How do you measure Public Relations impact on employee engagement?

1 Define your goals and objectives

Before you start measuring anything, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your PR activities and how they relate to your employee engagement strategy. What are the specific outcomes and behaviors you want to see from your employees as a result of your PR efforts? How do they align with your organizational goals and values? How will you communicate them to your employees and stakeholders? Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and objectives will help you focus your PR efforts and provide a baseline for measurement.

2 Choose your metrics and methods

Once you have defined your goals and objectives, you need to decide how you will measure them. Different types of metrics and methods can be used to assess the impact of your PR efforts on employee engagement. Output metrics measure the quantity and quality of your PR activities, such as the number of press releases, newsletters, events, or social media posts and their reach, impressions, or views. Outcome metrics measure changes in employees' awareness, knowledge, attitudes, opinions, or behaviors towards your organization. Finally, impact metrics measure the broader and long-term effects of your PR activities on organizational performance and culture. These metrics can help you track efficiency and effectiveness, evaluate relevance and value of your PR messages and strategies, as well as demonstrate return on investment (ROI). However, they require more data collection and analysis methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or observation.

3 Use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data

To get a comprehensive and balanced picture of the impact of your PR efforts on employee engagement, you need to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Qualitative data can help you understand the reasons, motivations, feelings, and perceptions of your employees, while quantitative data can help you measure the extent, frequency, and magnitude of the changes. For example, you can use qualitative data from interviews or focus groups to explore how your employees feel about your organizational values and culture, and quantitative data from surveys or analytics to measure how often they share or endorse your PR messages or activities. Using both types of data can help you validate, complement, and enrich your findings and insights.

4 Benchmark and compare your results

To make sense of your data and evaluate your progress, you need to benchmark and compare your results with different sources and perspectives. You can use internal benchmarks, such as your previous results, your goals and objectives, or your best practices, to assess your improvement and performance over time. You can also use external benchmarks, such as your competitors, your industry standards, or your external stakeholders, to assess your position and reputation in the market and society. Comparing your results with different benchmarks can help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and adjust your PR efforts accordingly.

5 Communicate and act on your findings

Finally, you need to communicate and act on your findings to optimize your PR efforts and enhance your employee engagement. You need to share your results and insights with your internal and external stakeholders, such as your management, your employees, your clients, or your partners, to inform them about your PR achievements and challenges, and to solicit their feedback and support. You also need to use your findings to refine your goals and objectives, to revise your PR messages and strategies, and to implement new or improved PR actions and initiatives. Communicating and acting on your findings can help you demonstrate the value and impact of your PR efforts, and to foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?