A new Head of Internal Communication inherits a SharePoint intranet, a fortnightly newsletter, four Viva Engage communities and a request from the executive committee for “proper reporting”. What actually exists is a page view total, an open rate and a spreadsheet somebody maintained until they left. The instinct is to go and find a KPI framework. That instinct is the reason most internal communication measurement programmes stall in month three.
Frameworks are not wrong, they are just the wrong thing to start with. A fourteen-metric scorecard adopted in week one collapses because half the metrics have no data source, a third have contested definitions, and nobody has agreed what the denominator is. The way through is to start with one number you can defend in a room, and then build outward in a deliberate order.
Start with one question, not a framework
The first question worth answering is narrower than it feels: did the thing we published reach the people it was written for? Not whether it was liked, not whether it changed behaviour, not what the return on investment was. Reach against a stated audience, for one specific communication.
It sounds modest. It is also the question that almost no internal communication function can answer on day one, and everything more sophisticated depends on it. Sentiment analysis on a population you cannot define is decoration. An engagement index built on an unreliable denominator is worse than no index, because it invites decisions.
Weeks one to four: the audit you can do with no tooling at all
Inventory every channel, including the ones you do not own. One row each: name, owner, frequency, intended audience, and whether any usage data exists. Include the printed boards, the screens in reception and the informal messaging groups site managers run. Most teams find between eight and fifteen channels and are surprised by four of them.
Get the headcount file and agree it with HR. This is the least glamorous task on the list and the highest leverage. Every reach percentage you will ever publish has this file as its denominator. Agree what counts: contractors in or out, long-term absence in or out, the population as at which date. Write the definition down. Contested denominators are how good analysis loses an executive argument.
Measure one flagship communication end to end, by hand. Pick the most important item you published last quarter. Track it across every channel it appeared on, in a spreadsheet, manually. It will take a day and it will teach you more about your data gaps than a month of tool evaluation. You will find out which channels cannot be measured at all, which is exactly the information you need.
The first three measures, in order
One: reach against a stated denominator
Unique individuals who opened or viewed, divided by the agreed audience for that item, with the denominator printed next to the number. Not sessions. Not page views. Individuals. This single measure survives more executive scrutiny than any composite index, because every part of it can be explained in one sentence.
Two: reach broken down by one segment that matters
One. Not seven. Pick the segmentation axis your leadership actually argues about, which in most organisations is country, function or site. Adding all the axes at once means a longer data project and a report nobody reads. Adding the one that matters means the first report you present contains a finding. Our guide to audience segmentation for internal communications covers how to structure the attribute model so the second and third axes are cheap to add later.
Three: depth on the flagship item
Opens tell you the envelope was picked up. Depth tells you whether anything was read: time on page, scroll completion, click-through on the one action the item asked for. Measure this on your flagship communications only. Depth on everything is a data project. Depth on the six things that matter each quarter is an afternoon.
Deliberately not on this list: sentiment analysis, an engagement index, and anything called ROI. All three are legitimate later. All three collapse if the base underneath them is unstable, and all three are how measurement programmes acquire a reputation for producing numbers nobody trusts.
| Stage | Question you can answer | Measures to run | What to leave alone for now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Did this item reach its audience? | Reach against a stated denominator, one channel | Everything else |
| Months 2 to 3 | Which parts of the organisation did it reach? | Reach by one segment, depth on flagship items | Sentiment, benchmarks, composite indices |
| Months 4 to 6 | How do our channels compare for the same audience? | Cross-channel reach, channel overlap, baseline quarter | Targets, ROI modelling |
| Months 7 to 12 | Is this improving, and where should we invest? | Trend against baseline, segment gaps, content type performance | Predictive modelling |
Months two to six: the sequence that works
Fix the attribute model before adding channels. The join between activity data and workforce attributes is the whole programme. Get it right on one channel and every subsequent channel is incremental. Get it wrong and each new channel multiplies the problem.
Instrument the second channel, not the fifth. Choose the one serving a different population from the first. If channel one is the intranet, serving head office well, channel two should be whatever reaches the field, precisely because that is where the interesting answer lives.
Establish a baseline quarter before committing to any target. This is the discipline most often skipped and most expensive to skip. A target set on two weeks of data will be wrong, and you will spend a year explaining variance that was always seasonal. Our note on internal communications benchmarks sets out what normal actually looks like before you commit to a number.
Publish one page a month, in the same format every month. Consistency beats completeness. An executive audience learns to read a familiar layout and starts asking better questions of it. A report that changes shape monthly resets that learning every time. Our reusable monthly reporting template is a reasonable starting layout, and the piece on building an internal communications dashboard covers the step after that.
