I got my first internal comms job back in 1999, at what was Seeboard Energy, before it became EDF Energy. To be honest I think I got lucky – I had previously lectured on grad and post grad courses on communication theory, but I hadn’t actually worked in comms! I was over the moon at getting the job, and intended to keep it, but I was feeling way out of my comfort zone.
My first task was to put a strategy and plan together, I had never written a strategy and I wasn’t sure where to start. So I did what all academics do (or ex-academic in my case) and I bought a book – the Gower Handbook of Internal Communication – and I read it cover to cover.
I got my highlighters out, made loads of notes, and developed my first ever comms strategy and plan, which included an approach to measure the impact of the work the team was doing. It worked a treat and I still use an updated version of these notes today when helping clients to develop their strategies and plans.
The world has moved on since those early days of IC: IC is a well-established profession, and we now have employee engagement too. There’s lots of help and resources out there now, for both those new to the role and the more established. So why then are IC and engagement professionals still struggling to develop a strategy and measure their impact?
The annual ‘State of the Sector’ (SOTS) report was published this week, by our friends at Gatehouse Consulting. They describe their research as the definitive survey of the internal communication profession. It’s always a thought provoking read, and this year more than ever before, I was struck by the similarity in some of the findings, to our annual “Spotlight On” survey.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with ‘Spotlight On’, our research looks at the employee engagement profession. If you’re thinking that this is simply a case of ‘old wine, new bottle’, whilst there are those from the IC profession who completed our ‘Spotlight On’ survey, the majority were not.
I was struck by similar findings from both the IC and the engagement folks around strategy, planning and measurement. Both surveys found a lack of a strategic approach, with just 38% of IC professionals having a strategy in place, and only 52% of engagement professionals. When it comes to demonstrating impact only 41% of IC pros do this regularly, and just 38% of engagement professionals. It is not a surprise that there were similar recommendations from both reports: get better at planning, put a strategy in place, make sure you measure your impact and demonstrate your value. And all of this it will help you to win over those senior stakeholders.
My takeaway from the research however, is not that both IC and engagement need to do this stuff – I think everyone would agree that having a strategy and plan and measuring your impact is a good thing. But, my question is why is this still not happening?
I really want to hear your thoughts on this; why is it that so many practitioners are without a strategy and don’t measure their impact? There are so many brilliant (often free) resources out there to help develop a strategy, pen a comms plan and measure impact, as well as books, courses, development and training. And if practitioners are really stuck or simply don’t have the time, then there are lots of experts who can help develop a strategy and measure impact at a pretty reasonable rate. Whether you work in IC or engagement or across both, I believe that until these foundations are in place we’ll struggle to be taken seriously, we won’t be seen as adding value and we won’t get a seat at the table.
Please do get in touch and share your thoughts with me, I would love to see some serious improvements this time next year and want to know how we can positively impact these findings to make this happen.
@Emma
You can also download our free resource which will help you to start your engagement strategy – This includes a step-by-step guide, activity and template. Download here.
Download the 2018 SpotlightOn the Employee Engagement research paper here.
