Measuring Internal Communication: Moving Beyond Traditional Intranets

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Introduction: Limitations of Traditional Intranets

Traditional intranets, once heralded as beacons of internal communication, are increasingly recognized for their significant limitations. Despite their intent to centralize corporate information and enhance connectivity, they often fall short in facilitating dynamic employee engagement. A key flaw is their static nature, which leads to outdated content and underutilization. Moreover, these internal communication tools lack robust analytics, making it challenging to gauge the effectiveness of communication channels. As companies strive to foster informed and engaged workforces, the inability to measure the impact of communication on the traditional intranet becomes a glaring issue, prompting a shift towards more nuanced solutions.

The Imperative of Measuring Internal Communication

The importance of measuring internal communication cannot be overstated, as it directly influences business outcomes. Engaging effectively with employees not only boosts morale but also enhances productivity and retention. According to a Gallup study, a staggering 85% of employees are more likely to stay with an organization that invests in open, frequent communications, underscoring the critical nature of effective internal communication strategies. Additionally, companies with high employee engagement report 21% greater profitability, illustrating the tangible benefits of measuring and optimizing communication efforts.

How to Measure Internal Communication

This brings us to the point of how we can begin to measure internal communications, a subject that has long eluded the communication specialist. However, today in 2024, we have answers.

•  Newsletters: Most companies are sharing newsletters but falling short in tracking results from the same. Managers require comprehensive tools to track newsletter engagement, including open rates and click-throughs, allowing companies to assess how well these communications resonate with employees.
•  Mobile Notifications: Gone are the days when employees were always behind their desks. Today, companies need to be able to communicate with the employee on the go and track if that communication is in fact reaching the employees in question. This isn't just the case for a remote workforce but is also pertinent for industries with frontline staff in factories, as well as the consulting sector, where employees are often scattered at client office locations. By measuring the response rates to mobile notifications, it provides insights into the immediacy and relevance of distributed content, ensuring that crucial information reaches employees efficiently. The right platform would also allow you to track confirmation of receipt of critical information by employees.
•  User Activity: Monitoring user activity on the platform enables companies to see who is engaged and who is not, which is crucial for tailoring communication strategies to increase overall engagement.
•  Content Performance: It is important to analyze which types of content perform best, providing data on views, shares, and interactions. This allows communicators to refine content strategies based on what truly engages employees. This helps plan an internal communication strategy with the right formats of content, the relevant topics of content, and accurate sources of content, among others.
•  Advocacy: Analytics need not be limited to internal performance but must also extend to include the impact of employee engagement externally. It is interesting to track how employees share company content on their social networks, a key metric for understanding the reach and influence of internal communication beyond the corporate environment. Employees can make for the best advocates and being able to track their impact and offer rewards can become the best performing organic marketing tool for a company.
•  Multichannel Access: Your communication platform today must be accessible via several options. And your platform must be able to provide analytics across these various channels (e.g., email, mobile apps, social media), offering a holistic view of how content performs across different platforms and helping to optimize the multichannel communication strategy.
•  Custom Dashboards: No longer must you depend on a vendor for your statistics. Your platform should allow you to create the reports you want and download them at the touch of a button. Tailored dashboards give a real-time overview of communication campaigns, enabling communicators to make data-driven decisions quickly and adjust strategies to maximize impact.
•  Campaigns and Challenges: Running contests to boost internal communication is not new. The only difference today is that many of these contests have been digitized and thus offer the ability to track their effectiveness. Easy tracking of performance of badges, praises, challenges, and campaigns make it easier to improve rewards and recognition for internal communication.
•  Surveys and Quizzes: Surveys have been a corporate favorite when it comes to collecting employee feedback. And it continues to be a relevant tool under the internal communication umbrella. It is thus important to be able to track and analyze responses from the same.  Quizzes can also serve a similar function, and while testing employees on the company policies or history, or even skill-based topics such as generative AI, it is of course essential to be able to access and study the results.

Applying Communication Metrics in Real-Life Scenarios

The utility of detailed communication statistics manifests itself clearly in scenarios where immediate and widespread dissemination of information is crucial, but also in big-picture scenarios such as ensuring overall communication around company vision, mission, and values.

For instance, consider a CEO releasing an important company-wide announcement. With advanced tools, not only can the organization ensure that the message is delivered across multiple channels, but it can also track who has received and read the message. This becomes invaluable in ensuring no employee is left uninformed about critical strategic shifts or updates.

Similarly, when a new HR policy is introduced, it's not enough to just send it out and hope for the best. The right platform allows HR managers to track read rates and even deploy interactive quizzes to gauge employee understanding and sentiment towards the policy. This real-time feedback enables HR to address misconceptions promptly, ensuring that policy updates are both understood and accepted across the board.

See how our clients transformed their internal communications and achieved remarkable results

The Importance of Granular Data Analysis

While overarching statistics provide a snapshot of communication health, the real magic lies in the ability to dissect this data by specific groups, locations, functions, and important company-specific criteria. This granular insight is crucial for addressing unique challenges within diverse segments of a corporation.

Take, for example, the goal to boost engagement in a multinational’s Kolkata office. A modern intranet can analyze when employees are most active, what content formats they prefer, and how they engage with different communication channels. Perhaps the Kolkata team engages more with video content in the late afternoon. With this data, communications can be tailored not just in content but also in timing and format, significantly enhancing engagement levels. This targeted approach ensures that internal communication strategies are not just broad strokes, but are finely tuned to resonate with every subset of the organization, maximizing impact and fostering a truly connected company culture.

Measuring internal communications is the clear way forward for internal communication experts to showcase their value, and maximize time and budgets. By leveraging these advanced measurement tools, companies can transform their internal communication from a static, one-way dissemination of information into a dynamic, engaging, and measurable dialogue that drives business success.

Sociabble as a Communications and Analytics Tool

Being able to do all of the above is not wishful thinking for the future. It exists today! Sociabble is focused on helping companies create a more informed, engaged, and influential workforce. And one of the strongest pillars of making this a reality is the ability to measure every move on this internal communication platform. If you’d like to see firsthand what Sociabble can do, book a free demo here today.

 

To get in touch for our services or any other communication requirement, please contact + 91 842 581 4016 / 17 or simply drop an email at solutions@ticworks.com.