Poppulo knowledge
How to Guide
7 steps for a great
internal communications
audit and how to use
the results
Contents
Introduction03
What you need to know?
Why conduct communication audits?
Expert vs. Do-it-yourself
04
04
04
Case studies
05
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Children’s National Health System, Granite
Services, and ConAgra
05
Creating an internal communication function from scratch
06
Solution06
A powerful monthly employee newsletter
06
Embedded videos to further enhance engagement
06
Lay the foundation
Set goals
Review past audits
Hold a planning meeting
07
07
07
07
Who to survey in your organization
Senior leaders
Focus groups
Your workforce
Ask the right questions
08
08
08
09
09
Don’t forget your communications channels
Audit your communication channels
Implement channel improvements 11
11
11
Conduct a measurement audit
Do you have the right tools for the job?
13
13
What next?
14
Conclusion15
02 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
Introduction
Nervous about auditing your communications?
Don’t be. You will boost the engagement with your
messages and see great results.
We’ve created a guide taking you through seven steps to completing a communications audit. From what to do first
to what to do with the results.
Communicators from companies such as ConAgra Foods, Con Edison, Granite Services and Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company weigh-in with their experiences.
Plus, we’ve included plenty tips from industry experts, how to do-it-yourself ideas using “guerilla research”, how to
ask the right questions - and who to survey at your organization.
Tim Vaughan
Head of Content
Poppulo
03 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
Step 1
What you need to know?
Why conduct
communication audits?
Doing a top-to-bottom audit of your internal
communications and your channels may seem like a
daunting task, but the payoff can be big.
An audit provides actionable intelligence that will enable
you to improve what you’re doing with the tools you
have. You’ll find out where your communications are
succeeding and where to invest your time to increase
efficiency and impact.
Expert vs. Do-it-yourself
Many communications experts say it’s essential to get
an outside consultant’s objective perspective. Shel Holtz,
of Holtz Communication + Technology, says that you
wouldn’t audit your own taxes. He says an audit may
also highlight issues that are politically awkward to
raise internally, but which an outsider can more easily
raise. And an outsider won’t share an employee’s
understandable reluctance to tell bosses where
communications fall short.
inundating people with all sorts of emails” – a couple
hundred a year – and thereby overwhelming this
communications channel, admits Ann Cameron, director
of creative services. HR was filling up inboxes, and the
company shared every press release with its staff via
email. All this served to weaken email as a channel.
Communicators took a hard look at all this and said,
“Whoa. People don’t want this,” Cameron says. So two
and a half years ago, the company launched what
Cameron calls “a communications quest, recognizing
that we’re all about output and less about outcome.”
The cause got a boost last year when the new chairman
asked for a hard look at internal communications and
how to improve them, “so that gave us a little more
clout.”
Con Edison began by bringing in some consultants and
holding its own focus groups. As of December 2014, the
company had already cut internal email by 20%.
But consultants Steve and Cindy Crescenzo, of Crescenzo
Communications, insist it is possible to do your own audit
– or what they call “guerilla research”. “If you can hire a
professional, do it. But if you can’t hire someone to cut
your lawn or clean your house, does that mean you don’t
do those things?”
It is up to you, based on your budget, resources and
depth of audit needed. “But the goal,” Shel remains
the same: “to produce communications that have a
measurable effect on the business.”
Con Edison, a New York utility, pleaded “very guilty of
04 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
Step 2
Case studies
Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company,
Children’s National Health
System, Granite Services,
and ConAgra
When Sean Williams was with Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company, internal communications initiated an
audit to find out how well the company was getting
across its messages through various channels.
The audit revealed that even though Goodyear is
a global company operating in 22 countries, its
communications were largely focused on the U.S.
The finding led Goodyear to change its content strategy
and feature more stories from its non-U.S. businesses,
says Williams, now owner of Communication AMMO.
The company began celebrating its successes and best
practices and sales tactics worldwide. As a result, its
intranet raked in international traffic, and readership shot
up from 3,600 visits daily to more than 10,000.
This was something we really would not have
done had we not done the audit and seen how
pathetically low our visits were from outside the
U.S. and how much people in the non-U.S. areas
were eager for us to cover what they’re doing.
While you may find out information that may
surprise you or the data may tell a story that
you maybe hadn’t thought of, I think that’s the
exciting part of the process.
