Employee behavior tells a story that open rates can’t

Sometimes the clearest sign that an employee-focused message worked is that employees don’t have many questions.

Darcie Rosenthal, director of communications planning and performance at ADM, told Ragan that a drop in basic questions coming back about annual enrollment served as a sign that comms campaigns were spurring employees to act.

“It starts with being clear about what the communications plan is meant to achieve,” Rosenthal said. “From there, we look at both the communications metrics and what employees actually do. That’s what tells us whether the message helped drive action.”

Ragan: What can employee behavior tell you that a survey score might miss?

Darcie Rosenthal: Annual benefit enrollment is a good example. We tracked whether employees opened the message and clicked the links. Then we looked at enrollment completion and the questions coming into the inbox.

We found that the number of basic “How do I do this?” questions was way down from the previous year. That told us the communications were clearer and employees were better able to act on the information. An open rate alone wouldn’t have shown us that.

How do you separate a meaningful signal from normal audience behavior?

DR: You need a baseline understanding of how each audience typically responds.

We see differences across regions. Our LATAM employees are very active in the comments and likes. Our EMEA employees tend to open a lot of content, even when they don’t engage publicly. A low open rate in EMEA would get our attention. In LATAM, we might be more concerned if employees suddenly stopped reacting to something we expected them to engage with.

The same goes for messages from the CEO. Those usually have very high open rates and lower visible engagement. The signal appears when the response differs from what we would normally expect from that audience or sender. That gives us a reason to look more closely and decide what we might adjust the next time.

DR: How have you used employee feedback to improve communications?

We ask managers for feedback directly within our manager communications. We want to know whether the materials are working for them and what else would make the content more useful. Managers have been very willing to tell us what they need. Since launching our manager communications platform a little over a year and a half ago, we’ve introduced an improvement almost every quarter based on their feedback.

One example is a set of slides with talking points that managers can bring directly into team meetings. A manager might receive a slide reminding employees that it’s time to check in on goals and development plans, along with language to help start that conversation. That resource came directly from managers telling us what would help them. We made the change and then continued to ask whether it was working.

DR: What should a leadership-ready employee experience dashboard include?

Simplicity is the biggest thing. Before I take data to a business leader, I’ll often show it to another team leader or someone who understands the business. I’ll ask whether it makes sense and whether they have questions. That helps me see where the presentation needs more clarity.

The most valuable dashboards pair the data with an insight and a clear action. We might explain what employees appear to be responding to or recommend what the team should do next. That’s when the information becomes useful rather than another number to review.

Where does human judgment still matter as teams use more AI and automation?

Human judgment helps us notice when the data doesn’t make sense or when something isn’t going as expected. A tool might flag that, but it might not.

It also comes back to knowing the audience. We know how employees in EMEA tend to interact with content. We understand the differences between employees in Chicago and Decatur (Illinois). Decatur is especially unique because it’s a company town with about 4,000 ADM employees. I have neighbors who work for ADM. People who coach my kids work for ADM. I know many of the people reading our communications in real life.

When I’m creating content, I can picture those employees. I know when they’re likely to roll their eyes or feel that something doesn’t sound like ADM. AI can analyze our data and suggest a recommendation, but it doesn’t have those relationships. We’ve found AI most helpful as a check on our work. It can help us make sure content includes the elements we know perform well. The final judgment still comes from knowing the people who will read it.

Rosenthal will present here at Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference in Nashville August 3-5. To register, click here.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.