Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter White Paper

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter So what is analytics? Google Analytics, the most widely used web analytics platform in the world, defines analytics as the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your business to drive a continual improvement of the experience that your customers (in the case of internal communication these customers are employees, senior leaders and other stakeholders) and potential customers have which translates to your desired outcomes both online and offline.

Why Internal Communications needs analytics One of the most important steps of digital analytics is determining what your ultimate business objectives or outcomes are and how you expect to measure those outcomes. According to a recent survey , 40% of internal communicators say they will be focusing their attention and investment in improving measurement in the next 12 months, and just 12% said they don’t measure their communications (compared to 18% the previous year ). Although internal communicators are increasingly seeing the value of measurement, it isn’t a completely positive picture; the same report showed that just 38% of internal communicators provide their stakeholder with regular activity reports. 1

Perhaps more disheartening is that employee engagement surveys were still the most frequently cited method used to measure impact (used by 65% of respondents). The problem here, according to Gatehouse, is that these surveys are rarely owned by the internal communications team and questions related to communication are minimal.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

Overall, the report suggests that the internal communications function is still primarily focused on output rather than outcome. Effective measurement of internal communications focuses on outcomes, which are easier to align with business goals. Reporting outputs such as page views and click-through rates to senior management does not prove the value of internal communications; leaders need to see how communicating with employees is having an impact on the business. By measuring your internal communications, and keeping track of changes over time, you can identify key outcomes such as; • Change in employee behaviors • Reduction in staff churn • Increase in productivity that showcase the intrinsic value of your internal communication strategy

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Why you need to measure? Communicators and marketers around the world are turning to data to learn more about their audience. For marketers selling directly to consumers, the insights gained from analysing data from marketing campaigns can be used to guide future interactions. For example, a simple metric like the time of day a customer interacts with a campaign, means marketers can segment their messages, sending to specific customers at their preferred time. Whether it’s to drive more traffic to their website, increase sales through targeted campaigns, better inform employees of company values/news, create a more collaborative workplace or provide better customer service - data is giving organizations all the information they need to create a successful strategy.

According to Marie Wallace, Analytics Strategist with IBM, with the shift towards digital channels - social media, intranet and email - the message has developed a life of its own, making it more important than ever that communicators understand the flow of information through a company (the channels, formats, times, content) and the audience (who are the best people to help communicators spread their message throughout the organisation). Measurement is the tool that helps you achieve greater understanding of these two critical elements. Measurement in its many forms is being used to great effect by companies all over the world.

What gets measured, gets managed ~ Peter Drucker, management consultant, The Drucker Institute

Likewise for communicators looking to develop an effective strategy, you’ll need to know what works and doesn’t work. Analytics give you the insights you need and are easily integrated into digital channels like email, social networks and intranet. Intelligent email communications can be analysed through simple figures like click-through rates, and you can also gain valuable, actionable, insight into which content is proving most effective, what time is the best time to send critical messages and what channel is reaching the most employees. This is incredibly valuable information that will allow you to develop a more targeted approach to your communication. And by adapting your communication to match your employees’ unique preferences and behaviour, you can increase the effectiveness of your message.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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Why you need to measure? The American Cancer Society case study (below) is a great example of an organisation gaining invaluable insight from its measurements. Using that data they were able to make simple tweaks that made a dramatic impact.

The American Cancer Society The American Cancer Society is a non-profit organisation working to find a cure for cancer. The society uses several websites and mobile apps to provide information on cancer detection and treatment, offer volunteer opportunities, and accept donations. A Google Analytics case study illustrates how the society has used analytics to increase donations. Its primary site - www.cancer.org – is used to provide visitors with information on cancer research, and a separate site – www.makingstrides.acsevents.org - is used specifically to raise money for breast cancer research. Using Google Analytics, the society noticed that in October 2014 visitors figures to www.cancer.org increased unexpectedly. While analysis showed that this was due in large part to October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the society had expected breast cancer donors to go to the Making Strides site.

