Transcript No Slide Title

Evaluating Success
Measuring the impact of
communication
12th October 2006
HarknessKennett
What I’ll cover
 Using existing research
 Understand what your peers are doing
 Identify which media are delivering results
 Specific research tools
 Using research to
–
influence the planning process and drive the change
agenda
–
refine the business case for enhanced investment
HarknessKennett
HarknessKennett
● One of the leading independent internal
communication consultancies
● Working with Global, European and UK clients
● Our work spans the whole consultancy process from
strategy to implementation
● 82% of our work comes from existing clients or word
of mouth recommendations
HarknessKennett
Clients
HarknessKennett
So why bother?
HarknessKennett
Why measure?
Improve leadership
communication
Identify best practice
Ensure that
messages are getting
through
Check that we are adding
value
Find out how our
“customers” (leadership?)
view our service
Assess the impact of
communication on
performance
Evaluating
communication
Find out how our
“consumers” (employees?)
view our service
Start the engagement
process
Find out if communication is
influencing the way people
behave
Providing a temperature
check on key change
programmes
Assess levels of
engagement
Determine which
channels add most
value
HarknessKennett
In summary, research helps to
 Build the business case
 Balance organisation vs employee needs
 Understand where to focus resource
 Track interventions
 Reduce duplication
 Build consensus before introducing new initiatives
HarknessKennett
Communication profile
Silent
listeners
45%
Disconnected
64%
Connected
25%
Loose
cannons
15%
(source: Ipsos Mori)
HarknessKennett
existing research
HarknessKennett
Communicating change
Who do employees want to hear from?







Their supervisor
CEO
Senior manager
Executive Manager
Department head
Change management team member
Change management team leader
31%
25%
11%
11%
9%
7%
6%
(source: Prosci’s Best Practices in Managing Change report, 2003)
HarknessKennett
benchmarking
HarknessKennett
Benchmarking
Pros
Cons
• Can provide authoritative
data
• Engage leaders
• Assess impact of change
over time
• Highlight changing needs
• Track return on investment
• Can point to ways to ensure
more effective leadership of
change
• Identifies audience needs,
and any conflicts
• Difficulty of comparing like
with like
• Unless processes
understood little gain in
understanding
• Managers sometimes overly
focused on external
benchmarks rather than
internal issues/change
• Often guide to areas to
explore further rather than
offering direct solutions
HarknessKennett
I/C team size and budget – example
N/o
people
ABN AMRO
100,000
N/o IC individuals
N/o
group-wide excl
countries
central team
60
60
N/o
IC individuals
at group level
Budgets excl.
labour costs
10 including a
Corp Comms Director
AMEC
ATOS ORIGIN
Cadbury Schweppes
44,000*
40
12+
(22,000
soon)
(reduced
soon)
(excl cont.europe
which is being
sold)
47,000
40
40
50,000
200
Approx 100
(int&ext comms)
2
including
Corp Comms director
Approx £500k for UK’s
7,500 employees
£67 per person
£100k for group’s
44,000 people
£2 per person
UK I/C
budget
Group I/C
budget
£150k (€220k)
6
including
I/C director
£960k (€1.4) 2 yrs ago
for group’s 47,000 people
£3 per person - from £21
Group I/C
budget
3.5 including Head of
Internal & Change Comms
Unavailable
KPMG LLP – UK
100,000
144
144
2 channel owners
< £500k for UK’s
100,000 people
< £5 per person
Thales
58,000
50
200
Between 5 -10
including
Corp Comms Dir
Group amount unknown
£50-100k for the UK Aerospace Division’s
1,200 people
> £42 per person
Virgin Atlantic
25,000
26
Within Virgin
Atlantic 8 ICs
looking after
8,500 employees
Little need for resource at
group level. 1 group comms
channel owner exists.
Vodafone
60,000
20
9 including Head of
28 - 60
Group I/C
UK I/C
budget
UK I/C
Division
budget
Group amount unknown
> £500k for Virgin Atlantic’s
I/C business
8,500 people excluding conferences
budget
> £59 per person
£2 - 3 million for
Vodafone’s 60,000 people
£33 - 50 per person
Group I/C
budget
HarknessKennett
Internal communication team structure example
Director of corp comms
I/C manager
Assistant director of PR
PR manager
Corp comms assistant
HarknessKennett
Internal communication team structure – example 2!