– Kristina Larson
At ConAgra Foods, an audit by consultant Shel Holtz
revealed an uncomfortable but essential lesson, says
Sue Christensen, senior director of communication and
external relations. The company’s culture was a noseto-the-grindstone ethos where employees were nervous
about even peeking at the intranet, fearing their bosses
would accuse them of wasting time.
According to Christensen, Holtz told them, “I’ve never
seen a culture where it was almost frowned upon for
people to actually go out into the organization and
seek news and information.” With the audit in hand,
Christensen was able to argue for a new approach
throughout the organization.
Similarly, one hospital, excited about digital tools, had
canceled its print publication in the past, says Holtz, who
worked with the organization. But an audit revealed that
the magazine was the best way to reach busy nurses
and offline employees who didn’t work at computers
all day. They liked to grab the publication on the way
out the door and read it on the bus home. Sometimes
it takes guts to take a hard look at your work, but
remember the point of it all.
– Sean Williams
For professionals dedicated to informing and engaging
a workforce, audits bring huge benefits, according to
Kristina Larson, director of internal communications at
Children’s National Health System.
05 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
You have to go in with the idea that you’re going
to test your team’s practices against whether or
not they get bang for their business value. There
is no other way to look at it.
– Sue Christensen
Creating an internal
communication function
from scratch
With 5,000 employees around the world, a
comprehensive communication strategy was essential for
Poppulo customer Granite Services to ensure employees
stayed connected and had insight into the company’s
vision, goals and strategies, as well as daily news. This
challenge was compounded by the fact that the majority
of employees are non-desk workers without regular
access to a computer.
The first step for Sue Brockett, Communications Manager
for Granite Services, was to conduct a communications
and channel audit. She met with senior leaders,
managers and – most importantly to her – frontline
employees. Sue wanted to learn what was currently
being communicated, and what channels were being
used. She also asked employees what they thought
was working, what could be done better and how they
preferred to get their information.
Solution
and extend the reach and impact of corporate
communications through their email channel, using an
email newsletter that supported the business message
goals.
Along with a template design, Sue says “we updated
the overall content and tone of the communications. It
now includes information that gives employees a view
across the organization – such as what’s happening in
every region and in different functions – along with an
employee recognition section.”
Embedded videos
to further enhance
engagement
During my audit I saw that videos could help
deliver a face-to-face experience, so we
embed video in our emails whenever possible
– automatically creating a more engaging
experience.
Granite Services Interactive Email Newsletter Results
One of her immediate actions was to work with the
Poppulo design team to create email templates that are
branded, streamlined and with standardized formatting
for all corporate emails. The responsive design means
that a mobile workforce can access these emails on
any device. “By funneling all our corporate messages
through a central point we are able to take a more
strategic approach in our communications, while also
ensuring consistent formatting and tone.”
A powerful monthly
employee newsletter
Sue’s audit uncovered an antiquated PDF format
newsletter. She saw an opportunity to modernize
06 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
I was really pleased to implement Poppulo Email
because it gave me so many great capabilities
in our corporate email communications that I
didn’t have before. It also significantly reduced
production time, allowing us to send truly timely
information. Now I can customize the message
to my audience, and track metrics. The reporting
tools are fantastic because I can see not only
how many people are reading the newsletter,
but also what stories they’re reading. This is
really valuable because if I get a story that
gets a lot of clicks, or has a lot of conversation
around it, it gives me a good clue to do more
stories around this topic, and follow up. Our CEO
appreciates the reporting – if he has a message
in there, I can tell him how many employees
read it.
Step 3
Lay the foundation
Set goals
Don’t lurch into the process blindly. Think ahead. “An
audit starts by defining what you’re trying to measure
and the situation that you’re in,” says Ryan Williams of
Tekara.
Set specific goals and communicate those to either your
external auditor, or to your internal team who are tasked
to conduct the audit.
If you are bringing in an expert, Karen Scates,
marketing and PR manager at GinzaMetrics. says
“Remember, you’re not paying for somebody to tell you
everything that’s wrong,” says “You’re paying for the
recommendations and how to fix it. You’re paying for
additional knowledge that you couldn’t get from printing
it out yourself.”
Here’s an example of questions to ask that will help
you set up audit goals:
• Who are our target audiences? Different audience
segments may require different tools and messages.
• What are our goals with each of these audiences?
