Communication Measurements

Effective internal communication starts at the top, with the CEO's communication challenge.

Measuring the efficiency of an organization's strategic communications is usually a challenge for the company's management. Communication Audit provides a wide range of instruments for evaluating an organization's capacity for essential communications processes. It helps the company management to determine whether the current level of communications is sufficient and what "adjustments" can be made.

Knowing the specific practices associated with strategic communications is the first step to assessing an organization's performance with respect to those practices. Communication Audit provides a "snapshot" of where an organization currently stands in terms of its communication capacity or performance and points to areas in which the organization can improve its communications. The main tasks for the Communication Audit are to collect data about communications practices, and to use that data to make assessments about organizational performance and capacity. It is important to have a gauge (metric) that helps the auditors to measure and illustrate where the organization currently stands in terms of its performance.

Audits are most often performed by external communications or evaluation experts, but can also be performed internally. Internal audits help reduce direct costs and provide valuable experience for employees that builds communications capacity in and of itself. The advantages to using outside specialists are the credibility, knowledge and expertise they bring from other organizations for comparison purposes. Besides, external experts usually generate more objective results.

Both internal and external Communication Audits use a common set of methods to gather data for further assessment of an organization's communication practices. The most common audit method involves employee interviewing, which allow the person conducting the audit to better understand communications-related work processes. Interviewed respondents provide a rich qualitative sense of how practices are performed and how the organization treats communications.

The second most common audit method is a survey. Surveys can be distributed cheaply among the organizational staff within a short timeframe. Surveys are specifically efficient, because they provide for the standardization and comparison of all responses.

Another audit method is called Critical Incident Analysis. It allows employees to describe, through an interview or questionnaire, their specific effective and ineffective experiences with communications. This method helps the auditors to understand how communications practices are performed within situational contexts.

In order to evaluate the company's communication practices "from inside", the auditors may take part in the organizational activities involving communications themselves. This method is called Participant Observation. It helps the auditors to see how and when the practices are performed.

Document Review method enables the auditors to evaluate an organization's communications documents, including recent publications, campaign materials, press releases, etc.

The communication auditors can also perform an organization's Network Analysis in order to examine the information flow, the channels and relationships through which information is exchanged. This method helps reveal the company's communication structure, which may be very different from its organizational structure. It also identifies network areas where blockages are occurring and possible routes that are currently untapped.

Although strategic communications audits are an evaluation tool, they usually do not focus on the results or outcomes of an organization's communications practices after they are implemented. However, they focus on the organization itself, its practice and capacity, and how the organization has positioned the communications function. Experiencing the strategic communications audit process can be a critical part of an organization's progression toward more strategic, and ultimately more effective, communications.