There are 6 global divisional
comms directors
There are 5 I/C reps at group level
Vice President of
Corporate Communications
Divisional Comms Director -
Corporate Communications
Director UK
Notably, xyz has a higher number of Comms Directors than
other participating global companies (ie by country & division)
Communications Director
abc Division
UK
I/C Officer
Abc Division UK
There are I/C
representatives for each
of the 60 countries
UK
MD
Head of I/C UK
Head of I/C
bcg Division UK
Country
Division
I/C
Ext comms
(denotes dotted reported line)
HarknessKennett
Example – in-house ‘benchmark’
Employee Engagement
Survey Statement:
I understand the plans for the
development of our business
for the future
I am confident that widget co
is moving in the right direction
Team
Manager
Team
Manager
after
event
Manager
Manager
after
event
76% &
59%
94.6%
64%
83.9%
67% &
62%
94.6%
66%
90.3%
HarknessKennett
Research tools
HarknessKennett
Planning and change
Feedback
Will it lead to change?
Planning to use data
What are goals?
Data collection and analysis
Process of data collection
Techniques for data collection and analysis
Source: Nadler, Feedback and organisation development
HarknessKennett
Model evaluation process
Set up steering
group
Pilot
Interpretation
Interviews with
senior managers
Collection data
Feedback
Group
discussions
Analysis
Action planning
Development of
evaluation tools
and review
available data
Group
discussions
Implementation
and re-evaluation
HarknessKennett
Strengths and weaknesses of some different
quantitative data collection tools
Tool
Strength
Weaknesses
• Structured questionnaire; fixed
response (eg. Likert scales)
• Fast to complete
• Easy to make comparisons
• Enables more complex analysis (eg.
clustering of themes)
• Impersonal
• Survey fatigue
• Provide limited interpretative data
• Telephone or face to face structured
interviews
• Combines personal touch with more
rigorous data
• Enables targeting of key groups
• Creates opportunity to probe
• Time intensive
• Can be perceived as subject to bias
• Group polling
(structured and facilitated discussion
with instant response audience polls)
• Combines hard data with qualitative
data
• Creates energy and engaging
sessions for participants
•
•
•
•
Subject to negative bias
Perceptions of cost
Time consuming
Limited probing
HarknessKennett
Strengths and weaknesses of some different
qualitative data collection tools
Tool
Strength
Weaknesses
• One to one interview
•
•
•
•
•
Demonstrates concern
More flexible
More empathetic
Allows for probing of opinion
Allows more in-depth understanding
of perceptions and issues
• Permits discussion around solutions
• More time consuming
• Subject to interviewer and
respondent bias
• Critical incident interviews
(one to one interview exploring the
detailed management of
encounters/incidents)
• High insight
• Illustrates behaviour linkages/casual
relationships
• More bias free than general
interview
• Difficulty of finding representative
interviews
• Focus group
• Flexible and adaptable
• Starts the engagement process
• Subject to negative bias
• Time consuming to organise
HarknessKennett
But look at feelings as well as facts….
Focus groups, workshops and interviews can:
 Add depth and understanding
 Deal with sensitive topics
 Look at specific groups of people
 Develop solutions with employees
 Be action oriented eg. Speak Up Sessions
HarknessKennett
HarknessKennett
What happens if you get it right?
Critical factors
What you get
Clear purpose
Alignment of evaluation to business strategy
Information addresses purpose
Focus for future action
Key people engaged
Higher response; more likelihood of follow up
Collection
Higher response; easier to analyse
Analysis
Holistic view; how communication and other functions impact
performance
Interpretation
Insight
Feedback
Commitment to action, engaged leadership
Action
Improvements in the business/organisation
HarknessKennett
Tips for effective research
1.
Measure what matters
2.
Gain sponsorship
3.
Understand the background
4.
Assess the desire for Research
5.
Get to the nut of the problem
6.
Manage expectations
7.
Make efforts to get a good response rate
8.
Tell people about the survey, but let them talk too
9.
Be ready to act on the findings
10. Sort out your administrative support
HarknessKennett
More information
James Harkness
HarknessKennett
+44 (0)1483 222730
www.harknesskennett.com
HarknessKennett