Nearly half of UK organisations still do not measure the effectiveness of their employee communications, a survey has found. More than 18 months since workforce dynamics were changed irreversibly by the pandemic, the research showed 48% of organisations have no data about whether the information they send to their employees is being read or not.

“The pandemic heightened the importance of transparent, timely and informative internal communications, yet our research found that many employers are continuing to communicate with their fragmented workforces completely blindly,” said VRAMP operations director Darren Hepburn.

“Almost no other business function works this way,” he said. “Particularly in larger organisations, every other team is expected to evidence their performance on some level and they use the data they collate to inform future strategies.”

The high profile Engage for Success movement laid bare how effective employee engagement equates to higher productivity, profit and revenue, yet VRAMP’s research showed measuring the effectiveness of internal communications remains a struggle.

“Communicating with manual or non-desk workers has historically been more difficult, but the uncertainty of 2020-2021 highlighted the need for all employees to receive a single source of the truth, quickly,” added Hepburn.

“Communication became an urgent priority, yet more than a quarter (27%) of respondents in our survey said the issue of reaching all employees is still their biggest barrier to employee engagement.”

“The speed of the shift in workforce dynamics has meant that while some employers are keeping abreast of post-pandemic work culture, currently many still are not.”

“Measuring and monitoring internal communications will be essential for employers to compete in the ‘future of work’ era.”

The research also found that many professionals responsible for employee engagement and internal communications need more time and support from management to do so effectively.

A lack of time (38%) and leadership buy-in (17%) were two of the biggest challenges for those responsible for internal communications.

“Commitment from the top is so important,” concluded Hepburn. “When analysing our survey results, we found that those who are fighting for leadership buy-in barely spend any of their time on internal communications, and have the least advanced employee engagement strategies – despite this being a task they are officially responsible for.”

The survey of 206 UK internal communication and employee engagement professionals in the retail, manufacturing, property and construction, healthcare, charity and public sectors was conducted in August 2021.

 The State of Employee Engagement in the UK