Each week in this newsletter I tackle a question from a reader. This week’s question comes from a comms pro in Canada who read my previous newsletter about helping stakeholders move beyond “creating awareness” to setting clear objectives.
[If you missed that edition you can read it here.]
She writes:
“I love your weekly emails and learn so much from them. Thank you. I enjoyed seeing how this week’s email built on last week’s theme, and wondered if you’d consider continuing this conversation in your next issue.
In today’s email you provided an example of how you helped clarify what the stakeholder’s objective was - ‘Ensure all employees know how to make a flexible working request.’ Would you be willing to now tell us how you would use this objective to inform your tactics and, of most interest to me, how you would measure success?
I get stuck sometimes on how to measure objectives like this one, where it could be as much as a year after launching this campaign that an employee needs to make a flexible working request. How do you set up a system to see if your strategy is working, when it could be ages until your audience needs to use the information you’re providing?”
I like this question because you've identified one of the biggest challenges in internal communications: knowing what success actually looks like and how to measure it, both in the short term and in the long term.
You're asking about measurement, and here's the biggest measurement mistake I see comms pros making over and over: waiting until the end to figure out if something worked. Instead, you need to get crystal clear on what success looks like BEFORE you start communicating and identify the early signals that will tell you if you're on the right track.
This approach helps you become more strategic, builds credibility with stakeholders, and gives you the data you need to continuously improve your work. Plus, you'll never again be caught off-guard by that dreaded question: "Is it working?"
So let's dive into this in today's newsletter: identifying your overall measure of success (your long-term indicator) and the early signals that you're heading in the right direction (your short-term indicators).
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Using indicators to measure success
Let's talk about how you can identify and use different indicators to help you measure your efforts.
The first time I heard about "indicators" at a measurement workshop more than a decade ago, I found the whole concept very confusing. I was lost. So let's explain it simply and clearly: an indicator is just something that tells you if you're successful or not. It gives you an INDICATION that your plan is working or that you've achieved your goal.
Let's look at two types of indicators you can use.
Long-term indicators are your final results, the ultimate proof that your communication was successful. This is your outcome, the thing you set out to achieve at the start. For our flexible working example, your long-term indicator might be: "Employees successfully submit flexible working requests when they need them."
Long-term indicators are important because they'll ultimately tell you if you were successful or not. But they often happen so far in the future that they're not much help for knowing if your campaign is on track. It might take 12-24 months to achieve your final goal, so relying solely on that final measure is tricky. What if your plan is going wrong halfway through, but you miss it because you have no early warning signs?
That's where short-term indicators come in. These are early signs that predict the future success of your long-term effort. They happen much sooner and give you confidence that your communication will be successful.
What this looks like in practice
Let's stick with our flexible working example. If your long-term indicator is "Employees successfully submit flexible working requests when they need them," here's what your short-term indicators might look like:
Within 2 weeks of launch:
- 80% email open rate on flexible working announcements
- 200+ clicks on the flexible working policy page
- 150+ downloads of the request form template
Within 1 month:
- 50+ questions about flexible working in team meetings
- 25+ searches for "flexible working" on the intranet daily
- 75% attendance at flexible working Q&A sessions
Within 3 months:
- Managers report feeling confident about handling requests
- 90% of employees can correctly identify where to find the policy
- Practice requests submitted through pilot program are 95% compliant
Do you see how these early signals can help you figure out if success is likely? If no one is downloading the form and your communications are going unread, you've got clear signals that things aren't going well. You can then experiment with different messages or tactics, months before you would have discovered the problem through your long-term indicator.
And if all your short-term indicators are positive, you have strong evidence to show stakeholders that you're on the right track and your campaign is likely to be successful when employees actually need to use the information.
How to find your short-term indicators
The key to identifying your short-term indicators is to think backwards from your ultimate goal. Ask yourself: "If this communication is going to be successful in 12 months, what would I expect to see happening in the next 4 weeks, 2 months, or 4 months?"
For different types of objectives, your indicators will be different. But here are some things to consider:
- Knowledge objectives: Comprehension tests, recall surveys, confidence levels, open rates, downloads
- Behavior change objectives: Early adoption, pilot participation, training attendance, asking questions
- Culture change objectives: Language shifts in meetings, informal conversations, leadership modeling, qualitative data
The art is identifying which early signals will actually predict long-term success for your specific objective. You can create multiple checkpoints to ensure you're on track, rather than waiting a full year or longer to discover if something worked or not.
What I’m working on this summer
Speaking of measurement, I'm currently building a comprehensive course on exactly this topic, how to measure the effectiveness of your internal comms. It will include templates, frameworks and real examples to make measurement simpler and clearer and more practical for you.
Current courses in production include:
- How to design & run employee focus groups
- How to create a long-term strategy aligned to business goals
- How to measure the effectiveness of your internal comms
All courses will be available both as on-demand digital courses and live workshops with me.
I'm basing all my course creation on what you tell me you're struggling with most, so hit reply anytime and tell me what you need. I'm here to help.
Thanks for reading and stay curious,
Joanna
Find me on YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and check out my book
Want to work together?
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- Ready to review your channels and content but don't know where to start? Download my practical Internal Comms Audit Playbook to guide you through a DIY audit - no expensive consultant needed. This has ready-to-use templates and checklists to give you a systematic way to do your own audit which you can repeat every single year. Get it here.
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