5 ways to tie communications to business results

Communicators, the number crunchers might argue, are right-brain types, fine at producing a creative educational campaign, but not so good at understanding the bottom line.

So, if you want to show the bosses that your work produces real results, measurement is everything, says Angela Sinickas, president of Sinickas Communications.

Speaking at a recent Ragan conference, Sinickas asserted that internal communicators should tie their work to specific results. This will justify their efforts to the bosses and demonstrate their value to the firm.

Some, bruised by budget battles, might be leery about sloshing into the mangroves of business value, but Sinickas suggests such discussions can work to your advantage.

Here are a few of her tips:

1. Ask what employee behaviours needs changing – From the start, get the higher-ups to consider what they’re trying to change in an organisation, so the first draft of a communication plan will match what the company wants.
2. Find out what motivates the employees
3. Consult with members of your potential audience
4. Get the bosses to put a dollar value their problem – Don’t just promise to push the big message. Turn the numbers question around on the bean counters, and get them to explain how serious a problem this is to them.
5. Demonstrate your worth with results – If a campaign succeeds, survey your audience to connect the behaviour change with your campaign. Even if the percentage who credit your campaign is small, your budget is also likely to be small. So your influence will be outsized compared with the results.

“Let’s say the results improve everywhere, but they improve even more where your communication is being used,” Sinickas said, “then you can take credit for the difference in improvement. … That’s an approach that pharmaceutical companies use all the time in clinical trials.”

Make use of the data that’s out there. For example, a communicator might launch a video campaign, but one location doesn’t call the meeting or show the video because the manager didn’t want the down time.

Don’t tear your hair out about bozos who don’t get the message. “They’ve just given you a free pilot study,” Sinickas said. “All you have to do is go back and find out which sites did and didn’t use the communication, and see if the results were any different on those sites.”

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