Engagement isn’t just a buzzword. Research has found that companies with a culture of engaged employees who work together for a common purpose simply do better.
According to Gallup, companies with high employee engagement are more 21 percent more productive and 22 percent more profitable than those that aren’t.
Knowing that is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out how best to improve your company’s culture and spur collaboration so employees are as engaged as they can possibly be.
Communication and Engagement
Companies have tried lots of ways to keep employees engrossed in their overall goals, some of them at great expense: free food, company cars, in-office gyms, reward programs, flextime, bonuses, and so on.
But one of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to keep employees engaged is through effective internal communication. Harris Poll found that employees who feel that their companies communicate effectively are far more likely to also rate their employers’ reputations as good and say their best days are ahead. Those sorts of optimistic sentiments are clear signs of a strong company culture.
How Data and Analytics Drive Collaboration
Even the best company leaders and communicators have a hard time effectively connecting with employees if they’re in the dark, trying whatever they can to get employees’ attention. That’s why gathering data and analytics about internal communications is so vital.
In PoliteMail’s 2016-2017 survey of 526 communications professionals in companies large and small, 76 percent said measuring communications efforts helps them engage employees better.
More engaged employees are more likely to collaborate and listen to executives and communicators’ messages in emails, videos, newsletters and other types of outreach. As writer Francois Pienaar describes in on CMS Wire, it’s a “virtuous cycle.” More engagement means more collaboration and better communication, which leads to even more engagement.
Fixing What’s Broken
Even with all that evidence, companies aren’t all necessarily committed to measurement. Most respondents in the PoliteMail survey said that their internal communications measurement budgets won’t increase in 2017 or that they don’t have a budget at all. As such, more than half of communicators are unsatisfied with their methods of measurement.
To start that “virtuous cycle,” organizations will have to take the leap of investing resources into measuring their communications with employees. The benefits are crystal clear: a thriving, collaborative culture.
Learn more about how communicators are measuring internal communications by downloading PoliteMail’s 2016-2017 Internal Communications Survey Results.
