Measuring What Matters: How to Prove Your Business Impact in Internal Comms

Samantha Grandinetti: Hello, everyone, and welcome to You've Got Comms. Today, I am talking to a communications professional who spent over 15 years leading internal comms and corporate culture for some of the biggest players in oil and gas, metallurgy, and logistics during times of their transformations as well.She's known for building strategies that don't just inform, but actually shape employee behavior and improve performance. Now, with the launch of her consulting firm Sage XP, she's helping organizations across the Gulf region take their internal communications to the next level. I'm so excited today to chat with Kateryna Byelova today as we dive into the topic of internal communication impact and how we can measure it. So, Kateryna, how are you doing today?

Kateryna Byelova: Thank you. I'm fantastic because I live in Bahrain now. And I'm in love with the country, and I think it is difficult not to be fantastic when, for example, currently, I'm now in my office. And I can see a lime tree, papaya tree, and there is the sea at my backyard. So I'm quite good. Thank you.

Samantha Grandinetti: That sounds like a very nice place to have an office. Love that. It's fantastic to have you here. I also want to highlight a recent shout-out. You were ranked among the top communications creators worldwide by Favikon. So, how does that feel?

Kateryna Byelova: It was unexpected and cool and especially considering that I have no idea how all those LinkedIn algorithms work. And I do appreciate Favikon that they rate creators based on engagement level and based on content quality, not on your followers count. For example, among top 10 creators, I think that I'm the only one who has less than 10,000 of followers. And I think that my secret is that I treat LinkedIn as any other communication campaign or any other communication tool, whereas the most important thing is knowing your audience and to provide them relevant content. And my followers are active, I think it is because I share my experience, and I share tips that really work. And they do comments. They ask me something. And, yeah, so it was really cool.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yeah, I see a lot of discussion in your posts, which I think is really nice because that shows a very two-way communication. It shows a lot of very deep engagement with the content. And it's just great to see how you interact with everybody as well in these discussions.

Kateryna Byelova: Thank you.

Samantha Grandinetti: Very, very cool. I want to learn a little bit more about you before we dive into our discussion on impact, because it's going to be a good one. Aside from being an accomplished communications professional and content creator, I know you've also worked in a few different industries and countries in Europe and North America, and now, you're in Bahrain. Now you're launching your own consulting firm. So can you tell me a little bit about your journey through the communications field and how it's taken you to all these places?

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, it's my pleasure. So I worked in employer branding, and corporate culture, employee engagement, and internal comms. I worked mostly for large organizations from 100,000 of employees to 350,000 of employees. And mostly, those companies were in the period of their big transformations. And I built internal comms and corporate culture functions for them, mostly from scratch. And my focus was on shaping employees behavior in line with business goals. And I was responsible to build a comprehensive corporate culture to combine all employees under one umbrella of corporate culture. And working for those companies, I was lucky to hire top world consultancies, and they know where they're good at. So they're really good at the research stage, on the analysis stage, on running leadership sessions. But when you need to develop an effective function with long-term results, that is really a gap in the market. And I want to close this gap because I built it for companies where I worked. So this is why I launched my consultancy.

Samantha Grandinetti: That's really cool. So you were able to learn and see how these other consultancies really added value, and now you're putting your own twist on it as well and leveraging your deep experience with these really large organizations. I love that.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, exactly. And I want to be known for deliverables. So I want to be known for deliverables and actions, and functions that they can establish from scratch, or I can rebuild, not just an effective function, but I want to build an impact that this function can bring for the company.

Samantha Grandinetti: Well, I feel like you just segued perfectly into our topic of today, of course. You're talking about deliverables. You're talking about making real, tangible business impact. So let's talk about it. Today's episode is all about impact in internal comms and how to use data to prove it. So when we talk about internal comms, what does impact mean to you in this context? Is it alignment or behavior change or engagement or all of the above? How do you define that?

Kateryna Byelova: For me, first of all, impact in internal comms is when people do something differently. It is when you can shape their perception; shape their behavior, and when your message can motivate an employee to act in a different way and in a specific way that your strategy requires. So yes, engagement and alignment, it is very important, but the real impact is when we can shape the behavior and motivate an employee to act in line with our goals.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And so when you're thinking about how you're changing this behavior in employees, and making them do these very specific things, what metrics do you personally rely on to measure this impact?

