Your intranet is rolled out across the business and you’re posting regular updates. How confident are you that the right people are seeing and acting on these updates? 60% of internal communications professionals do not measure their internal comms efforts. If you’re in this position, you’re not alone, but let’s change that!
In this article, we’ll explore the most important internal comms metrics that will help you to monitor content performance and engagement across your intranet software, giving you a true reflection of the impact of all the work you’re putting in.
Here’s why you should be monitoring internal comms metrics
Measurement is key to understanding progress. Having the tools to collect internal comms metrics is one thing, but knowing which insights will prove the impact of your efforts is just as important.
Just as you should be reporting on the performance of customer-facing content each month, you should be doing the same for your employee comms. An engaged workforce is more productive, follows correct procedure and can provide a stronger customer experience. All of these can have a financial impact on the business, so regularly monitoring and reporting on your internal comms metrics is crucial.
The key metrics within your intranet analytics
You may or may not have intranet analytics built into your internal comms platform or employee engagement app already. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to have to pinpoint the data you need from a dashboard, so we’re here to help break it down. Your internal comms metrics will span all areas of your intranet, so splitting it up into categories will help you to focus on one theme at a time.
Content creation
Metrics you can access:
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Content created across different areas of your platform
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How does content creation stack up against last month?
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Top authors and contributors in different areas of the platform
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Which departments or individuals created the most content?
Explore these internal comms metrics to understand the diversity of voices and faces on your intranet and identify the biggest contributors. If you’re working in an organisation that is spread across multiple sites, use your intranet analytics to see if the updates from the CEO are getting any traction from those who wouldn’t know them if they passed them in the street.
For example, colleagues working in a retail space would be more likely to know the regional manager’s name and face than the CEO’s. Experiment with targeting communications to different business areas with an ‘author’ that they would recognise, increasing the likelihood that they’ll read and engage with it.
Oak’s top tip:
Look at social media, there are content creators everywhere. The value of user-generated content is just as prominent in an internal landscape as an external one. We pay attention to people who are like us, so assigning ‘Content Champions’ throughout the business as spokespeople for their team, project or function can help to diversify the voices on your platform. This will also ensure that each department gets a fair share of voice, keeping colleagues informed about what’s new for each business unit.
Content effectiveness
Most valuable internal comms metrics:
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Unique and total views on each content type and area
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Most-visited areas and content with the highest traffic and engagement
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Article read time and video watch time vs engagement
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Granular visibility of which employees have seen and engaged with each piece of content, including clicks, comments and shares
These are the insights we all want to know! Whose content performed best and did it get the right eyes on it?
When your intranet metrics go as granular as each content type, you can see how many individual people viewed it and how many returned to read it again. You can also filter these metrics by department, job title or region which will give you even better insights into whether the right people are seeing the right things on your platform.
Next, go beyond the views alone and monitor engagement with various content types. Anyone can click to open an article or video, but it takes that little extra effort to comment or react. Giving your people the chance to share their feedback or support is a great way to gather employee sentiment as well as overall engagement. Employee sentiment is something that you can drill down into per content type. It’s probably most useful on cultural or company-wide initiatives, or when you’re proactively encouraging feedback in surveys and polls.
Oak’s top tip
With these granular insights, you can see exactly if the right people are seeing the right updates. For example, why would warehouse workers need to know about a new sales software? They don’t, so there’s no point putting an update about this in front of them.
Instead, think about how you can streamline comms delivery so that, as per our example, warehouse employees only see what they need to see, as does the sales team. Oak’s Smart Delivery enables you to select audience segments for each piece of content, so everything they see is relevant to them, without boring the rest of the workforce with updates that don’t matter to them.
Viewing patterns and user engagement
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Peak views on days and times throughout the week
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Individual and departmental usage and login frequency
Knowing when your colleagues are most active will be key to timing when your updates go live. Having insights as to how often your people log into the platform will also be extremely valuable. If your intranet analytics show that 50% of people are logging in daily, but 30% are logging in weekly and 20% come even less regularly, you need to think about how you reach those who aren’t always active. How can you encourage them to visit the platform more often? Our customers have had great success with automated newsletters that are zero extra work to you, but will pull together a round-up of all news missed in a specified time period, so you can rest assured you’ve done what you can to reach those less active.
