Internal comms is evolving faster than many organizations can keep up with. A recent survey of over 500 communications leaders from Shallot Communications revealed that internal communicators are being asked to do more, but the systems and processes they have to deal with haven’t necessarily kept pace with these demands. This internal comms movement is seemingly only going to accelerate as companies grapple with dispersed workforces, heightened employee expectations and constant organizational change.
“Internal comms used to be seen as a support function,” said Tim Granholm, co-founder and managing director at Shallot Communications. “Now it’s responsible for platforms, channels, measurement, employee sentiment, crisis response and social issue navigation — and that’s all before you get to the day-to-day messaging. The complexity has grown, but the systems and expectations around the function haven’t caught up.”
Here are some takeaways from the data:
Internal comms pros are facing challenges out of their control
Internal communicators are accustomed to operating on multiple projects simultaneously. However, what stands out is that the data revealed the challenges that comms pros felt were the most pressing. They include:
- Communicating with deskless employees: 33%
- Constant pace of change and uncertainty: 32%
- Change management fatigue: 30%
- Communicating with remote employees: 29%
- Difficulty measuring success: 27%
- Budget constraints: 27%
The data shows that internal communicators are reacting to more than organizational complexities. They’re working to buoy employee experience while factors outside their control swirl around them — and on top of that, they’ve got regular messaging tasks to complete. Internal communications professionals are approaching many messages for various audiences, all with a wide range of tactics.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to measurement preferences
The report also indicated that internal communicators can’t agree on exactly how to best measure the success of their work.
With nearly three in 10 communicators reporting difficulty in measuring success, the survey revealed that there’s a wide range of preferences for measurement. Of the 10 choices listed in the survey, all of them fell between 20% and 30% support.
The cluster of data may seem a bit cloudy upon a surface-level look. But this is likely because no single measurement preference can capture the wide breadth of an internal comms pro’s responsibilities. They sit at the center of competing expectations from both leaders and their audiences alike.
Cameron Smith, communications consultant at Shallot Communications, ascribed this apparent lack of consensus in part to being pulled in multiple directions.
“Internal comms leaders are being asked to measure impact and maintain executive alignment at the same time,” Smith told Ragan. “Those two things don’t always point in the same direction.”
Peel the layers back again, and there are clear patterns of preference among different generations.
This reveals that there’s a good chance that the internal communicators in the survey feel that the most important measurements are the ones they’re interacting with the most. Younger employees are often charged with creating content and managing internal platforms and more experienced ones are focused on the high-level functions of the business. To them, the most important internal comms measures are the ones they’re seeing every day. The generational data splits here don’t necessarily denote disagreement. They’re just showing how the work of internal communications functions going up the ladder.
When you look at the data this way, the numbers look less fragmented and instead form a more coherent roadmap for success for different levels of the internal comms function. It shows that internal comms isn’t just one job. It’s a discipline with multiple levels of responsibility.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
