Communication Action Project Measurements

[derikson]

This is concerning our first Action Project that we are presently uploading to the AQIP site. I assume that I address this here instead of the General Forum since it is AQIP. We are working with a consultant to have a Communication Audit completed at our college. After that is done, we'll look at the gaps and then design processes that address those identified issues. I'm wondering how to establish outcome measures before we know what we will be doing. So our initial "measurements" will be doing what we said we'd do - establishing the committee, having the audit, reviewing the audit, and then developing a plan for improvement – the establishment of the processes. Then we want to measure the change in employee satisfaction with communication, so plan to send 3-5 of the key communication questions from the Constellation in a "How are we doing? Survey" twice a semester to all employees. Is that overkill? We'll use a Likert scale of 5 and will have the original Constellation results as our benchmark.

Since we haven't designed the "fix" - would it be feasible to design more measurements for our improvement plan after it has been developed and add them to the Action Project at that time?

Suggestions?

Also - Steve or Neil, I don't know the management piece of Action Projects yet - if we make them "Current" can we still modify or edit them?

[Spangehl]

"Communication" covers such a broad range of phenomena that it is difficult to come up with a single indicator that measures whether it is improving. If people were getting misinformation, or if they were not receiving essential information in a timely way, and your project cures those problems, the evidence for improvement might not be a survey, but a log of problems that would show the decrease. If, however, the problem is a generalized sense of "being in the dark," a survey may indicate the change in feeling. I think it makes sense to try to establish some baseline measures BEFORE you intervene, but I'd caution you against assuming that a survey can do it all. (Often the problems in communication are due to people not reading what is sent to them, and those people won't be included in your survey results -- unless, maybe, you survey by phone???)

Whatever you decide to do, share it here so others with similar projects or concerns can benefit from your thinking.

[Spangehl]

Too often, people go at these projects too casually, forming a committee, meeting occasionally, making little real progress. So it is delightful to hear of an institution taking their own project so seriously, and going at it "full steam ahead." I suspect you'll achieve wonders with this approach, and others should watch -- and learn -- from you.