Corporate communication for years has been in the grey area of metrics, especially in the field of internal communications. And no … not just about goal setting… it about how do you know whether you campaign or communication was successful.
I still remember the conversations with the leadership team, the seats in the town-hall are not full, have people got the email, did you send it out in time, how many read them, has the invite gone out. Etc…
Emailing is the most basic form of communication across the business, any bulk message or campaign to be run you just cannot avoid using emails, however if you are still using the basic outlook for your bulk messaging, you will always be in the dark with information regarding your communication/s. However we have tools today that can help us with information that we can use… tools like Populo etc.. (Naming it here, since we have used it in the past).
So remember data helps.
Personally, for me to set KPI’s for the team I divide the world of communication in two parts.
Getting the job done
Business impact
Now… how do we measure that.
Unlike any business the nature of a corporate communications professional varies everyday, at one moment you are working on a draft, the next planning an event, then working on a design and that could be just day one, leave aside, any crisis communication. The question is where do you draw the line. One of the best ways was, splitting up the role of communications and tracking your involvement. – A simple sheet I followed was
You can add as many variables and map out your involvement, that not only projects the role you played, but also maps the time involvement throughout each project and over time this will reflect the exact type of work you have been doing and how you can move the needle for yourself.
On the other hand there is always that age old argument on business impact. In my view it is extremely difficult to find a direct correlation to business impact especially for internal communication (with a few exceptions being there), but what you can do is, try and understand the desired outcome required from your stake holders and benchmark against that.
The communications team are always in the grey, in terms of metrics, not on purpose but by design, given the dynamic nature of work that gets delivered making every project, every draft and every incident unique.
So next time you set out drafting KPI’s, focus on
The nature of the work
Delivery time
Desired outcome