This is a clear example of how analytics have been used to gain valuable insight into website traffic, but it’s not as easy to gauge the performance of internal communications. While Google Analytics is very effective at delivering insightful metrics and measurement for websites across the globe, it lacks the level of detail required for internal communications measurement. That’s why most communicators will use analytics applications that have been built specifically for the software they’re using, whether that’s SharePoint or Yammer or Newsweaver. Four ways Google Analytics falls short in delivering effective internal communications measurement 1. You will not be able to identify individuals and their behaviour on your intranet 2. Google Analytics’ method for counting unique views could mean you have more unique visitors than you have employees - this leads to distrust your data 3. Google Analytics does not provide a reach figure (e.g. percentage of employees reached with each message) 4. Google Analytics uses IP address to identify the country of origin of your traffic; however, larger organisations may have a central IP or server, which means they will not be able to track employee engagement by country.

Responding to this insight, the society created dedicated links on www.cancer.org to drive traffic to the Making Strides site. The links were followed by over 39,000 people that month. The society also created a new donation form on Cancer.org that sent funds only to breast cancer research. The actions taken by the society based on the insight from their site analytics resulted in a 5.4% increase in www.cancer.org revenue year over year.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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Where do I start with effectively measuring the value of internal communications? Your next step is to set your objectives and then align those objectives to your key performance indicators (KPIs) In an insightful blog post, Veronika Mazour, co-founder of enterprise social platform eXo Platform, layered internal communications KPIs into three different levels: employee awareness, changes in behaviour, and business impact. Within employee awareness Mazour grouped reach, interest and engagement. Reach can be easily measured by assessing how many employees receive your emails, log-in to the intranet, subscribe to your company blog. Employees’ interest in your communications can be determined by click-throughs, page views, downloads, video views, etc. Finally, content engagement is best measured via metrics such as likes, shares and comments. By interacting in this way, employees have taken the step beyond simply consuming your messages and are actively engaging with it. Good or bad, this engagement is essential to understanding employee perception and satisfaction. As you make tweaks and changes to your message, assess if these engagement metrics are improving. Starting from your baseline, with your new insight and corresponding changes (new content formats, introducing video, regular blog posts, segmented messages) you should start to see growth in these figures. Measuring changes in employee behaviour can be achieved by taking a before and after snapshot. Use quick polls to measure employee sentiment before and after you have sent out a change in HR policy for example, or include calls to action that give you a clear indication of employees reaction to specific messages.

With enterprise social network Yammer, companies can gauge employee morale by analysing trending emotions; the topics and words associated with particular emotions can also be tracked, offering companies incredible insight into workplace sentiment. This analysis can prove effective when determining a reaction to new processes, systems or just general company news. Assessing the impact internal communications has on a business is a perennial challenge for communicators. In her blog post, Mazour outlined a number of business indicators that are strongly impacted by internal communications: employee retention rate and employee performance and productivity. A happy and engaged employee is less likely to want to leave a company than a non-engaged employee. If you factor in the cost of replacing an employee (which could be anything from 10% of their annual pay to 150%), reducing employee churn can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. There’s no mystery: happy and engaged employees work harder. A McKinsey Global Institute survey2 found that productivity improves by 20-25% in organizations with connected employees. This level of productivity growth has potential for revenues of approximately $1.3 trillion per year.

Measure twice, cut once. Measurement isn’t a one-off activity, it is a critical success factor for communications planning, execution and evaluation of effectiveness. ~ Sean Trainor, Employee Engagement expert

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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How do I use the figures to showcase the role of internal communications? Numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a clear and convincing voice. ~ Stephen Few, Data Consultant, Perceptual Edge

The State of Internal Communications Practice Report3 (November 2015) surveyed internal communicators worldwide. Respondents agreed that lack of leadership awareness, belief and commitment to the value of internal communications was the main barrier to progress. Author of the report, Sean Trainor surmised that in order to achieve their goals of influencing leaders, understanding audience needs, improving the efficacy of channels and content, and working smarter not harder, communicators need to demonstrate added value, employee insights, behaviour change and return on investment.

How can you do this? With measurement. In a paper by Juan Meng (University of Dayton) and Bruce K. Berger (University of Alabama) called How Top Business Communicators Measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of Organization’s Internal Communication Efforts, survey respondents indicated the five areas of internal communications that are measure most frequently. These are as follows; 1. Increased employee awareness or understanding after the information has been delivered. 2. Whether delivered information helps employees do their job better. 3. The extent to which internal communication initiatives impact employee behaviours. 4. The effect of internal communication efforts on employee engagement. 5. The relationships between communication effectiveness and business performance, such as the revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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How do I use the figures to showcase the role of internal communications? In order to successfully demonstrate the value of internal communications you need to wrap your measurements up in a language that senior management understands and can appreciate. Internal communicators often struggle to highlight the importance of their role. Unlike other departments like marketing, sales, HR and finance, which have clear KPIs that are directly aligned with business goals, it’s harder to prove internal communications value as there are no clear KPIs. This illustration from Towers Watson highlights several outcomes that are increasingly validating the role of internal communications. This research also provides food for thought on the broad range of KPIs that can be associated with internal communications and can showcase the impact your role is having on the business. Benefits of an engaged workforce Increased productivity 18%

