Why Internal Communication must start measuring what it enables

5 August 2026

Anthony Monks:

For much of the last decade, internal communication has been engaged in a battle for strategic relevance.

The profession has worked hard to move beyond being seen as a channel manager, content producer or corporate messenger, positioning itself instead as a function that shapes understanding, enables change, builds trust and helps organisations achieve their objectives.

This evolution has been both necessary and justified. Few organisations would now argue that communication is simply about disseminating information and most recognise its role in helping employees navigate complexity, understand priorities and align behind organisational goals.

Yet despite this progress, many communication teams still find themselves fighting familiar battles for influence, investment and credibility.

They are often brought into conversations after decisions have already been made, expected to communicate strategy rather than help shape it and required to justify their value in ways that other business functions rarely need to. That raises an uncomfortable question; if internal communication has successfully positioned itself as a strategic function, why does it still struggle to secure the strategic influence it seeks?

One possible explanation is that the profession’s biggest challenge is no longer communication itself, but its ability to demonstrate impact.

From proving importance to proving value

Internal communication has largely won the argument about importance. Few leaders would dispute that communication matters, particularly during periods of uncertainty, transformation and change. Organisations rely on employees understanding priorities, making informed decisions and adapting to new ways of working, while leaders recognise that poor communication can create confusion, slow progress and undermine trust.

However, importance and value are not the same thing.

Many functions within organisations are considered important, but those that consistently secure influence, investment and a place at strategic decision-making tables are typically the ones that can clearly demonstrate their contribution to organisational performance.

Functions that enjoy influence rarely have to spend much time explaining why they matter because the connection between their activity and organisational outcomes is relatively clear.

Public relations increasingly demonstrates its contribution through measures linked to reputation, share of voice and business outcomes, while finance, operations and sales can point directly to financial performance, productivity and revenue generation.

Internal communication, by contrast, often finds itself in the more difficult position of being widely recognised as important while struggling to demonstrate its contribution with the same degree of clarity.

Internal communication occupies a more challenging position. Practitioners instinctively understand the value communication creates, yet translating that value into evidence that resonates with organisational leadership remains considerably more difficult. As a result, communication is often viewed as important but difficult to quantify, creating a disconnect between its perceived significance and its demonstrated contribution.

The profession’s evidence gap

This challenge does not stem from a lack of data. If anything, internal communication has access to more data than ever before.

Most teams can produce extensive reports covering email open rates, click-through rates, intranet engagement, attendance figures, video views, pulse survey results and employee sentiment. Over the last decade, the profession has become increasingly sophisticated in its ability to collect and analyse communication data, creating dashboards that provide detailed insight into how employees interact with content and channels.

The problem is that much of this data answers questions leaders are not necessarily asking.

Communication teams frequently report on communication activity, while organisational leaders are generally more interested in organisational outcomes. An executive team is rarely interested in an email open rate for its own sake. What leaders want to understand is whether employees adopted a new process, aligned around a strategic priority, embraced a change initiative or developed greater confidence in organisational decision-making.

The distinction may appear subtle, but it sits at the heart of the profession’s ongoing challenge. Communication reports often focus on explaining what happened, how many people attended an event, opened a message or interacted with content, while organisational leaders are far more interested in understanding what changed as a result. When measurement focuses primarily on activity rather than outcomes, a gap emerges between the value communication creates and the value it can confidently demonstrate.

Measuring communication instead of contribution

Part of the problem is that internal communication has become increasingly sophisticated at measuring communication itself.

The profession now knows more than ever about who opened an email, attended a town hall, viewed a video or clicked on a piece of content. These measures provide useful diagnostic insight and can help practitioners understand channel effectiveness, audience preferences and engagement patterns. They have an important role to play and should not be dismissed.

However, problems arise when these measures become substitutes for impact.

Opening an email does not necessarily mean a message was understood. Attending a town hall does not automatically translate into behavioural change. Feeling informed does not guarantee alignment and engagement does not always result in action.

Communication exists to achieve something beyond communication. Its purpose is not simply to distribute information but to help employees make sense of organisational priorities, build confidence in leadership decisions, navigate change and align their actions with organisational objectives; yet many of these outcomes remain largely absent from traditional communication reporting.

As a result, internal communication has become increasingly effective at measuring communication activity and increasingly confident in measuring employee sentiment, while remaining far less effective at demonstrating whether communication changed anything that materially affected organisational performance.

Focusing on what communication enables

If the profession wants to strengthen its strategic influence, it needs to focus less on communication outputs and more on the outcomes communication enables.

Communication helps organisations align around strategic priorities. It reduces uncertainty during periods of change. It supports trust, strengthens understanding and helps employees make decisions with greater confidence. In many respects, communication acts as an organisational enabler, creating the conditions that allow people and teams to perform effectively.

This raises a different set of measurement questions:

• How quickly are employees adopting a new way of working?
• How effectively are teams aligning around strategic priorities?
• How rapidly can an organisation move from decision to execution?
• How much confusion, duplication of effort or uncertainty is being reduced?

These are not traditionally viewed as communication measures, yet communication plays a significant role in influencing each of them. Clear communication reduces friction. Trusted communication accelerates action. Relevant communication helps people understand not only what is changing but why it matters and what they need to do differently.

The challenge is not proving that these relationships exist. Most experienced practitioners recognise them instinctively because they see them every day. The challenge is demonstrating them consistently and credibly in ways that resonate with organisational leadership.

A different approach to measurement

The solution is not to abandon traditional communication metrics. Reach, engagement and sentiment continue to provide valuable insight and remain useful indicators of communication performance. The issue is not their existence but the role they play in defining success.

Rather than treating these measures as evidence of impact, they should be viewed as diagnostic indicators that help explain performance. The starting point for measurement should instead be the outcome communication is intended to support.

Before launching a communication initiative, practitioners should ask a simple question: what needs to be different as a result of this communication?

If the objective is behavioural adoption, then adoption should be measured. If the objective is understanding, then understanding should be measured. If the objective is supporting a transformation programme, then communication metrics should be connected to indicators that demonstrate whether people are moving from awareness to action.

This approach requires closer alignment between communication objectives and business objectives. It also requires practitioners to become more comfortable measuring outcomes that are more complex, less immediate and sometimes harder to quantify. However, the outcomes that matter most to organisations have rarely been the easiest to measure.

The profession’s next evolution

Internal communication’s future influence will not be determined by the number of channels it manages, the volume of content it produces or the sophistication of its dashboards. It will be determined by how effectively it demonstrates its contribution to organisational success.

The profession has spent years proving that communication reaches people. The next challenge is proving that communication helps organisations move, adapt and perform more effectively.

Strategic influence is rarely awarded on the basis of activity alone. It is earned through evidence of contribution.

If internal communication wants a stronger voice in shaping organisational decisions, it must become better at demonstrating not what it delivered, but what it enabled. The future of the profession will ultimately be determined not by how effectively it communicates, however, by how clearly it can show the difference that communication makes!

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Anthony Monks, is Director and Internal Communication Specialist at ITPR in the United Kingdom.