Only then add sentiment and comparison. Once reach by segment is stable and trusted, qualitative layers become useful rather than decorative. The relationship between survey data and communications data is worth understanding before you combine them, which our comparison of engagement surveys and communications data works through.
Three mistakes that cost a year
Setting targets before you have a baseline. A number agreed with the executive committee in month two becomes the thing you defend rather than the thing you learn from. Ask for a baseline quarter explicitly. It is a reasonable request and it is almost always granted.
Reporting the aggregate when you were asked about a segment. “Reach was 58 per cent” answers a question nobody asked. If the CEO wants to know whether the plants got the message, an all-population figure is not a partial answer, it is a different answer, and experienced executives notice.
Building the dashboard before agreeing the definitions. The dashboard is the last step, not the first. Every hour spent on visual design before the definitions are settled is an hour you will spend again.
The honest position on Microsoft native analytics
SharePoint site analytics, Viva Engage community insights and the Microsoft 365 usage reports are free, already switched on, and genuinely enough for the first month of this programme[1]. If you are starting from nothing, start there rather than buying anything. You will get further than you expect.
The point where native runs out is specific and predictable: it arrives when you need reach by segment. Native reporting is scoped per product and does not join to workforce attributes, so it can tell you a page had 4,200 views but not that 3,900 of them came from head office. That join is the reason Gallagher’s State of the Sector research keeps finding measurement to be the capability internal communicators name as their biggest gap[2], and it is why the second segment axis is so much more expensive than the first if you are doing it by hand.
Teams frequently try to close it with a Power BI build against the Microsoft Graph reporting API. It can work, and some organisations run it well. Know what you are taking on: the reporting API is not consistently reliable and produces days with missing data, customers have observed KPI values in Power BI that do not reconcile with the native SharePoint reports for the same period, and a dependable build needs a robust ingestion process, scheduled reconciliation against the native figures and a named owner. Budget for the pipeline, not the dashboard.
Tryane exists for that join. It reads SharePoint, Viva Engage, Teams and your newsletter platform together, connects the activity to your organisational structure through Entra ID or an HR file, and keeps history across product transitions so a baseline established this year still reads correctly in three years. It is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and GDPR compliant by design, hosts in the EU by default with US data residency on request, and deploys in a couple of hours through Azure AD or Entra ID single sign-on with no agent to install. Gallup’s workplace research is a useful reminder of why the segment view matters: engagement is consistently weakest in frontline and deskless populations, which are precisely the people an aggregate number hides[3].
Frequently asked questions
What is the single most useful metric to start with?
Reach against a stated denominator, for one specific communication, on one channel. Unique individuals who viewed it, divided by the agreed audience for it, with the denominator written next to the number. It is unglamorous and it survives questions, which is more than most composite indices manage.
Do we need a tool before we can measure anything?
No, and buying one first is a common and expensive mistake. The first month of this programme runs on native Microsoft 365 reporting and a spreadsheet. Buy when you hit the specific wall, which is reach by segment across more than one channel, and buy knowing exactly which question you are paying to answer.
How long before we can report a trend?
Plan for a full baseline quarter before you claim a trend, and a year before you claim a trend with any seasonal confidence. Internal communication has real seasonality: August and late December behave differently everywhere, and a programme that treats the summer dip as a failure loses credibility fast.
What should we stop measuring?
Anything nobody has asked about in two quarters, and any number you cannot explain in one sentence. Page view totals with no denominator, cumulative community membership, and any index whose formula lives in a spreadsheet nobody has opened this year are the usual candidates. Our guide to the KPIs that survive executive scrutiny covers what to keep.
Does Tryane replace native Microsoft 365 analytics?
No. SharePoint and Viva Engage keep recording what they record. Tryane sits on top, reading them alongside Teams and your newsletter tool and joining the result to your organisational structure, so you can answer the cross-channel and segmented questions no single native panel can. You keep the Microsoft 365 investment and add the measurement layer.
Sources
• Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 usage and activity reports
• Gallagher, State of the Sector
• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace
Further reading
• Building an internal communications measurement strategy
• Internal communication KPIs for 2026
• How to build an internal communications dashboard
• Measuring cross-channel internal communications
• A reusable monthly reporting template
Tryane runs a 15-minute working session with Heads of Internal Communication, starting from whatever you have today and mapping the shortest route to a reach figure you can defend in front of your executive committee. Book a slot with Jérémy to schedule yours.