Bottom 25% Least engaged employees

Top 25% Most engaged employees

Greater retention 40%

Disengaged employees

Engaged employees

Gallup (2006)

Hay Group (2009)

Higher profitability 70%

Lower absernteeism 43%

Not highly effective Highly effective communication communications

Disengaged employees

Hay Group (2009)

Better customer service 53%

Less incidents 38%

Engaged employees

McLeod and Clark (2009)

Bottom 25% Least engaged employees

• Choose your KPIs wisely, ensuring you have relevant metrics to support your results. Make sure your KPIs align with those of the broader organisation. • Illustrate your report with visuals – graphs or charts that highlight the improvements you’ve achieved. According to a PR Newswire Data analysis of more than 10,000 press releases, releases with photos and video have a 48% increase in uptake over a plain text press release. Data doesn’t lie, so you can be confident in your figures. With comprehensive analysis, continuous monitoring, intelligent tweaks to your strategy, setting realistic goals and aligning those goals to relevant business KPIs, you are in a good position to demonstrate the added value of your role, as a person who understands employee sentiment and can use that data to make strategic decisions that benefit the business.

Engaged employees

Towers Watson (2012)

Disengaged employees

Top tips for reporting to senior management • When reporting to senior management, you need to speak in their language. Page views, bounce rate, likes and shares, while interesting and imperative to you in establishing the success of your strategy, don’t hold the same weight with senior management.

Top 25% Most engaged employees

Gallup (2006)

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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What should I measure? Built-in analytics within SharePoint provides basic analysis of how your intranet site is performing. Separately, most applications feature their own in-built analytics: enterprise social networks like Yammer and Jive have their insights and internal email services can serve up detailed reports on individual email campaigns. A dedicated analytics platform for internal communications can collate and present detailed metrics for multiple channels in one single dashboard, making for easy channel comparison.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the massive amount of data surrounding your communications efforts. Not all the data is going to be useful to you, but here are some of the fundamental and most useful metrics you will need to understand and be able to interpret.

Performance over time Identify: - employee engagement and trends over selected time period - which channels are operating most effectively

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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What should I measure? Key email metrics • Click-through rate: Considered the bread and butter of email marketing, the click-through rate shows you how many people have engaged with your content by clicking through on links in your email. The figure is worked out by dividing the number of clicks by the total number of emails sent (multiply by 100 to get the percentage). • Conversion rate: This is the number of people who have clicked through a link in your email and completed a desired action. For example, filling out a questionnaire or ticking a box to signal their attendance at a meeting. This is calculated by dividing the number of actions completed by the total number of emails sent (multiply by 100 to get the percentage). • Email forwarding: The percentage of people who clicked on ‘share this’ button to post the message on social media or email it to a colleague. This is calculated by dividing the number of people sharing or forwarding the message by the total number of emails sent (multiply by 100 to get the percentage).

Other email metrics: • Open rate: This is the metric most often cited by marketers and communicators. It is simply the number of people who opened your email. This can give you an indication of how many people have received your mail but it is not on its own a very useful figure. Combined with the click-through rate it gives you an idea of how many of those who opened your email went on to click on links, and it can also be used as a comparative figure to compare the open rates of particular messages, specific subject lines, days and times of sending. • Bounce rate: This refers to the number of emails sent that didn’t actually make it to the recipient’s inbox. This can give you an indication that there is a problem with somebody’s email: their inbox might be full or you may have incorrect contact details. You will want your bounce rate to be as low as possible to ensure that your message is actually reaching your target audience.

