Talking Internal Communication...

Demonstrating your value – input, output, out-take and outcome measures

At the CIPR internal communication conference earlier this week I facilitated a short workshop on demonstrating your value.

One of the topics my group got discussing was the types of measure you can use to assess your effectiveness and evaluate your impact as an internal communicator. As part of this we spent some time talking about the differences between input, output, out-take and outcome measures.

This is often an area where practitioners appreciate some guidance, so I have pulled together a brief summary below:

Input	What’s already out there? Background information and research to inform your initial planning. Some of this information could also provide benchmarks against which to measure future progress. This is the sort of information you make use of during the audit stage of your planning and can often be uncovered using desk research.  Good sources include your in house HR or Marketing team, which are usually sitting on a wealth of rich (and often untapped) data. Sources include the internal comms brief, desk research (demographics, survey data, content analysis of channels, etc) and qualitative research (interviews and focus groups).
Output	Are your messages getting to people? Used to measure WHAT we did – typically around message exposure and audience reach. A valuable measure focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of your processes. It can analyse message exposure but it cannot explain to what extent people’s opinions or behaviour has been influenced. The sorts of measure here include the volume of IC material issued (number of newsletters distributed, publication of related stories on intranet), events (who and how many attended) and the frequency of exposure to key messages (how often did we communicate key messages to each audience?)
Out-take	Are your messages getting through to people? Used to measure THE IMPACT of what you did – the extent to which the audience is aware, has understood and remembered and their likely reaction and response. Out-take research is often carried out during a campaign or programme to check whether messages are getting through to people – helping you refine and fine-tune your plans. This sort of research includes looking at the number and type of questions submitted to an intranet-based Q&A, the pattern of intranet hits, awareness measures (is the message getting though?) and the likely intentions of audience.
Outcome	Are your messages changing attitudes or behaviour? Used to measure the TANGIBLE RESULT of what you did – the degree to which comms changed awareness, opinions and behaviours. The most valuable form of measurement, it provides concrete proof that a change in employee behaviour can be traced back to an internal comms programme, activity or message. It is also the basis for calculating ROI. Outcome-based research includes an assessment of results versus objectives, hard evidence on value added (quantitative – sales, financial, etc) and soft evidence (qualitative – focus group feedback, etc).

A wide range of tools and techniques are available to evaluate IC effectiveness at all four levels. Your choice will depend on a number of factors – particularly how much depth and detail you require, your time availability and your budget.

A simple ‘menu’ of research methods is shown below, according to degree of sophistication. Externally sourced research will generally be more reliable, but there is a huge amount of valuable information that is likely to exist already inside the business and that you should be able to access quickly and easily.

Basic Communication team can source, undertake and analyse internally.	Intermediate Managed by communication team but may require specialist external input.	Advanced Relies on specialist external advice, managed by senior member of communication team.
Desk research and information gathering Collecting demographic data Telephone interviews Pre testing of messages External benchmarking Developing a brief	SWOT analysis Focus groups Pulse surveys Content analysis(channels) Audience profiling Creating a communication dashboard Creating a communication scorecard	Key driver analysis Telephone surveying Major employee surveys

The above is adapted from my CIPR Guide to Measurement & Evaluation for Internal Communicators – which is available exclusively to CIPR Members via the Member Area of the Institute’s website.

Whilst on the subject of demonstrating your value, you might also be interested in a funky new tool which has just been developed by Russell-Oliver Brooklands at the Internal Communication Model. ROB has created a seemingly rather sophisticated toolkit that apparently enables you to quantify the value of your contribution in pounds and pence. I haven’t had time to scrutinise it yet, but if it does what it promises to do then ROB may well have moved us one step closer to the Holy Grail!  It’s free, so why not check it out…

Lee

The employee expo – a tactic with real potential

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by a large utility company to attend its annual employee exhibition. They’ve been doing one for years apparently – taking over an large exhibition hall for a few days and inviting their people (and suppliers) to come along for a few hours to see what’s going on inside the company.  Intrigued by the concept and keen to get to know the organisation better, I snapped their hand off and went along for the day as a guest.

I’ve come across similar events in the past – indeed I created one or two during my days in-house – but they were always tagged onto a more traditional all-employee conference. As such, the exhibition element was effectively bonus content – a way of making better use of an expensive venue, giving staff something to do during the breaks and subtly reinforcing the messages and themes conveyed in the main event.  So this was my first direct experience of a ‘pure’ employee exhibition. 

The concept is simple. Hire a venue, brief key teams to create their own exhibition ‘stands’, invite employees along, deliver the event. I’m making it sound easy and, of course, the reality is the exercise can be as simple or painful to produce as any other activity we get involved in – and I have no doubt the event I attended involved considerable input from the comms team here, who did an excellent job. But, depending on which way you do it, it could be a very different kind of input to the usual employee conference.

