What is a Communications audit?

One of the services we offer at Frontier Communications is help creating communications plans. But before you can figure out what is wrong (or right) with your organization's communications, it is helpful to perform what is called a "communications audit."

A communications audit is a comprehensive evaluation of a companies communications resources, policies, and capabilities. Following is an excellent excerpt from the Public Relations Society of America.

Tips & Techniques: The Communications Audit

What it does, how to do it, what it costs, and why it should be an essential part of your internal and external communication plans and programs.

Experience demonstrates that the most successful managements create internal and external climates that encourage the support of goals and enlist the cooperation of constituencies in problem solving.

Successful climates are the result of a planned communication strategy based on periodic audits conducted by professionals. Whether the auditors are from inside or outside the organization depends on particular staff skills, responsibilities and budget.

Often I am asked by communicators whether communication audits must be conducted by outside consultants. I usually say that they need not be, but that there are merits to using outside experts. These include time availability and undivided attention to the task, an assortment of similar experiences for comparison, a degree of objectivity, and the credibility factor that often comes with outside credentials.

Here are other questions repeatedly asked about audits.

1. What is a communication audit?
It is a complete analysis of an organization's communications -internal and/or external - designed to "take a picture" of communication needs, policies, practices. and capabilities, and to uncover necessary data to allow top management to make informed, economical decisions about future objectives of the organization's communication. An audit should also lead to a series of recommendations.

2. What is the scope of an audit?
The scope of an audit may be as broad and as deep as the size and complexity of the organization's demands. The audit can measure the effectiveness of communication programs throughout an entire organization, in a single division or department, or within a specific employee group. It can examine communications on a particular subject or communications via individual media, it can uncover misunderstandings, information barriers and bottlenecks, as well as opportunities. It can help measure cost effectiveness, evaluate ongoing programs, confirm hunches, clarify questions, and, in some instances, reorient concepts among senior management.

3. What does the communication audit provide?
It provides meaningful information to members of management concerned with efficiency, credibility, and economy of their communications policies, practices, and programs. It also provides valuable data for developing or restructuring communications functions, guidelines, and budgets, as well as recommendations for action tailored to an organization's particular situation as uncovered by an analysis of the collected data.

Outside consultants may bring additional features to the process, such as an objective eraluation from one or more communication specialists who have a broad frame of reference gained from education and experience working with many, varied types of organizations on diverse communication assignments. and comparison of the audit findings against data from other clients to see how the organization compares in its needs and capabilities.

4. When should an audit be conducted?
Generally, an extensive audit should be conducted every five to seven years. In the interim, reliable feedback techniques should be obtained periodically through the organization's routine communication function. This ongoing process can be used to: monitor existing communication activities and to provide background information needed to develop or modify specific communication programs.

Audits are helpful also after mergers and acquisitions, whenever new or revised corporate policies and structures are being implemented, during periods of labor or management unrest, and following a crisis.

5. What subjects are covered?
Typically an audit will cover such areas as: