Best Practices For Communication Audits

Internal comms keeps getting asked to prove its value... but maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place this whole time? The new Valuing Internal Communication report from the inimitable Jenni Field and Dr Kevin Ruck introduces something I really like: the Value Ladder. Instead of just counting clicks and attendance (because nothing says “strategic” like a pie chart of open rates), it asks us to think in three layers: 📁 Planned value: What you intend to achieve (ie the stuff you put in your budget case) 📉 Slipped value: What was missed or underdelivered (risk and cost to the organisation) 📈 Realised value: What actually happened, and *what difference it made* It’s a deceptively simple idea (good ideas often are) but it encourages reflective practice, not just reporting. Because the real value isn’t in the outputs; it’s in what you learn from them. The ladder also bakes in listening as a core function. Not the “we did a survey once” kind, but real dialogue. Communication as relationship, not broadcast. By connecting communication to outcomes like trust, advocacy, well-being, and even societal health, it offers a more rounded and credible way to show how communication creates value. 📄 The whole report is thoughtful, research-led, and (whisper it) actually useful. If you’re looking for a practical lens to move beyond vanity metrics and towards genuine evaluation and learning, this one’s very much worth your coffee break. Link in first comment. --- Photo description: Screenshot of report cover. Text reads VALUING INTERNAL COMMUNICATION: How internal communication provides value to organisations, employees and society. Included here for attention tax.

How to measure the impact of Internal Communications? A practical guide below 👇 If you’re still reporting on opens, clicks and event attendance, you’re measuring activity. That is ok. But the IMPACT sits deeper. Here’s a simple 4-level structure you can use: 1️⃣ Reach & Response Did people see it? (opens, clicks, attendance, views) 2️⃣ Perception & Understanding Did trust, clarity or alignment shift? (pulse checks, sentiment, quick polls) 3️⃣ Behavior Change Are people doing something differently? (define the behavior → measure baseline → measure again) 4️⃣ Strategic Impact Did this influence retention, eNPS, productivity or performance indicators? (track the correlation) Internal Comms becomes strategic when communication connects to behavior and behavior connects to business metrics. Save this framework for your next campaign. Share it with someone who’s building IC as a system, not a content stream. #InternalComms #CorporateCulture #EmployeeEngagement #CommunicationStrategy #SageXP #Measurement #Communications

🚨 Internal Comms Hack: If you’re still measuring clicks, you’re missing the point. Open rates and clicks? They’re vanity metrics. They tell you reach, not impact. The real question you need to be asking is: What happened next? ✅ Did people take action? ✅ Did behaviours change? ✅ Did it spark conversations? ✅ Did it drive better decisions? If you want to measure real impact (which you really do want to be doing by the way), here’s where to start: 🔍 Go beyond the numbers Pair your data with qualitative insights. Are there fewer questions because your comms were so clear? Are people talking about that new initiative you launched? 🎯 Track behaviour change What did people do because of your message? Did they sign up, take part or change a process? 🗣 Listen to feedback Pulse surveys, focus groups, and informal chats give you invaluable context on what’s landing well (and what’s not). 📊 Look at performance metrics Did your comms drive results tied to KPIs such as increased participation, fewer errors or faster project completion? 🌱 Spot behaviour adoption For culture or change comms, are people embracing new ways of working? Are they living your company’s values more visibly? 📈 Monitor trend changes If you’re communicating around things like wellbeing or retention, keep an eye on absenteeism rates, turnover or productivity to see if your comms are moving the needle. 🚀 Link to outcomes If your comms support a wider business goal, track the results. Did engagement increase? Did a project run more smoothly? Did retention improve? So, next time you share that update, don’t just ask “How many people read this?” ask “What difference did it make?” What would you add? How do you measure the impact of your comms?👇 ________ ✨ I'm Jo and I'm on a mission to make work not suck! ♻️ Share the love - comment and repost for your network. 📌 Follow Jo Coxhill for insights on #internalcommunication, #employeeexperience, #employeelistening and #organisationalculture and ring the 🔔 on my profile so you never miss a post.

If your comms strategy disappeared tomorrow, would anyone notice? That’s the real test of impact. Healthy internal comms don’t just fill inboxes. They build trust, alignment, and clarity that people would miss if it were gone. I put together six signs your internal comms strategy is in good shape: ✅ Leaders communicate proactively ✅ Feedback moves upward ✅ Messages are tailored ✅ Channels reinforce each other ✅ Metrics focus on clarity, not clicks ✅ Employees know where to find information When these six things are working, communication doesn’t feel like noise. It feels like connection. What’s one sign of a healthy comms strategy you’ve seen in action?

Stop measuring internal comms in the dark. Here's your 5-level roadmap: 📈 Level 1 - Reach: Weekly newsletters? Track open rates and engagement to optimize timing and content. 🧠 Level 2 - Understanding: Town halls falling flat? Survey comprehension to ensure your key messages actually landed. 💭 Level 3 - Sentiment: Team morale declining? Monitor employee perception and confidence levels—you can't rebuild what you can't measure. 🔄 Level 4 - Behavior: Rolling out new processes? Track adoption rates. Are people actually using that new system, or just nodding along? 📊 Level 5 - Business Impact: Sales team missing targets? Track how internal product updates correlate with revenue performance. The game-changer: Match your measurement depth to your communication stakes. Routine updates and clarity = Level 1-2. Change initiatives and alignment = Level 3-4. Business-critical initiatives = Level 5. Your comms strategy is only as strong as your measurement strategy. Which level matches your biggest challenge right now?

