Cynosura

Communications Audit

Your communications audit is an important part of the planning process for the strategic plan.  It should not be done in isolation but should be part of the larger comprehensive data gathering process.⁽¹⁾

What do you want to know?

• What communications channels are being used, formal and informal?⁽²⁾
• Are your current communications channels under-communicating or over-communicating (information overload)?
• What information is being communicated and what is the quality of that information like?
• Are the messages accurately relaying the information you wish to give?
• Are there any constraints or bottlenecks⁽³⁾
• What feedback are you receiving and does it include negative/positive feedback, possibly with incidents or experiences outlined?

There are some other basic questions you may want to ask yourself:

• Why communicate in the first place?⁽⁴⁾
• What do you want to communicate?
• Who communicates?
• Is everyone receiving the information?
• Do they understand it?
• Which communications channels are most effective?
• In what direction/s is communication taking place – downwards, upwards, and sideways or matrix?

Audit should tell you

• Who you are talking to
• Who you should be talking to
• What people are talking about
• Where people get their information.

Degree of communication taking place

In any organisation the amount of communication taking place will vary.  As part of your audit you should be able to gain an understanding of the maturity of the communications methods for individual channels or collectively. 

1. Nil – no communications process is taking place or being encouraged
2. Ad hoc – at its most basic level the communication taking place is unstructured and probably has no resources allocated to the communications process
3. Planned – this is where some management of communications is taking place, there are some resources allocated and some responsibility assigned
4. Embedded – the communications process has been built with care and best practices are being followed
5. Embedded and evaluated – the communications process is following best practices, is being evaluated regularly and fine tuning taking place to ensure that it functions effectively.

Doing the audit

If you have thought about the questions raised above, then you will have a much clearer picture as to what it is you want to achieve.

It could be that you wish to undertake an internal communications audit only, or an external communications audit.  Or it could be that you want to look at your overall communications package both internal and external.  You should decide this at an early stage because it will affect who you talk to and the scope of the audit. 

Be very careful not to make assumptions before you start the audit.  It is easy for managers to say that such and such a communications channel is working well.  Without investigating the channel and gathering some hard data you cannot be sure.

Things to consider

• If undertaking a survey, what will be the sample size; are you planning to ask everyone, a random selection or invite everyone who wants to participate⁽⁵⁾
• How are you going to motivate people to respond?⁽⁶⁾
• How will you disseminate and collect the data?
• Who will write the questions? – make sure it is someone who knows how to develop questions
• How many questions will you ask? – too many and it won’t be returned
• Always test the questions on a small sample group first; this will help to ensure that the questions are properly understood
• Who will analyse and interpret the data?
• What will you do with the data once analysed?
• What follow up actions will you take?

Audit tools

There are a number of audit tools available as part of the audit process.  These are:

• Surveys – or questionnaires.  They are good for collecting quantitative data across a large sample.  Typically a survey will last 20-30 minutes
• Interviews – useful in both internal and external communications audits, they allow you to gather a lot of qualitative data, including information about perceptions and opinions which will help you to identify potential bottleneck points.  Interviews can last up to an hour
• Focus groups – drawing groups of up between six and twelve people together in a carefully moderated discussion.  They allow you listen to a conversation where information is teased out through one person responding to the comments of another.  Focus groups last several hours
• Network analysis – attempts to look at the methods for exchanging information.  It asks individuals who they communicate with and the purpose of the communication.  The resulting network structural chart can help to highlight bottlenecks or lines of fast communication.  This lasts about 20-30 minutes
• Critical Incident Analysis – usually in interview format, it asks staff to describe positive and negative experiences with communications; it lasts about 30 minutes
• Document review – all communications documents are reviewed.

Identifying areas for improvement

Once you have completed the audit you will have a large amount of information to work through.  This is stage four in ‘Creating a Communications Strategic Plan’. 

It is important at this stage to be realistic about what you can achieve.  Your financial and human resources may be limited.  In which case build a strategic plan that is capable of being implemented.  It is better to do a few things well than to over-reach yourself and find that the whole communications process is chaotic.

In general you may find that the improvements you can make are in the following areas:

• Better thought through information dissemination where senior executives accept that they should have a clear picture of the most important messages they wish to pass through the organisation
• Better message formulation
• Better communications pathways leading to fewer or bypassed bottlenecks as well as recommendations on how to expand pathways
• Knowledge as to the most effective communications channels and therefore how you can strengthen or revise these
• Recommendations for new communications channels
• A clearer understanding as to what communications training is needed and who needs the training
• Recommendations for regular evaluation of communications channels and their effectiveness. 

Also don’t forget to highlight those parts of your communications that are working well.  They should be a core element of your communications strategy.

There is a big difference between knowing the theory and making it happen. For help in implementing your communications practices email us now.

⁽²⁾ See Communications Channels i.e. Formal; face to face, team meeting, intranet, newsletter etc and Informal; rumours, personal emails, social networking in corridor, canteen etc

⁽³⁾ This might include managers failing to communicate messages, poor technology, gatekeepers etc