The ultimate internal comms audit in 4 easy steps
Enjoy an easy-to-follow internal comms audit breakdown, including a free template.
Your internal comms channels are the trusted source of news in your organization. And in times of uncertainty, you must be reaching your employees in an engaging and timely way — while also keeping business goals in mind.
But how do you make sure you’re on the right track? It’s time to conduct an internal comms audit. Think of it like spring cleaning. You’ll need to “clean up” your IC strategy once or twice a year to make sure your channels are aligning with your comms strategy.
We’re here to help you save time. That’s why we’ve created this four-step guide for you — including a free template — to help you audit your channels with minimal stress. This guide breaks it down into 4 easy steps:
Determine the scope
Conduct executive interviews
Ask your employees for feedback
Audit your channels and determine next steps
Step 1: Determine the scope
Does an internal comms audit seem overwhelming? A great place to start is to determine the scope. Consider:
The audience you want to audit. Is this a local audit for a single office location, or is it company-wide?
Your communication channels and formats. Sometimes you may want to focus on just one (printed materials, online content, meetings, etc.).
How much time do you have to put into this audit? Think about: When can you carve out time to both plan and complete it? Do you want to complete this every six months? Every 12 months?
Who will own this audit on your team?
Which stakeholders need to be consulted?
Be as realistic as possible. It’s better to keep your audit at a reasonable level — you’ll still come away from it with key learnings, but they will be way faster to implement. This will then allow you to observe the effectiveness of your changes quickly.
Step 2: Conduct executive interviews
Comms audits put a lot of focus on the communication needs of employees. That said, it’s important not to forget about executives — they’re the ones on the other side of the table, and their views and expectations provide great insight into both the priorities and the expectations of your communications efforts.
Try to interview at least three or four key executives. These interviews can tell you what management wants from communication, provide insight into how management thinks the organization currently communicates, and prove to senior leadership that you’re serious about driving the business forward through communication.
Here are some sample interview questions:
What’s your communications plan for the next five years?
Which barriers are your organization likely to face?
How can communications overcome these problems?
How would you rate your present organizational communication?
What would your communications accomplish in a perfect world?
What do you see as the biggest obstacles to effective communication?
What are the most crucial issues facing the organization?
What information do you feel your internal audience needs, but isn’t getting?
Step 3: Ask your employees for feedback
A well-designed employee survey can offer invaluable data and feedback, which can significantly shape your company from the inside out.
However, it‘s essential to pay attention to the survey‘s design, as poorly designed surveys can lead to unintended consequences and even worsen employee engagement outcomes.
For example, question order can greatly impact responses. One study found that the likelihood of respondents choosing an option increased by an average of 24% if it was presented first rather than last.
This demonstrates the importance of carefully considering survey design to avoid biases and ensure accurate, meaningful results that contribute to positive change within the company.
Here’s our advice:
To ensure high participation and total completion of your survey, try to limit the number of questions to a maximum of ten.
Avoid hypothetical questions. Choose direct questions about your organization‘s current internal comms situation. It’s far more valuable to understand what people are actually doing as opposed to what they think they should be doing.
Make sure you gather demographic information at the beginning — like location, business unit, age group, and work type (desk or non-desk, remote or hybrid, etc.). You’ll need this information to segment the questions from above and understand the differences and priorities of various audiences.
Use pulse surveys, which are super short surveys focused on a single specific area for improvement. Pulse surveys are used to help monitor employee happiness, understanding, and engagement quickly and easily.
Here are some sample questions:
Overall, how satisfied are you with communications in your company? (Sample scale: very satisfied, satisfied, neutral, dissatisfied, very dissatisfied)
Compared to a year ago, how would you rate your knowledge of the company, its strategies, and its ongoing accomplishments? (Sample scale: much more knowledgeable, somewhat more knowledgeable, same level of knowledge, somewhat less knowledgeable, much less knowledgeable)
What kinds of company-wide information do you believe are important for you to receive? (Sample topics: overall strategy, products and services, updates about your location/business unit, HR, marketing, competition, key initiatives and projects, success stories, community involvement)
What kind of information regarding your employment do you believe is important for you to receive? (Sample topics: HR, benefits, personal development, compensation, training, personal goals, level of goal achievement)
From which of the following sources do you presently receive most of your information about what’s going on in the company? Rank your top three information sources only. (List current communication channels)
Step 4: Audit your channels and determine next steps
A channel audit is a top-to-bottom review of all your internal communications, which covers all the ways you communicate with your employees. — whether it’s the intranet, employee app, email newsletter, or digital signage.
Do these channels fulfill your organization’s objectives? And how could they be improved?
We’ve put together a template to get you started:
Fill out for each of your existing channels.
Define the channel’s purpose, audience, metrics, and scheduling.
Draw conclusions from all of the data you’ve collected throughout the whole audit process (executive and employee interviews), and make recommendations for next steps to improve the effectiveness of your channels.
Take action today
Do you want to unlock the power of employee communications? The Staffbase platform brings best-in-class communications across all your channels and touchpoints.
