It's a runner

Thanks to everybody who took time to complete the employee comms in engagement survey - according to my colleague at Brunel who knows far more than me about these things, the sample size is now viable.

So, when time permits, I'll start digging into the findings.

Employee communicators in engagement survey - one week to go

The survey monkey's still ticking over as more and more communicators complete the research questionnaire on the role of employee communicators in engagement. There's still a week to go if you want to add your voice which you can do here

To whet your appetite, here are a few of the trends at the half-way collection point:

• Almost half the organisations that have responded have no engagement strategy
• While the majority of organisations recognise the difference between communication and engagement, only 4% claim that recognition is total
• Almost 90% of communicators who have responded have some responsibility for their organisation's engagement agenda
• HR is the top 'owner' of engagement - drawing twice the response of 'everyone'
• HR is also the most common owner of the engagement strategy
• When it comes to tools, nine out of 10 communicators use email and the intranet
• Fewer than half still use printed newsletters/magazines
• Over 80% of respondents formally use social media in the comms mix, with blogs and internal social networks the most common uses
• Engagement varies widely among responding organisations. No organisation is fully engaged, though 30% claim a 7 out of 10 engagement score
• Asked what would make the greatest difference to engagement, the most popular response so far is a more joined up approach between functions.

That's a slice of the picture with a week still to go. Will it change? Your views could be vital.

In this only a Transatlantic issue?

Interesting: after an initial splurge of responses, the last couple of days has seen only a trickle of responses to my survey looking at the role of employee communications in engagement. In many ways, that's to be expected: those who are interested will respond immediately while others will either delete the message or put it on the 'nice to do' pile for some time never. Still, there are still 12 days left, and if I can double the current response over those 12 days I'll have something robustly statistically viable.

This is a learning experience for me, and one of the most noticeable features is the strong UK/US bias to responses. They're running fairly even; I have a few from Canada; a few from Scandinavia and ones and twos from other northern European countries. I didn't expect much from non-English speaking countries (or countries where English isn't the language of business), but hoped I'd pick up some response from Africa, Australia and New Zealand and, most of all, India. But as yet, it's radio silence.

I have a presentation to prepare this afternoon, but after that, I suspect I'll be pushing the survey out to those particular communication outposts.

Early days, early findings

Just one day into the survey mapping employee communicators' roles in engagement and there are already a gratifying number of responses from across the UK, Continental Europe and North America - it would be great to get some input from other parts of the world too.

Anyway, the number of responses is statistically interesting, but perhaps not get a truly viable sample - still there's a fortnight yet to go.

Some early findings - which may well change as the number of responses rises suggest:

• Almost half of all respondents have a role that includes employee communication - but has responsibility for other stakeholders as well.
• Almost half of all respondents state that their organisation has no employee engagement strategy.
• A third of respondents' organisations really don't differentiate between employee communication and engagement.
• Virtually all employee communicators are involved in engagement strategy or implementation, with a third of respondents stating their team 'owns' engagement in the organisation - though HR is the most common 'owner'.
• The intranet is the most widely used communication channel from our early respondents, closely followed by emails - with face-to-face channels very popular, but restricted by time and capacity, especially of leadership.
• More than three quarters of respondents to date use social media in their organisations, with blogs and internal social networks leading the way - though one respondent is also using virtual worlds.
• Engagement levels vary widely, and the 'must haves' to help employee communicators vary from a social media strategy to effective line management support and a joined-up approach across functions.

However, this is just a broad-brush round up 24 hours into the survey. It still has two weeks to run. If you haven't taken part yet, why not do so here?

The role of Employee Communications in Employee Engagement

While the debate continues around the correct terminology for employee engagement, there's an equal lack of understanding of the role the employee communication function plays in engagement within organisations.

I'm currently working on a report covering exactly this area, and would very much like to get a snap-shot of where exactly employee communication practitioners operate today within the engagement agenda.

It strikes me that too few organisations today differentiate properly between employee communication and employee engagement - but I'd like to apply some evidence to that hypothesis.

So, if you have a role in employee communication and perhaps play some part in engagement in your organisation, pleas complete this survey and help build a picture of what role the employee communication team plays in engagement - and how you're fulfilling that role.

The survey will be open until September 24th - and I'll post details of the final report once it's published.