She tracked 250 data points. She showed leadership just one.

Comms teams are tracking and relying on more metrics than ever before. When it’s time to report them to leadership, the ones that get results share only what matters most.

During Ragan’s Communications Measurement Virtual Conference, Meaghan Baumwald, senior director of internal communications at XPO, shared how that approach helped her team win over leadership during a new employee app rollout.

“One of the quickest ways to lose your audience when you’re telling a story with data is to highlight 100 different metrics and not explain why they’re important or relevant,” she said. “Selecting the one to three that are the most germane to your conversation and will inform action is a critical part of using data to tell a story.”

A month after launch, her team’s dashboard tracked at least 250 data points on the rollout. Baumwald brought leadership one.

“In July, I reported to leadership that we’ve had this tool for one month and we have a 19% activation rate,” she said. “For a company of our size, the benchmark at one month post-implementation is about 18%.”

But Baumwald said that matching the benchmark wasn’t the goal. She wanted the app to give comms a direct line to frontline employees instead of relying on leaders to pass messages down.