Any communication must have a purpose. If not obvious, ask - E.g., Boss says, “We should do a blog.” What are some common goals? Benchmark measurement does 2 things: Gives a baseline of where employees are at with respect to the goal/objective Explores the best way to communicate credibly and effectively The Strategic Communication Plan is informed by the benchmark measurement and lays out the strategies and tactics you’ll use to reach the goal(s), as well as what you will measure and how. Carry out the communication plan. [Click Now.] Measure according to the plan and in keeping with the benchmarks so as to make comparisons. Report to management (and possibly the rest of the organization, depending on the goals).
The communication goal almost always is to change something. (It can be to reinforce the existing state of affairs in the face of changes such as restructuring or crisis.) Review content of slide. Often there is more than one goal and they are often interrelated. ACTion requires that you KNOW HOW TO improve performance and WHY TO change your behavior. You must also FEEL motivated to change behaviour. So it can be useful to measure all of those factors, even though the gold standard for change is performance. Because if you fail to get the performance boost that management is after, you need to know if the problem was in awareness, skill or motivation.
Surveys and focus groups raise people’s awareness of the subject being asked about and gets people thinking about it. The impact can even spread beyond those surveyed if they start talking with others or their behaviour affects others. [Click Now.]
Process – Inputs (as sent) How often there is communication (both by you, management (CEO to supervisor level) and peer)? Is the key message consistently presented vs. off target? Is the source credible and preferred for that type of information? Is the channel credible and preferred (e.g., face-to-face, newsletter, intranet)? How widely is the message distributed across the organization and in what fashion (e.g., direct, vs. hierarchical)? Process – Reach (as received) Who and how many were exposed to the message (e.g., at meeting, PPO checked, hits) Who and how many are aware of the message? Who and how many found the message of interest to them (e.g., asked questions, click-throughs, time spent)? Outcome – Know Who and how many understand and can relate message to their work? Who and how many remember the information (skill or info) beyond when exposed to it? (not just end of session survey) Is the message credible? Outcome – Feel Extension of credibility – do they feel they are “in the know”? Do they feel they are valued employees? Do they feel committed to stay and contribute to the organization’s success or directions? Do they feel positive about the message/directions, or their future with the organization? Outcome – Act These are largely the performance impacts. Do they put what they know into action successfully? Do they participate in the conversation meaningfully? Do they collaborate in a way that builds a positive organizational culture? Do the promote the organization and its message to others (e.g., peers, customers, community)? Return on Investment – measures the financial impact of the communication against the cost of the communication. (value of what you do)
We mentioned before that there are intrusive and invisible ways to measure employee communication. And that intrusive methods can act as further communications that raise awareness and influence change. All of the intrusive ways involve Asking Employees questions . Methods & Considerations in using those methods: Surveys If you want to know if a communication aimed at increasing knowledge or skill worked, you can give employees a test or survey in which they need to correctly identify or tell you what they know. This is different from asking if they know something, because people can think they know something, but have it wrong. Asking if they know something is useful if you want to know if they feel informed . Most communicators use surveys to measure opinions (beliefs=know or attitudes=feel) Surveys – questionnaires if written – can be print or online . The simplest use online is to add a Poll at the end of a blogpost or article, e.g., Microsoft – “Was this article useful?” Considerations – Who responds & how many is enough? People with extreme opinions, because that’s who cares. Opinion: ask how person feels and how much they care. Length/time to complete an issue. Format: Lower response rate with online than paper. # needed = sliding scale, but “enough” is matter of opinion. Representative is more important. Sensitive issues – trust in anonymity required for truth. Also, unbiased wording of questions. Likert scales: neutral midpoint? Depends. But should be balanced toward neutral if each point labeled (NOT Extremely dissatisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Satisfied, Extremely satisfied) Print/Online – no chance to clarify question…or answer. Don’t know if people read/followed instructions. MAKE IT SIMPLE. Not very deep information, even with open-ended Qs. And no chance to expand.
There are lots of more subtle ways to collect information related to various output and outcome measures. Sometimes these measures are, or can be, built into electronic communications with little effort on your part and none on the part of the employee. Others involve analysis of information already being collected for other purposes, often by human resources, sometimes as part of the business planning process. Intranet page hits and email “Read Receipt” responses tell you about Exposure to the message. Click-through to a web page with more info gives you a measure of interest. Social media gives us an easy poll of POSITIVE interest or agreement in the form of “Like” But little effort is required to “Like” something, similar to signing a petition. Comments and Blog posts require more “commitment” on the part of the employee…and can be analyzed for themes as well as positive vs. negative feelings about the subject. If an organization is large, you may be able to track-back visitors and repeat visitors to work units to gather information about things like, perceived relevance of information, difference source preferences for information within the organization. Registrations or RSS subscribing to sources gives you “pull” information that indicates a deeper interest in a topic or trust in a particular source. (Ditto bookmarks and inbound links.) The key issue is privacy and trust. In order to engage in a conversation (whether face-to-face or online, people need to feel that what they say will not “come back to haunt them.” So be careful what you collect and report: make it as generic as possible. Even though users of social media should expect that what they do online (even on the company intranet) is public, they often don’t. “Big brother” perceptions will shut down the conversation and you’ll lose your source of data, or skew it badly. Representativeness – Do all employees use the intranet equally and in the same way?? ‘Nuff said. HR measures (review) – most are collected for other purposes, but can also be used for Before/After comparisons as a measure of communication effectiveness. Some can also be used to help ID need for additional communication (e.g., questions). Require commitment from others to collect and share, so make it as easy for them as possible.
Most of the time, you want to do one of three things: 1. describe the way things are, 2. compare them with how they were before, and 3. predict how people will respond or act. You will occasionally want to explain why things are the way they are, which is a mental extension of prediction, but statistically different. Most of the time you will be looking at numbers, but doing fairly simple things with them because you are not academics and neither are the managers you report to. How many or what % answered or acted a particular way? What’s the average rating on the opinion/attitude scale? Mean if normal, Median if skewed. (Also Mode if one or two answers were the most popular) Are people pretty much in agreement or are they all over the place? Does something about people make a difference in how they respond/act? (Can be used to compare two groups (control & experimental group) or Before & After the communication.) Qualitative – do thematic analysis of people’s responses (e.g., blogpost comments) to see how they feel or what is important to them. Can also do COUNT on themes & make qualitative quantitative. If you know one thing about people, can you also predict what they believe, feel or do. Correlation is used if both variables are ordinal (2>1) rather than nominal/categorical (1 not 2). Range -1 to +1 with 0=no relationship. r=-1: As X increases, Y decreases. r = +1: As X increases, so does Y. If you square r (multiply it by itself), you can get the variance in Y accounted for by X (how important it is). Can use Excel to calculate r (t not so much, but it tells you how likely a difference is by chance.) Some people like tables of numbers and others prefer graphical representations. Can do many of these easily with Excel spreadsheet.
