OK, so the title may be misleading. As anyone who's been involved in a research project knows, there's almost nothing quick and easy about the process. But as with most things in life, having a clear and simple strategy at the start goes at least some way towards clarifying what you're trying to achieve and why, and how best to get it done.

So this week's tip is: Clarify what you're trying to achieve before you start. And to help you develop your own simple research strategy, here are seven steps to internal communication research heaven, as suggested by Echo Research:

Step 1: Decide your business reasons for doing internal research
For example, "We want to use the findings to reset the organization's direction and set future targets," or "We want to check that employees are receiving the right messages and getting them through the best channels," or "We need to see if teams believe in the message and understand how it links with their work." Get buy-in for the research from your colleagues and management.

Step 2: Run an ideas workshop to decide the scope of the research
For example: Which communication issues do we want to explore and measure? How shall we increase "ownership" of the survey and people's enthusiasm for acting on the results? How shall we encourage a high response to the survey? How should results be fed back to managers and teams at the end of the day?

Step 4: Conduct the research
[This section probably deserves its own "seven steps," but we'll save that for another issue of The Source.]

Step 5: Interpret the results
Decide what the communication and operational implications are. Think how you could turn these into actions for the year ahead.

Step 6: Report the results and the implications
Multi-level reporting often works best. Produce compact summaries for management, more detail for internal communicators - for example, key demographics like job level, age and gender, and easy-to-digest reports for other team members.

Step 7: Work up measures to set sensible targets for next time
Map communication measures to other data so that the link between communication and employee retention, for example, or communication and motivation, can be made. Calculate and demonstrate, if possible, the return on investment.

I hope you enjoy this week's tip.

Mandy Thatcher,
Editor mandy.thatcher@melcrum.com