some elements of the profile will not change; however, employees can update their profile by changing their favorite quote or sharing something positive they like about working for the company.
Extra Credit: Crisis Communication Addressability
One useful metric, especially in the wake of COVID-19, to determine the potential effectiveness of internal communications is to test how quickly employees could be reached in the event of an emergency.
It has two components: How quickly can a communications team get a message out to employees? Once the message has been delivered, can they respond appropriately to the message? Practicing different scenarios can yield a fuller picture.
In many cases, new technology is needed like a mobile intranet and digital workplace app that can support push notifications to get urgent messages delivered quickly.
- Employee Engagement Rates
- Open Rates or Intranet Read-Receipts
- Page Visits and Logins
- Adoption Rates for New Apps
- Employee Feedback
