Focused Diagnostics • Practical Solutions • Business Results
Angela Sinickas is a widely-published author. She has written a university textbook, book chapters, white papers, and regular columns for Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management, Best Practice Measurement, and Total Communications Measurement, as well as IABC's Communication World and many others.
With so many change initiatives currently underway, it’s important to measure how they’re being received. But don’t fall into the trap of measuring just what management wants to measure as executives may not be focused on the right issues to expedite the changes they’re hoping to achieve.
In 1992 and 2004, Angela Sinickas wrote articles refuting the common misperceptionbased on well publicized but highly flawed research designthat supervisors are employees’ preferred source of information on all business topics. A look at her survey database showing results for the last five years shows that supervisors are now a distant third choice behind intranets and publications.
Surveys may be the favorite method of measuring engagement, but focus groups can be an equally powerful tool for identifying and fixing barriers to employee commitment.
Trust and credibility shouldn’t be the only factors determining which sources of information we use. Just because we believe what someone tells us doesn’t mean we want them to do the telling.
Learn how to take a series of “snapshot” measurements that need little time to conduct, but still provide meaningful, useful metrics to quantify the effectiveness of your work.
Too often speeches are measured with satisfaction survey questions; instead, we should focus on improvements in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that are changed by hearing the speech.
Many communication measures can be captured and tracked without having to spend any money or taking too much time, including content analysis, reading grade level analysis, and mining more data out of past surveys.
Read Audience-Free Measurement: High-Quality Metrics without Surveys »
Once you figure out the total “demand” for communication, you can tell how many individuals you’ll need to supply communication support.
Read Industry Trends on Staffing Communication Departments »