• Return on investment: In internal communications, the investment is typically time and the return is engagement or actions/conversions completed. This is a challenging figure to work out but an important one to be able to illustrate to your boss the value of your campaigns/communications.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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What should I measure? Key intranet metrics • Page views: This is a key metric for your intranet strategy. This tells you how many views a particular page has had. This is an important metric in understanding the impact of your message. • Bounce rate: Google defines bounce rate as: the percentage of single-page visits (i.e. visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). Generally, your intranet homepage will be the page with the highest bounce rate. • Exit pages: Similar to bounce rate, exit pages refers to the pages where people have left the intranet. This would indicate that they have found the information they needed or completed an action, or, on the flip side, that they didn’t find what they were looking for on a particular page and left feeling frustrated.

Key enterprise social network metrics Enterprise social networks like Yammer and Jive have similar interfaces to social networks such as Facebook. • Likes: How many people ‘like’ your content, whether it’s a news update, blog post or how-to video. • Shares: How many people have shared your content with a colleague. • Comments: How many people have engaged with your content by commenting on it. For a more detailed guide to measuring your intranet, download the free best practice guide ‘Measuring Intranet Communications’

• Time of week/day: This metric will show you when people are accessing the intranet. This will be an important figure when it comes to scheduling updates for the site. • Site searches: With this metric you will be able to see what people are searching for on the intranet site. The goal with any intranet is that people can easily find the information they’re looking for so this will be an important metric to keep an eye on. • Site downloads: This figure will tell you how many people are downloading specific documents or forms that are on the intranet. This will be important if you have documents you need people to read. It will give you an indication that employees are consuming the information you’re sending.

NEWSWEAVER  Internal Communication: Developing metrics that matter

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I have my data, now what do I do with it? With any analysis there has to be a starting point, or a baseline. You need to know and understand the current state of your internal communications. What are the figures telling you? As a starting point, examine each figure in isolation. Taken altogether, measurement can be overwhelming, so break it down. Most metrics are self-explanatory: page views will tell you how many views a particular page has received, click-throughs shows how many people have clicked on a particular link, bounce rate highlights how many people have arrived on and bounced straight off a particular page, and so on. Assess your channels and their associated metrics by conducting an audit of your digital communications and establishing the state of play for each channel. You will want to determine figures like average clickthrough rates for your content for example. Do pages about company news receive more views than pages on HR policy changes? Do middle management click-through on more links than your front-line staff? Do more people read your email newsletter in the mornings or evenings? Take note of your average or baseline figures; these will be the indicator on which future analysis is measured against. Now you can start to make tweaks: if your email newsletter has a typical click-through rate of 11% why not try changing the day or time you send out the newsletter, segment it to different employee groups or experiment with different subject lines. Continue to monitor the click-through rate and you should be able to see if the modifications you’re making are having an effect.

How long are staff spending on your intranet site? Do your baseline figure suggests they log on and off very quickly (high bounce rate)? Why not make it easier to find content, improve the search facility, include contextual links in your content to lead people to relevant articles or content. Perhaps make your intranet content more dynamic, use video instead of text for CEO messages or making policy documents print-friendly so that people are more inclined to print them out and read during their breaks/commutes. Through continuous monitoring and assessment of metrics over time, you will be able to quickly observe changes in employee behaviors, show impact on employee churn through engagement, and showcase the value of your internal communications strategy. About Newsweaver Cross-Channel Analytics Newsweaver’s Cross-Channel Analytics is the only purpose-built tool that measures the reach and impact of your communications, campaigns and content across all of your channels – SharePoint, video, email – all in one place. Core features include: cross-channel measurement, where you can see at a glance how communications are performing across all channels; reach reports, through which you can understand the reach of your message across all channels; segmentation by employee data to better understand engagement levels of particular employee groups; tailored reporting for global and local views; and purpose-built reporting for internal communicators.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight ~ Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP

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About Newsweaver Newsweaver helps Internal Communicators to create and send better employee emails that are visually impactful, with content that is more personalised, relevant and interactive. Newsweaver’s analytics provide communicators with powerful insights to improve results, deliver better outcomes and prove value to organisation.

With offices in Ireland, the UK and the US Newsweaver is a trusted partner to many of the world’s leading organisations, including Vodafone, Barclays, Marks & Spencer, Shell, Zurich Insurance, ACCA, and many other FTSE 100 and Fortune 1000 companies. Sources: 1. According to a recent survey 2. McKinsey Global Institute survey 3. The State of Internal Communications Practice Report (November 2015)

Talk to us today about increasing your levels of engagement Global NQ: 00353.21.242.7277 US: 781.443.7600 [email protected] www.newsweaver.com

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