Measure the worth of your internal communications It’s encouraging to read about how Internal Communications can make an impact on clients’ businesses and staff (Design Business, DW 22 September).

It’s encouraging to read about how internal communications can make an impact on clients’ businesses and staff (Design Business, DW 22 September)

But how can we measure success? Measures such as employee satisfaction tell us nothing about how engaged people are – it is not about awareness or familiarity with a message. Internal communications are important supporting acts in brand engagement, but on their own they just scratch the surface.

Real engagement goes further. Its two essential ingredients are intellectual connection and emotional commitment. Our Buy-In Benchmark research shows that employees can be split into four categories: brand champions (those who ‘get it’ and help build the brand), loose cannons (who care, but do not understand), bystanders (they understand but do not care) and weak links (they neither know nor care). We can now identify problem areas and set objectives, so we can turn promises into tangible results.

Pete Bell, Worldwide chief executive, Brand Engagement, Enterprise IG, London EC1M