Although there was an overarching umbrella theme and identity for this event and a welcome from the CEO in the exhibition guide, there were no tight scripts, very little Powerpoint, branding was minimal and the timetable was fairly fluid, so there wasn’t too much ushering required. Those of you who are involved in staging large internal events will know that these are the meat and veg of the typical conference - and therefore often place considerable demands on the comms team.    

Where I think these events are most effective – and this one was – is in the following areas:

• engaging employees around some of the real, live, current activities the business is involved in – enabling them to experience some of the things their colleagues do and hopefully gain an appreciation of what’s happening across the wider organisation
• providing some visibility for the more obscure teams and initiatives – giving them their 15 minutes of fame  
• building community by providing an environment in which employees can meet other employees informally, in a largely social setting
• unleashing employee creativity by giving teams the freedom to design and deliver their own exhibition space (working to a consistent brief, of course) 
• bringing dull subjects to life and getting employees to sit up and pay attention to subjects that would normally fly below their radar   

The event I attended featured a Crystal Maze which employees could enter to win prizes if they collected sufficient ‘time tokens’ from around the exhibition.  As for the stands themselves, all sorts of techniques were employed to get team messages across – blackboards, staff in costume, video, stickers, postcards, quizzes, before and after photos, visuals and give-aways – the list goes on and on. 

There was a large area in the centre of the hall where employees got to compete against each other in a ‘drilling and tapping’ competition – effectively having a go at what some of their frontline workers do each day. This was a big hit with staff.

A Big Brother-style diary room even enabled visitors to leave comments on video. Throughout the event interactivity was emphasised – there was even a competition where visitors got to nominate their favourite stand (my own personal favourite was the ‘Old Skool Customer Service’ stand). 

Ask me a few years ago and I’d have probably disliked this approach, but in today’s context it really works. Budgets are tight and there is growing scepticism amongst employees around some glossy, heavily produced, tightly choreographed set-piece events. As we are seeing in other areas – like social media – a more authentic, raw, real world/user-generated approach is sometimes more effective and credible.

There’s been a lot of talk over the years about experiential employee events and I’ve always been a fan – any live event that gets beyond a simple ‘show and tell’ and actually involves people has to be a good thing.  But many of the examples I’ve come across in the past have been glossy, highly theatrical affairs – inevitably costing a huge amount of money. Powerful as these grandiose internal events can be and relevant as they sometimes are, the reality is that we don’t always need a bespoke set, actors, live video and a lighting rig U2 would be proud of. This example shows that sometimes a well thought-through, simple, under-produced, home-grown approach is far more effective.

Lee

Directory of Twitter tools for communicators

In line with my new found enthusiasm for Twitter (you can see my ramblings and follow me via the right hand column of this blog), here’s a really helpful post from Brian Solis in San Francisco - on the tool and the phenomenon. Better still, it’s written especially for comms people. Excellent, timely stuff. Enjoy! 

Lee

Singing the praises of corporate choirs

A few years ago Ernst & Young, the big 4 accountancy firm I used to work for, launched a corporate choir in London. It went down a storm as I remember, with employees signing up in droves to sing together in sweet harmony. Their occasional performances were also extremely popular with fellow employees – a real head office spectacle that entertained and lifted the spirit in equal measure…

Now I read (Human Resources, April 2009) that call centre staff at Admiral, the British insurer, are receiving singing lessons from two opera divas in a bid to boost morale and, wait for it… to reduce absenteeism. 

The musical pair, Georgina Jones and Andrea Beardshaw, have been ‘making sweet music’ with a 40-strong call centre team based in Cardiff.  Like EY, they have formed a staff choir which will perform in front of thousands of colleagues at various internal meetings this year. 

And there’s a health benefit too, with staff being taught how to use their voices to combat sore throats, manage infections and so on – all rather helpful for pressured call centre people. Apparently this initiative has been a big hit too, with the Admiral top team singing its praises from the rafters.

In a similar vein I was talking to a contact of mine who works in central Government recently and he told me that his department has been running stand-up comedy sessions internally. Nice.

Could these be the tactics we need to lift employee spirits during the deep, dark recession?

Enjoy Easter!

L

Retro communication

Had an interesting meeting yesterday with Martin Loat, the guy behind Grasswhispers.

At our consultancy Gatehouse we make a habit of keeping tabs on the latest developments in employee communications. We had heard a lot about the Grasswhispers service - which 'broadcasts' voice messages to mobile phones - and, as something that will no doubt be of interest to many of our clients, we wanted to find out more.   

In these days of email overload and message bombardment we communicators need to find different ways of getting to - and getting through to - our audiences. The humble telephone remains under used as a channel and, in my mind at least, has a bigger role to play in many organization's communications.   

The Grasswhispers service taps into this need by enabling communicators and business leaders to record voice messages or mini radio-style programmes which are then delivered via mobile phone. The clever bit is that the system actually dials the 'listener's' number, so they have to listen to at least the first few seconds of the message.

Effective employee comms if very much about 'push and pull' and, because this is a relatively intrusive audio-based approach, I think it has a useful role to play as part of a wider channel framework. Like any channel though, the key is to use it in the right way and to resist the temptation to over-use it.

What I really like about the Grasswhispers system is that it is measurable - as a user you receive data on, for instance, how many people have listened to your message and for how long. That's useful information for any communicator.

During our conversation we observed that, in this era of all-singing, all-dancing electronic comms many people are adopting a back-to-basics strategy by utilising 'old school' communication channels - like the good old telephone and face-to-face. Martin, in a slightly tongue-in-cheek way, referred to this as 'retro communication'.

It's a phrase that's grown on me since - and there's definitely something in this. Face-to-face has always been critical but I feel business leaders are now at last beginning to treat it more seriously, more strategically.

Similarly, as social media begins to make its presence felt inside organizations, we're once again seeing the advantages of more traditional approaches and technologies - print publications, telephone messages, physical workspace comms (posters, etc) and the like.

The result, and it's a real result, is that leaders are now seeing the need for a multiple-channel approach - realising that the intranet or an occasional newsletter are no longer sufficient and that most large organizations require a mix of print, face-to-face and electronic channels.

I get really excited about social media, but I'm equally passionate about these 'retro' channels. As a child of the 1970s I think that's rather appropriate.

Digital storytelling - a great tool for internal communicators

Over the last few weeks we've been talking to a potential client about developing an internal communication campaign based around digital storytelling.

It's a great idea and one that's got me really excited about the potential of this tool. 

As a way to engage employees, to cut through corporate bullshit and to capture the emotional side or organizational life, digital storytelling takes some beating. And considered alongside recent developments in social media (see my recent post on YouTube) it's an idea whose time has come.

Good stories, however they're told, are memorable, attention grabbing, entertaining, creative, social and personal. Those are important characteristcs to every internal communicator.

Furthermore, storytelling has near universal appeal - it can be used to engage with all sorts of employees, from (see below) bus drivers to management consultants. 

There's a wealth of research that backs this up too- from the critical incident technique used in psychology, to the application of stories in knowledge management.

But whilst the principles of storytelling are becoming more popular inside organisations, there still aren't many examples of digital storytelling being used by internal communicators.

That's a shame. It's a really powerful and, thanks to video streaming, a highly cost effective tool.

It won't suit every organsiation (for a start you have to be willing to let employees tell their stories without corporate spin), but if you're willing to give your people a voice, it's something to give serious consideration to.   

Here's a couple of superb examples of employee-driven digital storytelling:

• Accenture's digital stories - used here to build its employer brand
• How Transport for London is celebrating the 50 year anniversary of its Caribbean recruitment scheme

And here's a few additional links on the subject:

The BBC Wales Digital Storytelling initiative

Tech Head Stories - an enormous collection of additional weblinks on the topic

Digistories - the website of Barrie Stephenson, a former BBC producer who now offers training in digital storytelling techniques

Responding to an employee survey

Over the last few weeks I've been talking to a number of people who have recently undertaken their first employee survey and are now grappling with the results. What they all want to know is how they should respond to it - what they should do to communicate the results and act on them.

Here's a very brief summary of the key points we discussed:

1. Respond quickly – don’t sit on the survey results for six months
2. Publish a clear and simple summary of the findings – make it as visual as possible and focus on themes, rather than detail. Make some observations and recommend next steps.
3. Use some sort of survey brand (e.g. ‘Have Your Say’) to badge the programme and use the brand whenever you communicate something that relates to the survey or the issues it uncovered.
4. Be honest – resist the temptation to put a positive spin on the results or to hide or disguise negatives.
5. Prioritise the issues - be clear about where you’ll focus on making improvements and where you’ll leave things well alone (reward is often flagged as an issue in first surveys, though it can rarely be changed in a major way).
6. ‘Cut’ the results to see trends by department, business unit or location, but....
7. ...avoid ‘paralysis by analysis’ – once you have properly analysed and reviewed the survey results use your judgement and knowledge of the organization to draw sensible conclusions.
8. Use focus groups to get behind the headlines, and as an integral part of your response plan.
9. Involve your line managers - brief them and get them to own local action planning. 
10. Use the results as a benchmark against which to track future progress.

Some of these points are obvious, but you'd be surprised how often they're ignored. I'm still staggered by the number of organisations that invest large sums of money in a survey and then don't bother to respond to it in any visible or meaningful way.