Kateryna Byelova: Yeah, it's a good question, and thank you for that, because a lot of professionals struggle to measure the impact of internal comms. And I personally use four levels of metrics. So first of all, it is reach and response. We need to understand, "Did employees see our comms?" And yes, we need to track open rates, clicks, video views, event attendance, and so on, but we need to understand that it is just a surface. Because if you know that, for example, 70% of employees, yes, they see our comms, but it doesn't mean that they will act accordingly to our comms. That is why the second level of the metrics that I use is perception and understanding. Do they get it? Do they believe our message? And we need to track it. To track it, we can use some quick surveys or quick polls. But what is most important, we can use them before and after the campaign. Because quite often, professionals check something once a year, and that's it. My point is to check the specific campaigns and to check the specific results before and after the campaign. For example, if you run a campaign about new strategy, you can track the answers for the question. Like: I understand the strategy, or I do trust our leadership. And you can check those answers before and after your campaign. And that is how you can understand if your employees understand your message and if your communication campaign really works. So the third, and for me, this is the most important level is behavior change. So we need to check the behavior change, and it is not as difficult as many professionals think. First of all, every campaign should start with a clear behavior goal. We need to understand: Why do we do our comms? What is the goal of our campaign? And we need to define the behavior. Then we need to measure the baseline, then we need to launch the campaign, and then we need to measure it again. For example, if our, let's say, sales team wants to increase the adoption of a new product, that is why we need to check the sales level before our campaign, and then we need to check it just after the campaign. And that is how we can understand this behavior change. Or if we want to launch a new tool or we want to increase some new system usage among the employees, we can track system logins before and after the campaign. So the main idea is to track the difference for the same questions before and after the campaign. And the fourth, and the most difficult, actually, level is strategic impact. We need to remember that we are not the only ones who influence eNPS or NPS, I mean net promoter score or employee net promoter score, or retention level or employee engagement level and some other strategic metrics, but we do influence. And we need to see if we can make a correlation between our campaigns and between those metrics. For example, if you see that we launched the campaign and in two months, we saw a rise in eNPS, then we can this correlation, that is the goal.

Samantha Grandinetti: You know, that really is the ultimate goal, is you need to be able to prove to the business that you have had this impact that you've changed this behavior, that you've seen a difference. And I feel like that's where you really get to really prove your effectiveness and get some of that glory. You've changed behavior. And I really like how you talk about the first step is what is the behavior that you want to change. Because so often, you start these campaigns and it's just like, "Hey, we just need to tell people X, Y, Z."And I think that question of what's the behavior you need to change is actually, you have to get a little bit curious of really what is that. It's not just, "Hey, everybody, please, do this. Hey, everybody, we're rolling out this new software." What's the behavior? You have to try the new software, give feedback, whatever it is, right?

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, exactly. I think that's the biggest problem. When a professional says that we don't know how to check the behavior, I think that the problem is that they don't understand what kind of behavior they want to change, and they need to influence. Because they just get used to receiving some information and just to convey this information. But the real impact and the real goal of internal comms is to change this behavior and to motivate employees for actions in line with your needs.

Samantha Grandinetti: No, that makes sense. And that's the difference between having that real strategic edge and being more of a tactical role, right? Are you just saying, "Yes, sure. I'll help you roll out the software," or are you really digging into the meat of how's this going to improve things for people? What do we need them to do? How is it about action? No. Makes a lot of sense. So we've just talked about how you have to begin with a baseline. You roll out your communications campaign, and then you have to see how your behavior's changed after. This measurement is very important to proving the true impact of comms and being able to bring that to your leadership as well. It's a very scientific approach to it, which I love. And I feel like this segues perfectly into something that you've been doing recently. You just recently finished conducting your own study about internal comms in the Middle East. Would you mind sharing a little bit of information about why you decided to do your own research and what you learned from the process?

