March 24, 2025
As any communications leader can attest, one of the biggest challenges in their roles is convincing top leaders just how much high-quality communication matters to the overall success of the business.
After all, if communicators can’t prove that communication matters, the function becomes an easy target for budget cuts, particularly in a business culture increasingly focused on data and analytics.
The good news is that the importance of the communications function is no longer an elusive thing to measure. The best companies are increasingly using a variety of internal communications metrics to demonstrate how investments in better communication positively impact the business.
From our work with companies across industries, we know that building a thorough internal communication plan that includes multiple measurement tools has numerous benefits. Measurement helps create credibility for communication among an organization’s employees and leaders, and ensures that communication has a place at the table in any strategic business discussion.
The key to successfully measuring communication effectiveness is to focus your metrics on the big-picture outcomes you’re pursuing. Since the goal of internal communication is to drive action and behaviors, it’s not enough to know that a message was distributed to employees. Rather, measurement needs to focus on whether the message was received, heard, and acted upon.
Why Measure Internal Communication?
Communicators use measurement to demonstrate they follow a smart, strategic approach to communication that’s grounded in what works for employees and leadership.
Given the growing variety of communication tools, preferences of employees often change quickly. For instance, mobile apps have grown exponentially while emails and written materials have taken a backseat at many companies. This means professional communicators need to show they can keep a pulse on progress and be ready to adjust strategies in real-time.
Communicators also need to make sure they meet the needs of their unique employee base. Employees working on a factory floor or inside a hospital aren’t going to have the same easy access to email as desk workers, to cite just one example.
When solving such communication challenges, we’ve found it helpful to include some type of communications measurement tool or method to guide your solution.
Here are six reasons to measure workplace communication:
- It helps you establish a baseline, so you know which areas to focus on and how you’re improving over time.
If you are serious about effective communication, you need a baseline from which to measure progress and success. This comes from an initial assessment of problem areas, such as surveys or focus groups, that can then be benchmarked against future data, so you know what’s working well and where to adapt strategies going forward. - It can highlight key issues and pinpoint critical areas for action, informing your internal communications plan.
Advanced statistics help us know where to start to have the most impact or improve a specific outcome. This allows organizations to target the most critical areas to address, such as timeliness or completeness.
Likewise, you can track how supervisors communicate, allowing you to be more prescriptive and get better results faster. - It helps you learn employees’ communication preferences through research, so you can adapt as needed to reach them more effectively and in ways that work best for them.
Internal communication measurement can verify if employees have received and understood key messages you want to deliver, and/or if the channels you’re using are effective at delivering those key messages. The results can help you modify and focus future communications. - It drives how you may leverage communication resources so you can make smart choices, invest where you need to, or save funds when possible.
With the right data, you can drill down to understand how communication is working in various geographies, divisions, and functions, even on the employee level, and use the results to leverage communication resources (people and dollars) in more efficient ways.
Best yet, you can stop what’s not working and reallocate or save resources. - It helps you demonstrate you’re listening to what employees have to say, a commitment to change, and continuous improvement.
The act of measuring is a symbol of openness and will be valued by employees. However, beware of measuring without the commitment to follow through. To be effective in supporting change, you need to do something with the data to show progress. Low response rates can mean you have historically done a lot of surveying without looping back with employees about the actions taken as a result.
We often hear a lot about employee survey fatigue; a bigger problem inside organizations today is surveying employees and doing little or nothing with the results. - It drives accountability and helps you deliver on your KPIs.
The bottom line is, what gets measured is what gets done. If leaders and managers know they’re being judged on their communications efforts, they’ll start paying more attention to how and when they engage employees.
Many executives demand (and rightly so!) facts to back up communication recommendations. Internal communication metrics can show the hard data behind your efforts, document progress, and help leaders make smart decisions that ultimately help you achieve your business and communications outcomes.
It can also build and/or reinforce your case for resources as you look toward fixing any communication issues.
10 Essential Internal Communication KPIs
We’ve outlined the 10 internal communication KPIs we’ve found best measure the impact of employee communications efforts, whether directly (like communication effectiveness scores and channel performance) or indirectly (such as employee engagement and turnover rates). Look to these KPIs for how to measure effective communication:
1. Communication Effectiveness Scores
This gives you data and insights about the effectiveness of internal communications (what’s working, what’s not, what audiences need/want, etc.), as well as comparative data on other institutions, enabling the internal communications team to make data-driven decisions about plans, activities, and channels.