• Why are we communicating with them?
• What will the benefit to the organization be?
• What are our existing communication tools?
• How much are we currently spending to produce,
distribute and evaluate each of these tools – both
staff time and out-of-pocket costs?
Review past audits
Review past strategic plans or formal communication
plans, says Tekara’s Ryan Williams. Many organizations
skip this step, but it is necessary to reread human
resources, marketing and advertising documents. Make
sure you’re familiar with past audits or research.
Children’s National had done audits in 2008 and 2011,
allowing the organization to look at what had evolved
and improved over those three years, Larson says.
“Certainly the technology has changed, our organization
has changed. What are the new opportunities to better
reach our employees?” – Larson says.
Hold a planning meeting
To launch an audit, Holtz begins with a major planning
meeting to answer questions. Gather stakeholders to
find out what they are looking for in communications.
Holtz asks about priorities of communicators and
leadership and reviews and clarifies the audit phases.
He also goes through the following items:
• Assign roles. Who will be responsible for what?
• Discuss who should be included in interviews and
focus groups.
• Consider locations for these interviews and focus
groups. For instance, how many non-HQ locations
will be included? How many front-line facilities,
distribution centers, sales offices, and regional HQs
will you involve?
• Consider issues that might affect or impede the
audit.
• Review existing research and existing channels to be
reviewed.
• Discuss of HR and IT roles, such as setting up a
separate email account so the auditors can review
all all-employee emails.
• Cover expectations for the audit report.
• Review dates set for audit milestones.
“I’ll find out what their expectations are, what they think
is working, and where they think they’re falling short.” –
Holtz says.
07 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
Step 4
Who to survey in your
organization
Senior leaders
Executive interviews are crucial, yet they’re the one thing
communicators tend to skip when they do their own
research, Steve Crescenzo says. This is because they are
intimidated, don’t feel they are worthy of executives’ time,
or can’t get a spot on the top bosses’ calendars. (Hint:
schedule meetings early. Senior leaders’ meetings tend
to run long, so as the day gets crowded, their secretaries
ruthlessly strike out meetings later on.)
Ryan Williams of Tekara usually starts by
interviewing the chief executive. He asks:
• What does the future look like over the next five
years?
• What are the barriers the organization is likely to
face?
• How can communications solve those problems?
Steve Crescenzo adds that he insists on at least
three or four interviews with key executives. These
interviews can tell you what management wants from
communication, provide insight into how management
thinks the organization communicates, and tell senior
leaders you’re serious about driving the business through
communication, he says.
Don’t be intimidated if the top bosses seem too busy.
Communicators have a bad habit of thinking executives
are too busy trotting the globe and attending important
meetings to sit down to talk, “but they can spare 30
minutes,” Crescenzo says. If the executive cancels, reschedule. Does it happen again? Request another slot.
Keep doing this until you get the time.
Incorporate some basic questions into all his
interviews, Crescenzo says. These include:
• How would you rate communication at the
organization?
• How would you like communications to be in a
perfect world?
• What do you see as the biggest obstacles to
communication?
• What are the hottest issues facing the organization?
• What information do you feel audience members
should have, but aren’t getting?
Focus groups
Bring in focus groups of employees to find out how
communications are working for them. Ask what their
expectations are, what their information needs are.
Focus groups also allow you to gather quotes that drive
home the points of your research.
What do they remember during the last year
that really stood out for you from internal
communications? Is there something internal
communications did that really didn’t work?
– Shel Holtz
Include all your stakeholders, says Larson of Children’s
National, which has commissioned two major audits.
The organization held focus groups with key audiences
segmented by groups, such as physicians, nurses and
non-clinicians. Children’s National operates from 30
locations, so auditors made sure to invite staff from
extended campuses to offer their views.
08 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
Focus groups allow the auditor to hold a conversation
about communications. In one case, Holtz says,
employees at a plant had access to information kiosks
but weren’t using them. Why not? He asked. Because the
news was all about what was going on at headquarters
and had nothing to do with them, they told him.
Cindy Crescenzo once replaced a consultant who left
midway through a project, she says. A partner who was
working with her told her not to worry about the internal
survey. They had already tried one, and it failed. “We
barely had any response,” she recalls being told. She
asked to look over the survey anyway. Turns out it had
102 questions.
