Brisbane's Story Bridge
The image above is the Story Bridge in Brisbane, Australia.

Communication Measurement: State Of Play

Recently I was asked to write a few words on "what's happening in internal communication measurement these days". My immediate reaction was to volunteer that nothing much was new, for this is how it seems to me working daily in the area. But, thinking about the question for a while I realised that some things have changed in recent times, and for the better.

Many organisations are still doing communication audits by way of questionnaire, focus groups, and sometimes both. These are extremely useful, but you can't do them more than annually. So it's not surprising that some less formal approaches have been developed.

Understanding who employees want to hear from about what

The premise expounded by T J Larkin in Communicating Change (McGraw Hill, 1994) that employees mainly want to hear from their immediate supervisors (face-to-face about local work issues), has been shown to be rather simplistic and potentially misleading.

Taking up the idea presented by Angela Sinickas (IABC Communication World, November 1992) I've been using a simple instrument in focus groups to get employees to match their preferred communication sources with particular information topics.

The findings show that employees want to hear from different people depending on the topic. Typically employees want to hear "big picture" issues, financial results and company policy information from the chief executive, especially when the organisation is in the throes of change. They will want information about some things from senior and middle managers. And, of course, they want a lot of discussion with their immediate supervisor or manager about local matters. Publications (often on-line) are preferred for some subjects (job vacancies, procedure changes and the like).

Measuring change communication

One approach I'm keen to try is that used by the Body Shop. This company used a "control group" of stores (which did NOT receive the communications being measured). The behaviour of employees in those stores which did receive the communications being tested was compared to that of the control group. The effectiveness or otherwise of the communications is pretty clear.

This is similar to the "before and after" measurement some people use, but less intrusive as you don't need to survey the same people twice.

"Quick diagnostics"

Increasingly I'm finding that ongoing feedback, especially about change communication, is necessary to refine the communication approaches being used.

For example, I recently phoned 20 "opinion-leaders" throughout a newly corporatised government department to informally check how the CEO's roadshows had gone. Very valuable qualitative information was obtained in an inexpensive and timely manner which enabled us to plan our next round of communication. (This built on the information I'd gained in 10 focus groups conducted earlier in the year to examine communication in detail across the whole organisation.)

I also helped a consumer goods client conduct a telephone survey of 100 employees to assess their impressions of recent senior management communications. We designed a 15 minute question format and obtained a huge amount of useful quantitative and qualitative information. (Again this followed a 10 focus group survey some months ago.)

The ultimate communication measure

Organisations are formed and sustained to achieve particular objectives. An organisation will achieve these objectives if it "performs". In turn, an organisation will perform if the behaviour of the members of the organisation is appropriate.

We communicate to help organisations "perform" and achieve their objectives. So internally we communicate to change behaviour. We are not in the entertainment business. So the ultimate measure of communication effectiveness is the extent to which we change behaviour.

With before and after measurements we can assess the impact, if any, or our communications with employees.

Open Book Management

The latest trend in internal communication, which is taking the US by storm, is Open Book Management.

This involves "opening the books" of the organisation to employees and showing them all the key financial indicators. All employees are trained to understand "the numbers" and constantly manage their activities in terms of the key indicators.

Communication in open book management organisations is largely around achievement of the key indicators; what is being done and needs to be done to get the number right; and recognition of those individuals and teams which achieve success.

In Australia both Qantas and ICI are said to be using open book management to underpin of their communication efforts.