If deskless colleagues are only checking in before they start their 8am shift, but you’re publishing updates at 11am, they’re not going to see it until the next day. Plus, if more news is published in the meantime, your update will be way down the priority list. This is different for desk-based workers who can pop in and out of the intranet throughout their working day, so it’s important to understand who is logging in and when.
Of course, the data will vary per industry and job type, so keep a close eye on the most popular times and plan your content accordingly.
Oak’s top tips
Be mindful of device access and optimise your content for mobile and desktop where relevant. When you have important, in-the moment news that needs to be seen immediately, you can use tools like notices and push notifications to alert people wherever they are.
Again, consider tailoring your comms to each audience segment, so your frontline colleagues are in the loop before they start their shift. Schedule posts ahead of time so that you don’t need to log in at the crack of dawn to publish an update. Let the system know when to go live with each content type and to which group of people, then let it manage that automatically for you.
When login rates look stagnant or people are logging in less often, consider running a campaign or social initiative to get people excited about the intranet again. No matter how shy people can be, they always appreciate recognition for the work and effort they put into their job. An employee recognition applet or a more formal employee awards initiative can do wonders for engagement. Severfield launched the ‘Severfield Way’ on their platform, so that every time a note of recognition is sent, it populates an intranet page where everyone can see what their colleagues have been acknowledged for, alongside the corresponding company value. Within four months of launch it had received over 70 nominations!
Search trends
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Popular and new search terms each month
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Identify navigation issues
Never underestimate the power of a word cloud. It’s a great way to visualise internal comms metrics such as search terms, with the most common ones visualised larger than others. When looking at search trends, there are a few takeaways to consider.
If people are spending a lot of time looking around the site and then deciding to search for things that should be easily accessible, it’s time to review your site navigation. Optimising this will streamline the user journey, giving them more time back to get on with their job and as such, become more productive.
Oak’s top tips
Ask your people where they’re struggling! If every month you see the same search terms appear but you know there is content on the site to answer their queries, do some internal research. Understand how colleagues are using the intranet. Are they using it like Google, just searching and not looking for things, or are they trying to find things but struggling to see where they are? If it’s the latter, use insights from these discussions to help you refresh your site navigation so that it’s crystal clear.
Each department will have different tools they need day to day. If it’s a long and arduous journey around the intranet to find these resources or links to third-party platforms, of course they’re going to use the search tool instead. How about linking through to a personalised selection of third-party tools from the user’s homepage so that it’s just a click away?
Employee feedback
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Understand which areas of your intranet they really love
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Gain insights on employee sentiment and perceptions
There are many ways to gather employee feedback and if you do it within your intranet platform, you’ll have easy access to all of the data! All of your survey insights and employee engagement metrics will be housed within the platform so that you can benchmark and chart progress across each measure with every survey that goes out.
Oak’s top tip
When creating employee surveys, you can launch them to certain areas of the business, so you can gather specific insights, for example, on job satisfaction amongst frontline restaurant staff, or whether all remote employees feel adequately supported by their manager. Tailoring surveys to each internal audience segment will not only give you deeper insights, it will help you to monitor the percentage of your workforce who are engaging with the survey. Even if it’s all anonymous, it can help to see generally how much of each employee type has responded.
Cross reference your internal comms metrics with wider business outcomes
We love the convenience of having such a breadth of data and insights at our fingertips. Oak’s AI-generated monthly reports provide more context and recommendations from your intranet analytics and they conveniently land in your intranet presentation-ready each month. Here’s how you can take things a step further to prove the broader business impact by comparing your internal comms metrics with other company data.
Recommended reading: How much do you know about intranet ROI?
Impact of effective onboarding on employee retention and turnover
Onboarding that is job-specific and tailored to locations and languages will resonate so much better than the dreaded, dull company-wide introductions of yesteryear we’ve all sat through at some point in our career.
Effective onboarding can have a direct impact on whether employees will stay on at the company both during and beyond their probationary period. Take Burger King UK, for example. Since they launched tailored, engaging digital onboarding via their award-winning employee app, ‘BK Hub’, they have seen a 32% reduction in employee turnover which can be partially attributed to the improved onboarding experience.
Turning views into actions
Having 95% viewership on an article is no mean feat and getting eyes on the page is certainly half the battle. The next step is to understand whether viewers did what was asked of them after reading it.