Holtz pressed, “If you could sign up to get text messages
to tell you about what’s going on in your plant, and
what’s going on with the brands that you make in this
plant, is that something you’d be interested in?”
No one’s going to fill that out. Of course your
response rate is low. Don’t shoot yourself in the
foot before you begin.
As he recalls, the employees said, “We’d sign up for that
immediately and check it often.”
– Cindy Crescenzo
Focus groups allow for such back and forth. And
they provide a reality check for executives and
communicators’ dreams and perceptions.
Instead, use short questionnaires of five to 10
questions, but survey more often. Like a tweet, it
should be short and to the point.
At an organization where Cindy Crescenzo did an
audit, communicators warned that executives, who had
been at the company for decades, probably would be
a hard sell on new social tools. She tested this out in
focus groups, asking, “Do you think using social and
multimedia tools would help tell internal stories?”
– Ryan Williams.
Surprisingly, it was the senior leaders who were
enthusiastic – and the employees who fretted about
wasting time and retaliation for posting their views.
One executive said, “I think it would push the more open
and honest communications that are needed.” But an
employee offered a counterpoint: “As far as comments,
I think you need to keep it anonymous; otherwise it’s
career suicide.”
Stunned communicators asked if this meant they
shouldn’t try to adopt social tools. Not at all, Cindy
Crescenzo told them. It just meant staffers needed
training, and the organization had to launch a marketing
campaign for the new channels. Better to learn that in
advance, rather than fall flat out of the gate.
Your workforce
Surveys provide hard data across large groups of
employees. But they have to be handled correctly to
provide useful conclusions.
Make sure you get broad representation in surveys
and focus groups, says Sean Williams. And secure
permissions from all the needed authorities. At
Goodyear, a worldwide company, communicators once
neglected to get a German unit’s union approval for the
survey, so the union told employees not to participate.
Yet when the audit comes out, the first thing people
ask in a global company is, “What do my people say?
I understand the big picture, I want to know about my
plant, my country, my region, the people who are in my
business unit,” says Sean Williams of Communication
AMMO.
Ask the right questions
Don’t muddy your survey with jargon or leading
questions. Often communicators writing surveys will list
five or ten channels and ask, “Which do you prefer to
get your information on?” Sean Williams says. Instead,
ask about past preferences and measure behavior.
Find out which communications vehicles your employees
use – and how frequently. Which channels do they use
daily? A couple times a week? Less than once a week?
Never?
09 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
“Then you can get to what people are actually doing,
and not what they think they should be doing,” Sean
Williams says.
Cindy Crescenzo offers an example of how to rewrite
a question to make it neutral:
Bad example:
“We have recently redesigned our intranet to be a
world-class site. Do you find the site easy to navigate?”
comprehension as facilitated by the supervisor.
Try asking, “To what extent does your supervisor help
put company performance into context for you?”
Ryan Williams suggests turning your communication
objectives into a questionnaire “you must use outcomes
to do this”, he says, and mixing questions that ask about
feelings, behaviors and demographic descriptors. This
allows for interpreting and generalizing your findings.
For example:
Good example:
“Is the redesigned intranet site easy to navigate?”
Christensen at ConAgra Foods asks this: “Are these
communications vehicles useful to you in getting your job
done?”
Your survey and other information-gathering must do
more than measure channels, says Sean Williams of
Communication AMMO. Measure knowledge and
• How many emails do you send daily?
• What age range do you belong to?
• How do you feel about the amount of email you
receive?
Some internal communicators check the pulse of the
organization as an audit progresses, using singlequestion surveys and questionnaires in employee
newsletters.
Step 5
Don’t forget your
communications channels
Audit your communication
channels
are getting in a separate box, removed from personal
emails.
At one retail company, Holtz says:
A channel review is a top-to-bottom inventory of your
means of communication, whether they are the intranet,
print publications or email. An audit reviews all output
and researches how many times messages are sent,
through what channels, how often IC interact with
employees or employees interact with IC, where and
when they do it, and why they do it, Tekara’s, Ryan
Williams says.
Did the communications fulfill the organization’s
objectives? Did IC get a higher performance, or did
IC keep people safer on the factory floor or in the
infectious disease ward of a hospital?
Review communications and information. Your
channel review should also include a deep dive
into the intranet, any collaboration platforms and
a review of all print publications.
