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Effective internal communications require your comms team to do more than just send out emails or create content. Having a handle on how many employees are actually reading your internal emails, interacting with the intranet and opening links in the company newsletter is also essential.
The best way to improve employee engagement and remove barriers to effective communications with employees is to conduct an internal comms audit, said Sharon O’Dea, co-founder of DWXS, a digital workplace consultancy. “Most organizations have the right tools but aren’t using them quite right.”
It's easy to get stuck in a rut and rely on the same channels, said Chris Tubb, a partner at digital consultancy Spark Trajectory. "Audiences change over time, and the needs of audiences change over time," he said.
He believes auditing your internal communications enables you to generate the data you and your comms team need to review your objectives, tools and content strategy, as well as re-establish boundaries around who — comms, HR or IT — owns a specific channel or a specific part of the intranet.
Why Do an Internal Comms Audit?
An internal comms audit will help you understand what channels are available to use, which audiences each channel is targeting, and what audiences are not being reached by existing communications, said Dante Ragazzo, senior director of digital workplace at Tapestry.
Typically, internal comms channels include internal email, intranet, employee newsletters, employee surveys, text messages, internal blogs, internal social media, document sharing, instant messaging and digital notice boards. If you’re not using all or most of those, an audit could help you understand if you should. Too often, internal comms teams have many different channels but no clear strategy for how to use them.
Companies frequently conduct internal comms audits when their employee engagement scores are low, O’Dea said. While most companies tend to do an audit every four to five years, Tubb recommends doing one every 24 months to determine if the team is communicating the right information to the right people.
Related Article: How to Fix the Communication Woes Between the Frontline and Back-Office
The Risk of Not Doing an Audit
There are consequences to not knowing what channels you’re using and how you’re using them, Ragazzo said. If you don’t know or track the dates and times of the messages being sent, the channels used, the narrative of those messages and the audiences who have received them, you run the risk of overloading your employees with messages because you don't know what is being sent to them — nor how or when.
Without an audit, the comms team might not realize that another department is sending out its own communications. “A lot of my time is spent doing detective work to figure out who sent this newsletter and what they are trying to convey,” Ragazzo said. “Then, I reach out to them, and we have a conversation about it and either we incorporate it into our channels, or we cut it off.”
Part of the internal comms function is also to understand available technologies and the channels people are using or wish to use — and why, even if in the end the company doesn’t adopt a channel that people want to use. For example, Tapestry gets requests for Slack all the time, but the company has made the decision that for consistency, it will use Teams instead. An audit allows you to understand what’s being used, what can be used, and what’s off limits.
Related Article: Internal Comms' Number One Channel? Email
How to Conduct an Audit
An internal communications audit usually starts with a survey of employees to understand their perceptions of the tools, channels and content provided, O’Dea said. The survey is typically followed by stakeholder interviews with 10 to 15 employees from different departments and with different seniority levels.
Talking with employees about their information needs and how they receive company news is an essential part of the audit. Employees might be reluctant to fill out a 10-minute online survey, but most will make the time for a 30-minute phone call, Tubb said. O’Dea also recommends visiting people where they work when possible to better understand the available communication channels in the context of how they work.
When speaking with employees, consider what barriers might be preventing effective communication. For instance, O’Dea worked with one organization where employees spent their work day in company vehicles, so the company issued a tablet for each vehicle to keep employees up to date. But the tablets didn’t get much use because it’s illegal to use the device while driving. “You want to get to the crux of why a channel isn’t being used,” she said.
Your audit should also help reveal a solution. For example, if you have a warehouse or distribution center, those employees typically don’t have desktop computers or time to use their phones. But you can put digital screens in that space and leverage them as a communication channel, Ragazzo said.
However, Tubb cautioned: “No one’s at work to read content. People are there to do their jobs.” The internal comms team needs to be realistic and understand that there will always be employees who aren’t engaging with any channels.
Related Article: Having a Single Source of Truth for Internal Communications Helps, But Don't Stop There
Assess Employee Behaviors
When auditing your internal communications, don’t rely on survey results alone. Analytics are great at helping you assess employee behaviors. For instance, Ragazzo said, use analytics to see what percentage of employees are engaging in Teams. How many employees are liking or commenting on a post, rather than just looking at it? Analytics will help you understand each channel’s adoption rate.
Beware of simply asking employees if they like a certain channel. It’s easy to say yes, but do they actually use it, Ragazzo said. “If you can look at behaviors, it gets you past what people tell you because people tell you differently than what they do,” he said.
Employees’ expectations about internal comms channels are often driven by what they experience outside of work. “External channels are getting better every year, but the stuff we use at work isn’t getting any better,” O’Dea said.
The world of work is changing, and internal comms needs to adapt and keep up with the ways people work and their changing relationship with the office, O’Dea said.
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Internal Comms, After an Audit
Demonstrate to your stakeholders that their concerns were heard. For instance, the internal comms team could send out a message that explains the findings and the changes being made as a result — and why.
If most employees said they don’t like to receive many internal emails, inform them that in the future, company news will be communicated through Teams.
And don’t just share the results, O’Dea said, develop a continuous narrative around the changes being made and why.