For more on surveys, check out the free articles from Angela Sinickas and Rodney Gray.

Communication champions - top tips

I was speaking to someone yesterday about the valuable role champions or networks can play in delivering great programmes and extending the reach of an over-stretched comms team.

I've always found these volunteer networks to be really helpful. They can add value in so many ways - as your 'eyes and ears' in the far flung reaches of your empire, as content providers, as grassroots activists, as an early warning system, as distributors of printed materials, as tidy-uppers of notice boards, as the voice of reason, and so on. 

I have developed and used champion networks wherever I've worked and I've learned a number of things along the way. Here are my top ten tips:

1. Make sure your leaders are supportive. Champions shouldn't be management moles, but it helps them be more effective if they've got the support of the top team (or at least the senior players in their part of the organisation).
2. Select people who are credible in the eyes of their peers. You don't want raving cynics, but nor do you want 'yes' men and women. You want people who are prepared to speak up when they don't like something (but who aren't militant) and who generally support what the organisation is trying to do (but without standing on their desk and singing the company song). Avoid the office odd ball and make sure your champions aren't too junior.
3. Be really clear about their responsibilities - are they primarily there as your 'eyes and ears', to help with logistics (e.g. distributing the magazine) or as content providers for a particular area? A clear role description will help.
4. Make sure the network reflects the fault lines of the organisations - there should be representation from the key teams, functions, geographic locations, etc.
5. Talk regularly - monthly or perhaps quarterly. If face-to-face is too difficult, arrange conference calls. This is really important. To be an effective team you have to create a sense of common purpose.
6. Treat them as key members of your team. Recognise and reward them. Give them access to information before general release and where possible seek their input on messages, style, etc, before you roll out your communications.
7. Make sure they're clear on the boundaries of their role, but demonstrate that you trust them.
8. Train them in the basics of good internal comms and ensure they understand your comms and business strategy and 'live' the organisation's values.
9. Consider creating a simple 'Champion's Toolkit' containing proformas and guidance notes.
10. Don't expect too much too soon. Take it easy during the early days - you can broaden their responsibilities once they get the hang of the basics.

Word of mouth..on steroids

Earlier today I bought a copy of Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's excellent book, Naked Conversations (see 'Recommended reads' below left).

It's a book about blogging and how it's changing the way businesses talk with their stakeholders. But it's far from dull.

After spending three hours on the train between London and Birmingham, I'm about 150 pages into it.  And I'm beginning to get quite excited about this blogging thing.

The pair describe blogging as 'word of mouth on steroids' and, through a series of interviews (based on a series real life and blog-based discussions) outline how blogging is revolutionising corporate communication.

I really do buy what they're saying. Next to face-to-face, blogs are one of the best ways for individuals within an organisation to have an authentic dialogue with employees, customers and other stakeholders.

It is this authenticity (blogs should be real and uncensored by PROs, lawyers, etc) and dialogue (blogs should be a conversation) that makes blogging such a great way to build trust. 

Trust is the basic ingredient for getting things done inside and outside organisations and, as we've seen in the Great Place to Work and Best Companies research, is key to superior performance.

I believe communications are the natural trust builders inside organisations and that's exactly why we need to understand blogging and help our employers and clients harness its massive potential. 

Mind mapping revisited

I'd forgotten what a fantastic process mind mapping is.

I read Tony Buzan's book years ago and was, for a short while, an avid user. Then I stopped.

My reawakening came earlier today when I did some work with a client and another specialist supplier, M62 Visual Communications, on reviewing the content, flow and messages contained in a mammoth slide deck. 

M62 recommended we use Mindjet software to capture our thinking. This resulted in the rapid creation of a series of mind maps which will now help us restructure the material, simplfy our messages and ensure there is a clear, logical flow to the overall presentation and the other communication materials that will flow from it.

It's a tool I commend to fellow communicators.

In our jobs it's far too easy to get sucked into the detail and to lose sight of the big picture. Using Powerpoint to capture your thinking (in an inevitably linear fashion) isn't the answer, yet it's what some many of us rely on.

Mind mapping is far superior. It's a great tool for capturing thoughts, mapping out messages and, perhaps most importantly, illustrating the multiple connections between different pieces of information. After all, so much of what we do is about alignment (in this case between different 'layers' of strategy - group, business unit and function) and flow (e.g. a timeline for rolling out various programmes of work).

If you're interested in finding out more, check out the following websites:

• The Wikipedia entry on mind maps
• A useful overview from Derby University
• Illumine, a UK training company that focuses on mind mapping
• Mindjet - superb mind mapping software on Mac and PC

I'll definitely be investing in a copy of Mind Manager Pro and using it to capture and clarify my thinking from now on.