Now more than ever, companies need to create internal communication strategies based on data. Whether providing employee feedback or managing unexpected change, data-based communications plans are key to employee engagement and retention (and HR’s success!).
Furthermore, communication is changing rapidly.
More companies are tapping into social technologies—like enterprise social networks (ESN)—to boost internal employee communications. In addition, knowledge workers with access to social communications increase productivity by 20 to 25%.
However, using enterprise social network data to support your internal communications strategy gets tricky—from understanding the why of the data to pulling it together into a report.
That’s where your analytics tool comes in.
With your ESN analytics tool, you can quickly and accurately build, monitor, and measure your communications plan.
Here’s what that looks like.
1. Take the guesswork out of your internal communication strategy
If building strategic internal communications is your responsibility, then you know there’s little room (and time) for just ‘hoping it works.’
Whether you’re setting benchmarks using enterprise social network (ESN) data or monitoring a department’s performance, how you process the information will influence your campaign’s success.
Use your analytics metrics to hone every strategy. For example, you can identify activity by groups. To understand the activity at a deeper level, you can look at individual performance.
Is the group manager engaging staff with meaningful posts? Are some employees in spectator-mode—simply viewing the group posts but not commenting or reacting?
2. Clarify data with visuals
We live in visual times! For instance, marketers reported a 10.5% rise in visual content from 2018 to 2019. When it comes to presenting your strategy and the outcomes, visual representations will have a greater impact than, say, a spreadsheet.
Of course, you need to analyze the data first. Your analytics tool will simplify the strategy-development process via easy-to-understand graphics and an elegant layout.
3. Reinforce strategies with automated reporting
Yes, ESN data is invaluable for building comms strategies and monitoring the results. However, one of the greater obstacles for short-on-time internal comms and HR managers is the reporting.
Without the right tools, you’ll only get a superficial view of the data then spend hours compiling a report.
However, with your ESN analytics, you can track your strategy-based campaigns with quick check-ins and generate a sharable report with a few clicks.
4. Eliminate communication silos
While HR and internal comms teams operate in a communications environment, others in leadership might need extra support to ensure the communication plan’s success.
Using an ESN analytics tool, HR can show leadership where they had success and create individualized comms plans for them—with measurable results. Maybe the CIO shared an article that generated a high engagement, including shares and comments.
A deeper dive into the data will uncover why the article resonated with employees. They can also see if the comments were positive or negative, helping them understand the content that yields the best results.
Moreover, the results provide a roadmap for engaging with employees in a meaningful way.
5. Failproof your employee onboarding strategy
When onboarding new staff, it’s critical to know how employees are adapting to their new workplace. That includes measuring (and correcting for) employee satisfaction in real-time. (You don’t want to discover they were unhappy after the fact.)
With an analytics tool, HR can see how new employees are progressing. Are they contributing to conversations? They might have a high activity score where they’re interacting within their group, but are the contributions positive, negative or neutral?
With a few clicks, HR can get a read on the new employee’s mood and follow up as needed.
Ultimately, the analytics information will help HR galvanize employee onboarding and ensure they stay.
Build every internal communications strategy with your analytics tool
With so much at stake for internal communication strategies, your ESN data plays a critical role. But the information is only as good as the analysis—from showing leadership where they were successful to guiding new employees through their early days in the org.
Now, imagine looking at your ESN data without an analytics tool.