How to set internal communications benchmarks

Internal communications has no single benchmark that fits every audience, channel, or task. Choose the branch that matches your decision: assess an outside figure, define the communication job, establish a local reference, or judge what a result can support. The aim is a defensible decision, not a league table.

If someone brings you another organization's figure

Treat another organization's figure as context rather than a local standard. Published measures can show which kinds of evidence communicators have used, but the study sample and period limit what a reported percentage supports. Let those findings inform measurement choices, not supply a threshold for your own workforce.

An Institute for Public Relations study on how business communicators measured return reported employee surveys, participation, and managerial feedback for internal communication. Its results describe that study's sample and period; they support combining evidence types, not presenting a reported percentage as a 2027 industry standard.

Use PR benchmarks as an adjacent reference, not a plug-in score. Corporate communications questions offer a wider angle on reading organizational signals. Neither source replaces the audience, task, baseline, or method chosen for the decision in your own setting.

• Rule of thumb: Borrow measurement ideas, not another organization's threshold.

If the communication has a distinct job

Set the comparison around the work a message is meant to prompt. A routine notice, an organizational change, and an emergency alert differ in exposure and urgency, so one measure cannot serve all three. Choose evidence that reflects the task, adding readiness or time-to-action measures when the communication requires them.

These distinctions matter especially for urgent messages, where reach and action conditions must be considered together. Crisis communications guidance can help frame those requirements. Do not compare an emergency alert with a routine notice as if their audiences, timing, and intended responses were interchangeable.

• Rule of thumb: Compare messages that ask people to do similar work.

If you need to choose what to observe

Follow the employee path from access to impact rather than treating one channel metric as the result. Separate delivery, attention, understanding, action, employee voice, system performance, and business outcomes. Set an interpretation limit for each measure before using it to support a communication decision.

The 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey management report from OPM describes an Employee Engagement Index with Leaders Lead, Supervisors, and Intrinsic Work Experience subindices. It covers the U.S. federal workforce and uses defined survey items. Private organizations should not treat those scores as a universal communication target; the transferable feature is its transparent item and index structure.

• Rule of thumb: Choose measures that answer distinct questions, and show their limits.

If you lack a local reference

When a defensible local starting point is missing, record a baseline before choosing a target. There is no universal good open rate, survey score, or message volume. Published comparisons can offer context, but they are not grades for an unrelated organization; connect each target to an employee or work outcome.

Record message type, audience, period, channel, question wording, denominator, exclusions, and business condition for every comparison. Without those details, unlike messages can look comparable. The local-data benchmark method uses an organization's own data; adapt that approach to employee communication rather than copying its outcome.

• Rule of thumb: Establish a local baseline before deciding what counts as good.

If you have not defined the calculation

Name the calculation before gathering results so another person can repeat it and understand its limits. Decide who counts, when to collect evidence, and which employee or operational choice the measure should inform. Fix those terms before the next communication cycle, not after results appear.

Keep percentages beside counts, and distinguish employees unable to access a channel from people who chose not to act. Note restructures, outages, labor events, and other conditions that can make a time comparison misleading. These are among the details measurement dashboards may omit.

• Rule of thumb: Define the calculation and its blind spots before setting a target.

If you need to decide whether a result is good, timely, or causal

Answer separately whether the result is good, when to review it, and whether communication caused it. There is no universal rate. Review operational measures after important messages, revisit the overall scorecard at a regular monthly or quarterly decision meeting, and require an explicit design before making a causal claim.

• Rule of thumb: State what the comparison shows, and claim no more than its design supports.

If another person needs to retrace your reasoning

Keep an evidence record with each decision so reviewers can follow the reasoning without depending on memory. Record the source, method, question wording, denominator, exclusions, known blind spots, and business conditions. The record should show how you made the comparison and what constrained its interpretation.

The GAO evaluation design guide connects evaluation questions to evidence needs and design choices. NIST experimental design selection guidance begins with the objective and practical constraints. Federal evaluation guidance does not make a local marketing result causal or transferable: movement alone does not show that communication caused it.

Retain the record across communication cycles, noting conditions that could make a comparison misleading. This makes it easier to detect changes in employee access, understanding, or action without mistaking missing method or context for evidence of a meaningful shift.

• Rule of thumb: Keep the evidence and method alongside the decision they support.