For example, if you shared an article about new uniforms and asked all restaurant staff to submit their clothing sizes, your measure of success would be how many people confirmed their sizing for the new uniform.
Perhaps your employee survey closes next week and you do one last push to encourage more people to take part. Your measure of success would be if you got any further survey completions before the deadline.
Increased productivity through time saved
Think back to before you launched or upgraded your intranet. Now, think about how you have streamlined the user experience through navigation upgrades to ensure your people can get where they need to be within seconds.
Consider the amount of time saved! The minutes of information searching each day can add up over weeks, months and across teams. The more you can streamline the digital experience, the more time can be better spent on the day job, improving productivity, increasing outputs and keeping management happy.
Ready to level up your internal comms metrics?
We hope this article has been helpful for you to identify the best bits of your intranet analytics and how to interpret your internal comms metrics to get the insights that matter most.
Read on to see some FAQ’s that our team are often asked, but if you’re ready to dive deeper into intranet analytics, download our ultimate guide to measuring the effectiveness of your internal comms now!
Frequently asked questions:
We’ve compiled some of the questions our team get asked most often and provided answers that we hope will help you too.
Q. What are the most-searched HR topics?
A. The truth is, the most-searched HR topics will vary depending on the type of organisation you’re in. Fortunately, with Oak’s smart analytics tools, you can visualise the most common search terms each month to identify what your people are looking for most often. You can also use this data to identify content gaps. For example, if people are searching for ‘volunteering days’ but you’ve not yet officially launched the initiative, you know that the focus for next month will be to add more content to the intranet to inform people about this.
You can also use search data to improve your intranet navigation for a streamlined user experience. For example, if people are searching for ‘book time off’, why not consider adding a quick link to their homepage in clear view that they can click on without having to type in the search bar?
Search data will also highlight the most popular search terms each month and identify any changes or trends. You may be able to correlate internal events or announcements with search terms to dig deeper into why things have changed.
As a matter of privacy and out of respect for each individual, we do not show who has searched for a specific term, so there are no awkward questions asked around why someone searched for their healthcare cover details, sick leave or parental leave policies, for example.
Q. How do I measure whether employees are reading our announcements?
A. For every piece of content that is published on your site, you can drill down into the detail to see who has viewed it, how often and when. You can also filter your metrics by department or office/branch to tally up unique and total views per business unit or location.
When creating must-read content such as updated policies or important company-wide announcements that everyone needs to know, you can set them as mandatory reads. This means that each user has to tap to confirm that they have read and understood these updates.
For each content piece set as ‘must-read’, the author and specified admins can see who hasn’t yet read them and can follow up with those individuals to ensure they take action. Plus, automated email reminders can be set up as an extra nudge to check the document.
We would only recommend using mandatory reads for super-important updates so that they maintain their status of importance and can be distinguished from day-to-day, ‘nice to see’ content.
Q. How do I track intranet usage across departments?
A. There are a whole host of ways you can track intranet usage across departments. The first is with our in-platform analytics which enables you to drill down into how many people in certain office or branch locations, or certain job types, have seen various parts of your intranet.
Say you wrote an article on the new uniform ordering process.
You would expect all staff who need to wear a uniform to have seen the article. Your user engagement data will show you if the customer-facing roles are those that have the highest viewership. Dig deeper into your viewers and filter them by job title, site location or department name to check who has seen your update, which will help you re-target the comms at those who have not yet seen it.
If you simply need to know whether all members of your department have been on the platform recently, your analytics dashboard can highlight who has or has not signed in recently. If new processes and procedures have come into action and been shared on your intranet, this might help you to ascertain whether people have seen recent updates.
Q. What’s the best way to track internal newsletter performance?
A. With Oak’s in-built analytics dashboard, you can track performance of your automated, personalised AI-generated newsletter all in one place. This takes the guesswork out of your measurement and keeps all of your data within the platform.
Filter by days, weeks or months to explore newsletter open trends, find out which content types are attracting the most attention and segment your metrics to see how each department or job type interacts with your newsletters.
Oak’s AI-generated newsletter is an intelligent round-up of the recent content that each user has not yet seen, bringing all of the information that’s relevant to them and their job, into their inbox in one personalised email. Once they click through on a link within your newsletter, their ‘view count’ will be added to the data for the associated page, document or post on your intranet platform.