Kateryna Byelova: Yes. Sure. Actually, I studied at Johns Hopkins, and probably that is why also I use some academic approach. And, you know, studying at Johns Hopkins, I think that nearly every assignment was grounded in primary research studies. And I focused my work on internal comms and employee engagement. And that's why I ended up reviewing thousands of academic research studies. And during the studies, I noticed that actually almost all data comes from North America and Europe. And then I checked that even the global corporate studies, they simply don't reflect MENA region because MENA respondents makes up less than 2% in global surveys. And it was a big surprise for me that this big region is underrepresented. That is why I decided to conduct my own research on internal comms and corporate culture developments here in the Gulf. And for now, we have the first, local benchmarks. And now we can base our decisions on real benchmarks, which is relevant for your region.

Samantha Grandinetti: That's such a game-changer. That's such a huge deal when you have actual, real local data for your specific audience instead of just relying on the European and North American majority. Wow.

Kateryna Byelova: I think it's important to have a local . . . Sorry.

Samantha Grandinetti: Oh, I was just going to say, I hope people understand how really impactful that is. That's all. Yeah, wow.

Kateryna Byelova: Yeah, because I think it is important to make decisions based on real data, which is relevant for the region. And that is why this research is important for the Gulf.

Samantha Grandinetti: No. That makes complete sense to me. And so  I'm curious, now that you've seen so many research studies from North America and Europe, and you've done your own research here, is there anything unique about internal comms in the Middle East that you think differs from other regions that we should know about?

Kateryna Byelova: It's a good question, but working in North America and Europe, now in Gulf, I think that we have more in common than we even can imagine. For example, my favorite PR and HR wars were PR and HR debating who should own what. It's the same in every country that I saw it. And this is quite funny. But, you know, I have a quite interesting finding from research study. I'm not sure that it is something just about the Middle East, because we just did not discuss it in other countries, and we can't find this information in other research studies. But the finding is that the function ownership shapes the understanding, the perception, and the development of the function. For example, it even shapes measurements. For example, if internal comms sits under PR Department, under PR or any comms department, they more often measure the impact. They measure comms metrics like reach, like clicks, open rates, and so on. But when the function sits under HR, they more often measure retention, engagement level, and so on. So it is logical. If you are professional in comms, you will measure comms outcomes, but it gives us the understanding that, actually, the function ownership shapes the development of the function. And it shapes the impact of the results because we even measure it in a different place. I think it's quite interesting findings.

Samantha Grandinetti: That is so interesting, because it makes sense. If you're in the comms function, you want to make sure that you're tying all the work you do, all the time that you spend, into supporting the business goals of your department. And if your department is HR, that looks like retention, that looks like eNPS. If you are PR comms marketing, that looks like other stuff, right? You're right, it completely changes how the function is shaped. And I think that changes the prerogative of what is the core function of your comms team at that point? That's the big change.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, exactly. So it changes the perception of the functions, the understanding of the role of the function. It is the same function, but when it sits under different departments, it can change everything. That is quite interesting. For example, also this research demonstrated even the assessment of the effectiveness of the function also depends on its location.

Samantha Grandinetti: So based on where the comms team sits, if it's HR, if it's its own PR or comms department, or marketing or whatever, people assess the effectiveness of that role differently.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes.

Samantha Grandinetti: Wow!

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, they assess the effectiveness of the function in different ways. For example, when the function sits under HR, I mean internal comms, when they sit under HR, they rate themselves as more effective than comms who manage this function. And the opposite for corporate culture. When the corporate culture is managed by comms, they rate themselves, they assess themselves as more effective than HR, who assess themselves, who manage the function. Is it clear or not?

Samantha Grandinetti: That's the funniest tongue twister.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes.

Samantha Grandinetti: These opposites, it's like wherever you sit, you think you're more effective than the other guy.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes.

Samantha Grandinetti: Oh, my gosh. That's such a funny little petty thing that we do in comms. That's funny.

Kateryna Byelova: And I don't know if we have the same pattern in other countries, because we just don't have this information from other research studies. But I think that it must be almost the same, and this is quite interesting.

Samantha Grandinetti: That is so interesting. I've lived it, too. My current internal comms team used to sit under the HR department, which we call people experience. We used to sit under that department. And we moved a year ago to sit under marketing. And I do feel a big shift in the vibe and who we predominantly serve, what questions we ask, what our directive really feels like. I do feel a shift. So that's interesting that you were able to really quantify that.