– Shel Holtz
For those trying to do this on their own, this is where
you may need to find internal expertise, Tekara’s, Ryan
Williams says. There’s someone in finance who can help
you calculate your efficiency. Others in HR might be
able to help you understand your impact on employee
engagement. Marketing can help you understand the
reputational impact of your external programs.
As a part of this process, Holtz recommends an inbox
analysis. Set up an email account where the person
doing the auditing can receive all the emails employees
We found emails going to store managers
represented the key chokepoint for
communication. Store managers had a lot to do.
They had literally dozens of emails a day saying
here’s something you need to communicate to
your employees.
Employee communications, HR, operations, executives
and others were bombarding the managers with email,
meaning managers were missing essential emails.
Implement channel
improvements
The channel review maps out and identifies chokepoints
in the information flow, and the auditor will offer a
revised model of how information should flow if the
organization adopts his or her recommendations.
A qualified auditor has the expertise to recommend
changes or point the way to new technologies and
practices. If you do your review internally, you may have
to research these matters.
At ConAgra Foods, an audit included a communications
cost analysis, Christensen says. The company asked, “Of
the channels that are most valuable to people – or least
valuable – what are we spending on putting those things
out?”
11 | 7 steps for a great internal communications audit and how to use the results
It also helped the company identify areas that served
as barriers. It was an eye-opener that employees
were afraid even to spend company time looking at
the intranet – a matter that never would have been
discovered without an audit.
We were very careful to teach people how to use
it in getting their work done versus just sharing
information.
The intranet portal had been around since 2004, and
its Yammer network was neglected. The company
revamped the portal and integrated it with Yammer,
which it relaunched among its employees. ConAgra
Foods went to a user-generated news model, with
employees encouraged to write up their own news,
rather than communicators chasing stories.
Nowadays, more plant workers than salaried employees
use Yammer for collaborating and sharing information.
Communicators were redeployed to train people on the
platform, which grew from about 1,000 users to 11,000,
or two-thirds of the people in the company who had
email addresses. Engagement now runs at 7,000-8,000
people per day on the platform.
– Sue Christensen
At Children’s National, an audit brought the
recommendation that the organization report more
general health care news in addition to company news,
Larson says. Staff wanted this.
Healthcare is one of the most rapidly changing
industries at this point in time. That was really
important to them.
– Kristina Larson
Step 6
Conduct a measurement audit
One step that many communicators forget to include
in their audits is a review of their measurement
strategy to give an accurate understanding of
engagement levels, and also insight that can prove
their business value to stakeholders.
In Poppulo’s Inside IC Global Survey, conducted with
over 700 professionals from around the globe, 95% of
respondents agree that measurement is important or
very important.
However, one in two respondents said that measurement
was the activity on which they spent the least time. Most
likely because they do not have access to meaningful
metrics. This results in measurement continuing to
present a real challenge to communicators.
Though these challenges are very real for
communicators - our survey results also make it clear
those who spend more time on measurement report
greater success.
Do you have the right
tools for the job?
Include a review of your access to measurement in
your audit. More than 50% of communicators agreed
or strongly agreed they do not have the right tools and
resources to do their job.
Many communicators and organizations do not realize
easy-to-use real time measurement tools are available.
Poppulo Analytics is the only software on the market that
can measure communication reach and impact across
all channels, email, intranet, video and enterprise social
networks.
Step 7
What next?
Your audit can shape your communications for several
years. But it doesn’t have to end with that one major
report. You can augment the findings with your own
ongoing bite-sized bits of research.
In the two-year gap between major audits, Goodyear used its
online polling feature and periodically asked questions such as:
Do you understand company strategy?
Sean Williams
After town halls, his staff of five or six would split up the
list of attendees and call up every one of them for quick
feedback.
That way, when the bosses asked if the message had
gotten through, Sean Williams could say: “Yes, town halls
work, and here’s how we know it.”
Alternatively, communicators could establish that versus
three months ago, people didn’t feel as well-connected
to the strategy as they used to. It could pay off to refresh
relevant stories, or repost the clip of the CEO speaking
at an analysts’ conference.
Conclusion
Whether you bring in an outside auditor or do your
own review, the process can raise sharp issues, but
it provides lasting benefits to your communications.
Plan ahead. Ask the right questions. Involve the right
people. Be open-minded about your channel review.
And above all, prepare for a renaissance in your
communications.
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