BEHIND THE IC SCENES BLOG

How to organise an internal communication audit in your company? Which steps should be taken and what you may achieve following them?

What is the IC audit?
Let’s start at the very beginning. The matter of the IC audit is to check the condition of the communications in your company. Without it, creating any IC strategy may be unsuccessful. After checking, e.g. where you’re with your communications, how your tools and processes work and what kind of changes your employees expect in the internal comms, you’re able to develop more successful IC strategy. That’s why it’s so important to start your work from this check.

How does the IC audit look like?
There are my 3 big audit steps:
1.    desk research
2.    qualitative and quantitative research
3.    conclusions

Let’s find out more about these all these steps.
1.    Desk research
Firstly, you need to collect essential documents and data that will help you get to know your company and its communications situation better. Check the business strategy to look for the strategic business goals, ask for the HR, PR or EB strategies or meet with the representatives of these teams to discuss what they plan. You should also analyse former research, e.g. former IC audits, employee engagement surveys, etc. and all the IC process if written. Remember about analysing the IC tools and their statistics – check what works and what needs to be improved. At this stage of the IC audit I use my tables that help me assess IC tools quickly and in many dimensions.  
This step is very important to find out as much as possible about a current state of the IC in your company to understand more and to prepare you to take the next actions. 

2.    Qualitative and quantitative research
The second step is much longer and more important. I conduct 2 kinds of research here. The first one is the qualitative one. Talks with employees are crucial here. You may organise individual interviews (IDI) or a focus group discussion (FGI). It’s a good moment to ask questions, look for interesting insights and opinions and observe employees’ behaviours during such meetings. After collecting many useful opinions, it’s easier to prepare the second part of this audit. To run quantitative research, you need to prepare questions to be asked in a paper (PAPI) on an electronic survey (CAWI). You’ll need to prepare a promotional campaign to inform your employees about this research and engage them to take part in it, but also to explain them what you plan to do with the results and how each employee may influence the changes in the firm communications.    

3.    Conclusions
For each of these steps of conducting the internal communication audit, you need to write down insights in a report that will help you assess the communication in your company. These results are crucial to build the IC strategy that should be the response to all the gathered data. It’s the best way to improve the IC in your company. After the audit, you’ll exactly know its strengths and weaknesses.

If you would like to present your ideas on how to organise an IC audit, feel free to send me your article. There is a lot of space on my blog for your guest posts to share your knowledge and experience with others.
 

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