The most effective communication plans work backwards. Outcome → Behaviour → Audience → Message → Messenger → Channel And defines success upfront to enable tracking and continuous improvement to deliver the desired outcome. Take the launch of a new strategic initiative. Before discussing messages, channels or activities, I'd want to answer a simple question: What does success look like? Not in terms of communication outputs. In terms of business outcomes and employee behaviour. 1. Do we need senior leaders to champion the initiative more visibly? 2. Do we need people managers to have better conversations with their teams? 3. Do we need employees to adopt new ways of working? Once we're clear on the outcome, we can work backwards. • Which audiences are most critical to success? • What specifically do we need each group to do? • What's preventing that behaviour today? • What would motivate it? • Who is the most credible messenger? • How will we know we're making progress? In brand marketing, I spent a lot of time understanding what drives customer behaviour before deciding how and where to communicate. Now I apply the same principle with employees. The better you understand what influences behaviour, the more likely your communication is to achieve the outcome it was designed for. And when you define what success looks like upfront, it's easier to track, pivot and move things around to achieve the goal. Because the role of communication isn't simply to distribute information. It's to create the conditions for action.

I was talking with a senior director of communications last week about how she measures whether messaging actually works. Her answer surprised me: "I don't care if it sounded good in the meeting. I care if people can repeat it a week later." She'd just been through a product launch where the team spent weeks aligning on the narrative. The positioning was sharp. The science story was clear. Everyone nodded and said it made sense. Then she went out and talked to people across the company. Half of them couldn't explain the mechanism of action. The other half were using different language to describe the same thing. The message hadn't pulled through. That's when she realized the problem wasn't the message. It was that no one had tested whether people could actually repeat it. Now she does spot checks after every major rollout. She asks colleagues to explain the message back to her in their own words. She listens to how employees describe the company to candidates. She pays attention to what people say when they think no one's listening. If the message isn't landing consistently, she goes back and simplifies it. The people who do this well don't just craft messages. They test whether those messages survive contact with the organization. Narrative success isn't about what got said in the meeting. It's about what people are saying three levels down, a month later, when no one's watching.   What's one way you test whether your messages are actually sticking? And what do you do when you realize they're not? #CorporateAffairs #Communications #Biotech

One of the most overlooked parts of internal communications is auditing how well your channels actually work. In the book “Engaging Employees Through Strategic Communication,” Jon Stemmle and I co-authored the chapter “Channel Auditing, Assessment and Actions.” We explored why communicators struggle to connect with employees and how asking the right questions can reveal what is working, what is not, and why. An updated edition of the book is coming soon. Here is an excerpt from that chapter: “As hard as communicators work to get the message right, the ability to effectively and efficiently deliver that message can prove to be a far more daunting task. Where messaging doesn’t reach or resonate with its intended audience, it’s likely that internal communication channels just aren’t working. Assessing how best to communicate with employees might seem like a complicated task, particularly in large, complex enterprises. But employees themselves are not particularly complicated. They have preferences on how they want to receive information from their employees and how they want to provide feedback. Under the right conditions, they are usually more than happy to articulate those preferences and tell communicators what’s working, what’s not and why. The key is to simply ask in the right ways by meeting employees where they are. Auditing is an avenue that every communicator should follow to acquire a comprehensive look at the effectiveness of internal communication efforts.” Have you audited your communication channels recently?

Finance isn’t just numbers, it’s conversations. 🔑 It’s a collection of decisions, trade-offs, priorities, and stories told in meetings. Every line item reflects a moment when someone said yes, no, not yet, or this matters more than that. Revenue is a story about focus. Expenses are a story about discipline. Cash flow is a story about how well you communicate under pressure. For every USD 1B in project spend, around USD 75M of budget risk is tied to communication, not strategy or technology. Numbers are a mirror. If you don’t like what they’re reflecting, go back to the conversations that created them. Here’s a quick 6-Question Finance Checklist: 1.) What conversation created this number? 2.) Who made the decision—and based on what assumptions? 3.) Was the goal clear at the time? 4.) Was the trade-off intentional or reactive? 5.) Does the outcome match the original intention? 6.) If not, what needs to change next time? Align benchmarks for finance communication with strategic goals: - Communication clarity score: Aim for a clarity rating of 4–5 out of 5 in post-meeting surveys - Response time: Set a target for critical messages to be acknowledged within 24 hours - Meeting attendance and engagement: Target 80–90% attendance for key finance meetings - Rework due to miscommunication: Strive to keep rework communication gaps below 10–15% - Escalation rate: Aim for less than 5% of finance issues escalated These are a solid starting point for finance teams to benchmark and improve internal communication effectiveness Change the quality of your conversations, and you will change the trajectory of your numbers.

One of the simplest—and most overlooked—ways we can advocate for our work in HR, Internal Comms, and L&D is this: measure results, not reactions. - Reactions tell you how people felt about the experience. - Results tell you whether the experience moved anything that matters. I was reminded of this while partnering with Shell’s Real Estate function on redesigning their global webcasts. The team already had sky-high satisfaction scores. People liked the sessions. But “liking” wasn’t the goal. The goal was: ➡️ clearer alignment ➡️ stronger participation ➡️ more meaningful connection to strategic priorities So instead of asking “Did you enjoy this?” we shifted to questions like: - What’s your key takeaway? - Do you understand what’s expected of you? - Are you more motivated to act? It gave leaders the data they needed to design future experiences with intention. After our work together, 98% of employees reported a clearer understanding of expectations—not because more content was added, but because the experience was designed around the effect it needed to create. Here’s the part I think is true everywhere: People don’t come to gatherings for more information. They come for clarity, connection, and meaning. When we measure for that, we make the case for our work far more powerfully than any satisfaction score ever could. If you want to hear more about this shift, I shared the full story (and a few lessons learned) on my latest case study 👇 https://lnkd.in/g835k7UC