Audit. As in auditory.

By Jim Ylisela

It happens all the time. I’ll meet someone at a conference, or get a call from a prospective client. They’re not happy with their communications, and they want to talk about it. Naturally, I’m all ears.

“We want to start a blog,” says one. “Our intranet sucks. We need to change it,” says another. “We’re thinking of killing our print publication. Nobody reads it,” adds a third.

To which I generally reply, in this order: “Why? How? How do you know?”

Many communicators want to leap into tactics before fully considering what they’re trying to accomplish, where communications should take them and, most importantly, how to connect internal communications to business goals.

I feel their pain. Tactics are tangible. You can see them and touch them. They can generate buzz. Redesign your magazine or add a new feature on your intranet, and it feels like you’re doing something, even if you don’t know exactly why.

But those tactics work better, and are far more effective, if you keep asking yourself: How do they help our business do its business better?

There’s only one way to find out. You have to ask, and then listen. And that’s basically what a communications audit is all about: listening to employees, managers and executives. An audit gives you the raw material you need to craft a communications strategy and then put it to work.

So how do we get there?

Listen first, then plan. Execute the plan and train those who will carry it out. Measure the results as you go.

A communications audit takes care of the all-important listening phase. You can do your listening in four ways: surveys, focus groups, executive interviews and vehicle assessment. Here’s how:

1. Surveys allow you to gather quantitative data from your audiences, and to establish their level of agreement and understanding, while also assessing how they feel about the current state of your communications. Here are a few tips:

• Ask questions that give you hard data. This is what surveys are all about. Ask people to choose their level of agreement (strongly agree, agree, somewhat disagree, disagree) for questions like these: “I understand how the new strategic plan affects my job,” or “Our senior leaders do a good job of explaining business decisions to employees.” Besides, executives love data. Survey results bring hard numbers to what many of leaders consider a soft science.

• Ask employees to rank your communication vehicles. Ask them to choose the channels they use most often to get information, then ask them to rate the usefulness of each vehicle. Does it help them do their jobs? Is the information relevant to them? Is it timely and trustworthy? How often do they use it?

• Keep the survey short and the questions clean. No one likes taking a long survey, and most employees have been cruelly subjected to some whoppers. Promise them your survey will take 10 minutes or less—and take it yourself to make sure! Compose clear and direct questions, and lose the jargon. One more thing: Don’t ask a question if you can’t do anything about the answer. “Would you like to earn more money?” will give you some terrific results, but unless your company is about to award bonuses, don’t ask it.

• Pick your demographics carefully. Many surveys get weighed down with a dozen questions that allow us to analyze the survey data along demographic lines. This is good, but don’t overdo it. Ask the demographic questions that will actually tell you something. In a multigenerational workplace, looking at survey results by age group can be quite revealing, especially if you’re considering new technologies or social media channels. Home office employees often have different views than those working in remote locations, or in the field.

2. Focus groups are a qualitative measure; they allow you to dig deeper into survey results and ask the “why?” and “what if?” questions that can inform your strategy. Keep these tips in mind:

• Do as many as you need to do. There’s no rule for how many focus groups you should do. The trick is to get a good sample of your different audiences. Again, think of demographics. If you work in a hospital, you need physicians, nurses, managers and non-clinical staff, just for starters.

• Aim for the magic dozen. We typically look for 10 to 15 participants in a focus group. Fewer than 10 or more than 15 changes the group dynamics. Aim for 12, though you may have to invite 20 or more to reach that number.

• Get them talking. Focus group leaders have to draw out the wallflowers and control the chatterboxes. Start the focus group with an exercise that gets everyone talking on the same level. My personal favorite: Ask them to write a few words or a phrase on an index card in response to a simple question, such as “How would you describe the way this organization communicates with its employees?” Then ask the participants to read aloud what they’ve written. That’ll get the conversation going, and the answers are usually quite illuminating.

3. Executive interviews. Executive interviews allow you to assess how leaders feel about communication, and to gauge whether their views are different from those of employees. That gap (and there’s always a gap) is one of the best ways to choose the right tactics. Here’s how to approach these critical one-on-ones:

• Get their views on communications. The fact is that most executives don’t fully understand what communicators do. Aren’t you the one who puts out that newsletter, or posts things on the intranet? But do they see communications as a channel to help them meet their business goals? Go find out.

• Test your ideas. An executive interview is a great way to float your ideas for improving communications. You’ve got a captive audience. Open an executive’s eyes to what communication can do for the organization, and you just might find a sponsor for your recommendations.

• Ask them what they are prepared to do. I love this question, and not just because it’s a bit provocative. It’s also immensely important. Executives pay lip service to the notion that communication is everyone’s responsibility, so let’s get real. What are they willing to do to make communication more effective?

4. Vehicle analysis. After all that listening, you have to take stock of your own efforts. Based on what you’ve heard, are your communication channels getting the job done?

This is the toughest job for a communicator, because it requires an objective analysis of your own work. (It’s also the reason people like me have a job.) To evaluate your vehicles, ask these questions, among others:

• Am I conveying the information people need, in the way they want to receive it?

• If not, what needs to change?

• Am I using each of my channels at its strength? How can I make the best use of print, the intranet, face-to-face meetings and my social and multimedia channels?

• What can I get rid of? What can I do less of, and how can I do what’s left better?

Writing your plan

I’m always amazed at what I learn in a communications audit. Employees are quite thoughtful about this stuff, and they like being asked. After you do the research, you’ll be in a much better position to write a good plan for strategic communication.

Based on what you’ve learned, how can you match your communication to the goals of the organization? What messages are most important to get to your audiences, and through what channels? How will you measure your effectiveness?

Once your plan is in place, you can finally get to the fun stuff: changing the way you tell stories, improving your existing vehicles and launching new channels.

In my experience, that often includes changing your own editorial process and training your staff to deliver the goods. But that’s a topic for another article.  

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For further tips on how to run a successful comms audit, check out Jim’s presentation, Audits Made Simple. Write to Jim at jim.ylisela@simply-goodadvice.us.