Seeing shifts and/or patterns from survey results around communication perceptions and needs allows leaders and communications functions to be more precise with planning and prioritization.
2. Employee Engagement Scores
The effectiveness of communication, as gauged above, can contribute to employee engagement (good or bad). When employees feel like they have the information they need to do their jobs and are emotionally connected to the company in a positive way, they are more engaged.
3. Employee Turnover Rates
If turnover is high, that’s usually a surefire indication that employee engagement has dipped. This is a critical piece of information for communicators to know and share with leadership.
Communicators can also dig into high turnover rates to help determine root causes and identify what the team might be missing from its leadership in order to build a stronger culture.
4. Channel Performance
Monitor the performance of your communication channels to maintain an understanding of what the most engaging and effective communication channels are, and which channels are performing best by measuring key engagement factors.
This could be open rates or intranet page reads/button clicks, page visits, and logins; adoption rates for new apps or video views. This could also be attendance rates for town halls and virtual coffees, or even the rate at which calls-to-action are taken on printed collateral (i.e., flyers or posters).
5. Employee Feedback
Keep a finger on the pulse of how employees are feeling in the workplace, how changes are being received, what communications worked (and didn’t), and what questions need to be addressed over time. The insights gained from anecdotal or qualitative feedback definitely inform internal communications priorities and plans.
Using a smart listening process also signals that others’ perspectives are valued and leads to greater shared ownership in the success of the business.
Keep in mind that gathering employee feedback in multiple forms is essential. All-employee surveys provide important data over time, but there’s nothing like a focus group for gaining an in-depth understanding of what’s on employees’ minds.
6. Individual Leader Effectiveness Scores
This is the measurement of how effective employees consider their organization’s leaders. This could be the CEO, or it could be the leader of a specific line of business, or a manager of a site or individual team.
Through regular quantitative measurement, leadership performance reviews, or listening sessions, the leaders themselves and the communications team discover how effective employees consider their communications.
7. Organizational Performance & Productivity
It’s important to track what factors drive high performance and productivity. Communicators can use tools to measure whether the highest-performing teams also have leaders known for effective communication. This further builds the case for the importance of high-quality leader communication.
8. Benchmarked Data
As we referenced earlier, benchmarked data is a great tool for tracking progress over time. For instance, maybe your goal is to increase employee attendance at town halls.
You can benchmark improvements over time through yearly employee tallies of attendance. You can also measure a leader’s improvement on a specific measure of performance – such as effectiveness at town hall meetings, as rated by employees.
9. Employee Advocacy
One key sign of employee engagement is the amount of time your team members spend promoting the brand online. Setting up a tool for measuring this over time can be a great way to see whether your employee engagement and advocacy efforts are picking up steam.
Additionally, you can track the number of employees who are referring new candidates for open positions. Highly engaged teams tend to have large numbers of internal employees recruiting top talent to join the team.
10. Demographic Trends in Employee Engagement
It’s extremely helpful for communicators to look at trends in age, location, and type of role when it comes to employee engagement in your various communication vehicles.
For instance, this data can help communicators see if there are certain new communication vehicles that are especially attractive to younger employees or if certain roles within the business are spending less time accessing your communication.
You may learn, for example, that remote employees need new and different ways of engaging. You can also identify if there are peak engagement times when employees tend to open communication, thus ensuring that you push out communication at the most popular times for the teams to engage with it.
How to Measure Communication Effectiveness
We’ve defined the guiding principles for measurement as:
- Keep strategies simple and doable (or they won’t get done)
- Use measurement strategies that already work for the organization
- Use measurement strategies that can live on after the initial communication metrics are complete
- Ensure senior management will champion strategies
- Ensure staff who participate in the evaluation process feel comfortable being candid, see the results, and have the tools to apply the feedback and/or results
Understanding the methodologies and tools at your disposal to track, analyze, and measure internal communications can help you when shaping your overall communications strategy. The following techniques have proven themselves as both effective and impactful in our work with organizations over the years and will help you know how to measure effective communication.
1. Build Internal Communications Metrics into Existing Measurement Vehicles
This enables you to connect to specific business and performance metrics, which helps drive accountability. For example, if your organization conducts an annual employee commitment survey, consider integrating a section (or at least several questions) about internal communication or specific tactics.
Use this communications survey to gauge employees’ perceptions of internal communications – specifically, channels, messages, senior leadership communications, supervisor communications, and overall communication environment.
We conduct surveys like this for our clients often and the results are compared to data from other institutions for industry benchmarking.