Kateryna Byelova: Do you have the difference in measurement? How did you measure the impact of the function?

Samantha Grandinetti: I think so. I also think that our time used to focus a lot more on more employee focused or employee facing projects. You would say, "How do we measure our effectiveness? Oh, we're going to tie this into eNPS. We're going to talk about retention." because you're right, we were measuring ourselves a little bit different. And now that's shifted a little bit different. It's a little bit more strategic comms. We've got external comms as well that sits with us, too. So we're looking at PR. We just have made a lot of changes and looks different.

Kateryna Byelova: You see? This is exactly this, yeah.

Samantha Grandinetti: My sample size of one anecdotal evidence is confirming your research.

Kateryna Byelova: Yes.

Samantha Grandinetti: Wow. I feel like you just know the most about comms academic studies that anyone has ever known before, given how much you've reviewed. This is amazing. So you've reviewed thousands of academic studies on internal comms and engagement. What does the research actually focus on when it comes to impact, and how does that compare to how we measure success in the real world?

Kateryna Byelova: So you know, most academic research studies they don't really focus on specific metrics as we do in real life. They mostly explore correlations between internal comms and some things as engagement level or a feeling of belonging, or performance level, retention level, and something like that. They are exploring if there is a correlation. And if we have this correlation, if it is high or not. And they can tell you that the answer is, yes, all the time, there is a high level of correlation. And so a lot of research studies demonstrate that internal comms increase engagement level, and that engagement level influences the productivity of employees.

Samantha Grandinetti: Woo-hoo! That's great. That's such an amazing thing to just know. We just know that internal comms improves these things. We've proven the correlation. That's great for us, first of all. Sorry, continue. I just got excited, but that's a great thing to just know concretely.

Kateryna Byelova: The only problem with academic research studies is their language, because it's academic, and it is difficult to read them. But actually, we have plenty of research studies. And I'm trying to translate them from academic to human language, but they have really interesting findings.

Samantha Grandinetti: And I feel like that's such a . . .  I feel like in our internal comms community, in everything that we see on LinkedIn, there's a lot of thought leadership. There's a lot of people who talk about, "Here's what's worked in my professional career that I can recommend to other people." But in terms of really looking at the academic studies, I see that as a big gap. Because I don't think everyone is poised to read academic abstracts, and look at the results, and really measure everything and come to a really informed, educated conclusion about it, and then implement it into their practice. So I think there's a lot that you can teach us, that's for sure, but I think that is a bit of a gap, right?

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, we even have a special course at Johns Hopkins where we studied how to read the results of academic research status, so you're absolutely right.

Samantha Grandinetti: That's fantastic. That probably should be a required course for more people than it is, but that's awesome. Shifting gears, we've talked about how academics looks at internal comms and proves that correlation, fantastic. You've worked with organizations of 60,000, 100,000, 350,000 employees, really big places. In your experience, how has the expectation of proving impact changed for internal comms over the years?

Kateryna Byelova: You know, first of all, I want to mention that in my experience, the bigger the company, the faster it realizes the power of internal comms and corporate culture. And they realize how important those functions are. Because when you have like 100,000 of employees, or 350,000 of employees as I had, it's like a city. It's a big crowd of people, and you need to get everyone moving in the same direction. It is even not easy when you have just 100 of employees, but when you have 100,000 of employees, you understand that "Yes, probably I need to do something with all of them."And I think that is why most large organizations have an internal comms function as a standalone department. It's more often you can find them there. But when we're talking about expectations about proving the impact, I don't think that it depends on the size, actually. Because I even know huge organizations with the standalone department, but they still don't measure the impact. And I know very small organizations who measure every metric that exists in this world. So I think it depends more on the maturity level of leadership, or of the function itself on the company, probably. So it doesn't depend on the size, from my experience.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Maturity has a lot to do with it. Because it's . . .  I think it takes that level of experience, and you've built this foundation in your organization to really know, "Okay, what are the metrics we need to measure that makes the most impact for us, too? How do we make decisions, and how do we want to make decisions?" So if you are starting from scratch, you're just looking at everything sometimes, right? You're like, "I want to measure every single thing, and use it somehow." And when you're a little bit more mature, that changes.