2. Gather Insights Through Existing Business Metrics
Pinpoint the level of employee understanding and action around key organizational priorities.
How?
Connect existing metrics to the outcomes you seek to accomplish through communication and establish a correlation to overall business results.
3. Conduct an Internal Communications Channel Audit
Inventory and assess your internal channels to see how they stack up against best-in-class attributes of internal communications. Then, use the findings to inform necessary updates to your internal communication channel strategy and internal communications plan.
4. Partner with Outside Experts to Do an On-Site Assessment
The results of an on-site assessment give you a roadmap of recommendations to elevate your internal communications and function. This can be ideal for teams who don’t have time for a full quantitative assessment or don’t know where to start.
An on-site assessment is often part of a robust channel audit, allowing auditors to assess in-person communication channels such as shift huddles, staff meetings, town halls, one-on-ones, and more.
5. Run a Pulse Survey
Identify a representative sample of your target audience and reach out to them for feedback on communications directed at them. Ask the survey participants a few questions to get a “pulse” for the impact of a communication.
This can be done via conference call, email, or an intranet posting.
6. Facilitate Employee Listening Sessions or Focus Groups
Gather employees to participate in an interactive discussion in which you ask specific questions about communication tactics. This can be done informally or in a more formal setting, depending on your organization’s culture.
This will allow you to gain deeper insights into employee expectations of communication and identify differences in expectations between various management levels and roles.
We conduct focus groups of this nature often for our clients as they find employees are typically more open to sharing feedback with an objective third party.
7. Engage in Leader Listening
Leaders should take time to consider their perceptions of current communication and what improvements they think are necessary. Take steps to understand what ideal communication looks like and what is required for the organization to get there.
As we do with employee listening, we often work with our clients to facilitate leader listening sessions, and as a result synthesize themes, core takeaways, and develop an action plan or adjust internal communications plans based on the findings.
This exercise can also unearth opportunities for leaders to improve their communication capability and then we help identify appropriate solutions.
8. Conduct a 180-Degree Communications Effectiveness Survey for Leaders
Through survey tools such as LeaderCommCheck™, leaders get important feedback from their direct reports on their communication, which will help them know how to lead and communicate even more effectively with their team.
9. Form an Informal Employee Advisory Board
Want to know how employees really feel about existing and new communication plans and strategies? Ask them. Appoint a group of employees who can offer regular feedback and who can help measure success.
These proven methods to measure internal communication generate actionable insights about the effectiveness of an organization’s internal communications, enabling communications teams to make data-driven decisions about plans, content, and channels to reach their employees.
Measurement doesn’t have to be complicated, time-consuming, or expensive. However, it is important to remember that when measuring the impact and effectiveness of communication, both qualitative and quantitative results are ideal.
One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. – Grace Murray Hopper, Computer Pioneer
Data and insights about the effectiveness of internal communications (what’s working, what’s not, what audiences need/want, etc.), as well as comparative data on other institutions, enable the internal communications team to make data-driven decisions about plans, activities, and channels.
How The Grossman Group Can Help Maximize Your Internal Communication Metrics
If you’re looking to adopt the best array of internal communication metrics and measure the effectiveness of your overall communications plan, we can help.
Our team has deep expertise in internal communication. We know how to measure communication effectiveness with a tailor-made system that works best for your specific business.
We’re also big believers in measuring for a purpose and taking action on what we discover, always keeping business outcomes top of mind. We help teams identify their most critical communication metrics and goals, then work with them to track progress and make adjustments over time.
Visit our website to learn more about how we support internal communications teams and business functions with internal communications.
Conclusion
Whether you are just beginning to think about the importance of your internal communication goals, are in the midst of evaluating an existing plan, or looking for ideas to better measure the overall success of your strategy, remember that all of this work has a proven impact on your business results.
Take action on the feedback and insight you gain when measuring internal communication effectiveness. When leaders or communications teams fail to act on valuable information to advance their internal communication goals, they not only squander an opportunity, but hurt their credibility and break down employee trust.
At its core, communication is an instrument of strategy as well as a strategy in itself. Effective employee communication helps you share your mission, vision, and values. It also helps you achieve essential goals. So, measure your efforts because what gets measured, gets done!
What measures can you put in place today that will help you and your organization gauge communication success?
—David Grossman
Use this guide to find out everything you need to know about conducting an internal communication audit – including when to do one, how to execute it, and a downloadable template to streamline the process.
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