Kateryna Byelova: Exactly. And you need to focus on something the most important for you, because, exactly, when you start something from scratch and especially in big organization where you have a huge house, you can't measure and control absolutely everything. You need to start step-by-step.

Samantha Grandinetti: And so when we're thinking about all the things that we measure, do you have a measurement framework or model that you find most actionable in these large-scale organizations?

Kateryna Byelova: The same. I don't think that the measurement depends on the size of the organization. Because you need to check the same, and you need to test the same as I mentioned before. So it's like reach, understanding, behavior change and strategic impact. And the only thing that changes is the volume of data. For example, when I worked for the largest organization, I had 40,000 of respondents in my employee engagement survey. This is a huge amount of data. But the logic behind what you measure, and why you measure, remains the same. For example, in my career I worked mostly for large organizations, but for now I have a client with almost 1,000 of employees. For me, it's just nothing after 100,000 of employees. 1,000 is quite small company. And we are building the function now, and we build the same measurement framework, and we expect the same impact. We still need to shape the behavior of those 1,000 of employees in line with their business goals.

Samantha Grandinetti: That makes sense. It's all just about scale at that point.

Kateryna Byelova: Exactly.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yeah, and so you mentioned 40,000 survey respondents; that must have been amazing. There's a lot of ways to gather feedback. How do you balance data from pulse surveys and focus groups and engagement platforms, and giant surveys like that? And how do you make sure to act on these results?

Kateryna Byelova: To be honest, I have never had to balance different data sources, because I always gather feedback with a clear understanding why do I need this feedback? And for example, if I need to know some quick input, I will run the pulse survey. If I need a deeper understanding of something from those surveys, I will go for focus groups, and so on. The same is acting on the results. If I gather the feedback, it means that probably I don't have enough information to make a decision, and that is why I need to gather additional information, or I need to gather feedback. That is why when I get this information, when I have this information, I will just act based on it. For me, I never had those challenges, because I do understand why, with which goals, I gather the feedback.

Samantha Grandinetti: I mean that makes sense. You're not asking people to fill out their opinion to give you their voice unless you have a specific way that you're going to use that, right? Otherwise, you get all this data coming in, and you're just sitting there like, "Neat. People shared their opinions. People took time out of their day. What do I do with it now?" It's much more impactful when you have a plan, and it's, like you said, "I don't know how to proceed with something. I'm going to ask the organization, and now I know how to proceed based on that feedback," right? Very swift, agile, and not wasting anyone's time.

Kateryna Byelova: Exactly. It is the same as with measuring behavior, the same with gathering feedback; you need to understand in advance. So before changing and measuring the behavior, and before launching the campaign, you need to understand what is the goal of your campaign. And the same with gathering feedback, you need to understand the goal of gathering this feedback. If you understand it, probably, you'll not have any problems with balancing this.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And so we're talking about surveys. We're talking about getting feedback. Can you share an example where a qualitative insight led to a measurable improvement in your strategy?

Kateryna Byelova: Yes, sure. I have a favorite example, actually, from this favorite employer, is the biggest one with 350,000 employees. So I started work for them with a clear goal of improving employee performance because they had extremely low level of NPS, Net Promoter Score. And we realized that we need to start with the employees. As I like to say, happy employees means happy clients. It was a big company and a lot of tools, and so on, and a big house. That's why I started with analyzing everything I could analyze, like tools, messaging programs, and so on, and so on. And the most important part, of course, was audience profiling. And so we run an employee engagement survey, a regular one. And I added one open-ended question, "Why do you work here?" So we gathered 25,000 answers because it was the first survey. Next year we had more and more. Around 5,000 of answers were on my question, "Why do you work here?" And I do remember that it was Saturday; I decided to go to the office and to read those answers. Because for me, it was about an understanding of my employees. And I was just starting to work there, and I needed it. That is why I went to office on Saturday. And I just started to read the answers. And of course, most of the answers were something like, "I don't have another job," or, "I get used to work here," or, "I don't have a degree to work somewhere else in bank or something like that. That is why I work as a post officer," and so on. But also, I saw the answer, something like, "I feel that I connect people. I feel that people from my area can rely on me," and so on, and so on, "that I connect families." And I realized that they're talking about their social purpose, about their important social role, and social mission. And I decided that it will be the foundation of our key messaging, the social purpose. And of course, we had another key messaging depending on key goals. And of course, they could change depending on strategy and products and goals, and so on, but this social purpose was our red thread. We use it in communication campaigns. We use it in recognition programs, everywhere. And of course, yeah, we had some other programs as well, but in complex, we saw our eNPS rose by 32%. It's incredible.

Samantha Grandinetti: Wow.

Kateryna Byelova: And moreover, when we ran the same survey with the same question, "Why do I work here?" More and more people started to answer, "I'm proud to be a post officer because I feel my important role. I feel my social impact, I feel my social purpose," and so on. Which means that this qualitative data, it gave us this measurable impact. Because people started to feel themselves more valued, more important for the company, and they started to perform better. So this is my favorite example.

Samantha Grandinetti: I mean that's a great example. And I think if you're in a comms role and you're ever wondering, "Oh, all this work I do about communicating our mission, about communicating our values, does it really have impact?" I think this is such a totally demonstrable way that this does have such huge impact on your employees, right? You talked about the social purpose, that's another way that you can think about your mission and values. It made a concrete difference in their working life. And then the way that you talk to employees and then the way that they think about the work they do, that's pretty huge.

Kateryna Byelova: Absolutely. Thank you, and I absolutely agree with you. Yes. And I think that is a power of our function and that is the impact that makes me be in love with the function actually.

Samantha Grandinetti: Oh that's so awesome. We've learned so much. We've covered so much. I'm just wondering, as we wind down here with our discussion, what advice would you give to comms professionals and companies where they feel like their function is undervalued or they have to prove themselves and prove their job?

Kateryna Byelova: Sam, first of all, thank you for this question because I think it is very relevant for internal comms professionals. And first of all, I want to say that you need to make your work visible and understandable because people won't value what they don't see or don't get. So I can recommend three short steps. First of all, you can build a short presentation, and you can meet with department heads, and you can present them internal comms function and how this function can help them. The second one, you need to remember that if you are not in the room, your results should be in the room. That is why I give your leaders short, clear updates that they can use with CEO meetings or in internal events. And the third one, you need to remember about early buy-in. Before launching something big, ask for feedback of other leadership because if they feel familiar with something, they will be more likely to support it. So the short advice is try to sell your function inside the company. That is it.

Samantha Grandinetti: If I take away nothing else, that phrase, "If you're not in the room, your results should be," I mean, that's such an amazing way to get a seat at the table at leadership meetings without actually having to be in every meeting. And I think that's a great way that you can really help other people, not only understand your impact, but talk about it, too. I love this so much.

Kateryna Byelova: Thank you. It's a corporate life and we need to understand that we can be the best managers ever, best comms professional ever, but there are some rules of corporate life and corporate career. And we need to follow those rules if we want to be successful, and if we want to build a successful function.

Samantha Grandinetti: This is great. I feel like I need to print this exact advice in a PDF and stick it up there and just remember it. I feel like a lot of people are going to find that very useful. So just thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I've so enjoyed our conversation, and again, I've learned a lot. I wish we could chat even longer. But before we wrap things up, how should people connect with you and follow along for more amazing advice and insight?

Kateryna Byelova: It's my LinkedIn, so you can follow me there. Thank you so much for this conversation, Sam, especially that it is 7:00 AM for you.

Samantha Grandinetti: Oh, you unveiled my secret that this is actually an early morning call. Not that anyone's been able to see the sunrise slowly happening through my window.

Kateryna Byelova: It looks beautiful. I like it.

Samantha Grandinetti: Thank you. It was so great to talk to you today. And I'm so excited to see how your research continues to shape our understanding of internal comms because I really think it's going to make a big splash.

Kateryna Byelova: Thank you so much. I started to present the results at different conferences. So, my husband is joking that I have a concert tour.

Samantha Grandinetti: Yes, that's your world tour. That's the internal comms research era's tour. I love it.