Community Metrics Matter
Metrics matter because leadership wants measurable results. Employees want to receive consistent value on their terms. What is today’s community builder to do? Meaningful metrics are hard to come by; especially in the beginning.
Members are at the center of every healthy community
A healthy community is led by volunteers that are enabled, empowered, and engaged. Collectively, their efforts can create a healthy ecosystem for all employees to enjoy.
Peeling back the layers of community one finds strong interdependencies. Within the community exists a strong symbiotic relationship between community builders and members. The effectiveness of the leader lies in heart of each volunteer and the impact of volunteer efforts rests in the effectiveness of the leader.
The effectiveness of the leader resides in the heart of each volunteer and the impact of volunteer efforts rests in the effectiveness of the leader.
Volunteer leaders are like a thermostat for volunteer enthusiasm that can be adjusted to produce better results. This type of leader contributes to the success of the organization through modeling and invitation. Having earned permission to lead over time, they can suggest changes that can be quickly adopted.
Building a member-focused community requires building a strong foundation first
While volunteers are the heart of the community, the ground on where they build is crucial. The community formed around broader principles aligned to organizational objectives is best. Principles ground community members and provide stability. The right principles enable, empower and engage people to work collaboratively to accomplish what they could never do on their own.
Service Orientation
A simple and effective construct to build a healthy, sustainable, and impactful community is found in The Future Leader written by the author, Jacob Morgan. His book emphasizes the importance of service orientation becoming the cornerstone of tomorrow’s successful leader. It makes sense that a community based on principles of serving (employees, employer, self) would also be a worthy proposition.
Community measures matter
Developing a meaningful community promotor score (CPI) that incorporates a net promoter score (a measure of employee loyalty) can produce a more holistic picture of community health.
Build core metrics into the community foundation
Core metrics should support the principles of the organization. Once those have been established, associated data can be captured, stored, and eventually analyzed. Community data is captured at each material employee interaction. The purpose is to learn and inform members on what is working best and adapt when new opportunities are identified. According to Robbie K Baxter, data is important as it can help us, “…drive decisions about what services to offer and which customers to focus on.”
Community Engagements
So, where do we begin?
Seth Godin teaches it best. Starting with the questions, ‘what is it for?’ and ‘who is it for’ are essential.
What is it for?
Knowing what problem we are attempting to solve brings clarity to our offering. In community building, we can have several, but we will be known for something. Once you know what you want it to be, we can ask our members how we are doing. Some examples of what the community could offer members include:
Increase influence through development of professional network
Practice leading, coaching, or advising others
Improve individual and team performance
Opportunities to share or learn innovative practices
Share a presentation and receive feedback
Work with like-minded volunteers to solve important problems
Realize a passion project
Learn new skills in a cohort
Have fun
Feel seen, heard, and valued
Where to start?
1. Member enrollment
When an employee chooses to become a member their community experience begins. When a member chooses to join, the onboarding should be easy and their decision celebrated. Not only on a personal level, but it should resound throughout the community and their personal network, leaders of groups, or activities they show interest in. If your budget is large enough, they may receive a gift commemorating their decision.
What you learn: core member information, interests, date joined, and opportunity to associate with existing corporate information.
On-going feedback
At pre-determined intervals contact your members based on their enrollment date to continuously receive feedback on how the community is doing. This information will inform the CPS and community health rating. Consider sending this out at the following intervals:
The first month: This will inform the team how well the onboarding experience is received and provide important ideas on how to improve.
First-quarter: This will inform the team how the overall new member experience is working. When your newest members are not satisfied you can solicit their help to make corrections.
Every 4 months: Begin after the first quarter and make this pulse re-occurring. This rating will be the core of the CPS.
Periodic focus groups: Establish a cadence to gather feedback on a more personal level. Give priority to your most engaged employees to learn their perspective and where they feel the community needs to go.
2. Core offering participation
Members deepen their community experience by registering for offerings. An offering is a general term that includes activities, events, and programs. Primary offering types include:
Event: The largest in scope and typically most expensive a well-run community can plan and execute events. An event is planned over several weeks or months and executed in one or a few days. Examples might include hosting a conference, a prominent guest speaker, or an internal summit.
Activity: Activites are smaller in scope than an event and have an end date. Examples could be one-time (or short series) of knowledge-sharing presentations, social gatherings for networking. They could even include an innovation or professional development workshop.
Program: A program differs from an activity in that there is not a specified end date for the offering. The community would continue to offer the program with changing participants. A primary example of a community program would be new membership enrollment (on-boarding). Other program examples might include mentor matching, career guidance, job shadowing, and more. Often relational or learning-oriented, those enrolled in these choose when to enroll and unenroll.
Offering delivery metrics
Crafting and consistently administrating surveys for each offering provides opportunities for trend analysis and developing your offering CPS. Include core member information, offering rating, and direct opportunities to improve and capture new ideas. Always include an invitation towards a path in becoming a contributor. Many employees will want to give back, they just need to be invited.
3. Partnership and affiliate offerings
After the community has established core offerings members' value, partnerships and affiliate offerings can be explored. Doing so can bring new opportunities current community leaders don’t have the resources or experience to deliver.
Value of partnerships
There will be other groups in your organization performing similar work. Maybe even better than what your volunteer is currently doing. A partnership can increase your effectiveness. Time to partner up. Collaborate to bring the superior offering to your members.
Or perhaps there is a guest speaker, workshop, or activity you were considering developing for your members, but learn another group is doing it already. Don’t be discouraged. Instead, ask how they might extend the invitation to your members. Then help promote it and provide an opportunity for your members to volunteer to help make it successful. They will love you for it. A word of caution; select partners wisely. Ensure your community principles are not compromised.
Benefits of affiliates
While a partnership may allow your community to deliver value through collaborative effort, an affiliate may plan and deliver an offering for a specific group of members without much help. This approach can be valuable when you want to serve a specific need, but there is not enough interest to justify the effort to develop by your community offering creators. It might also be a way to test out or pilot how valuable a particular offering is prior to doing it yourself.
4. Member accomplishments
While membership may not have a causal relationship with member accomplishments, belonging and contributing may have played a vital role. If so, the community platform should trigger a conversation to find out. Perhaps even capture a written or video testimonial. It may also be an opportunity to extend an invitation to help others achieve a similar accomplishment. Accomplishment examples the community can celebrate and amplify include:
Team award
Individual award (internal)
Individual award (outside)
Promotion
New role
Community award (key contributor, badges earned, hours volunteered, etc…)
5. Platform and offering metrics
Any channel where members interact with the community should be captured to establish a baseline. Later, review changes to learn what the normal activity level may be for each channel. Each one you identify can be included in a weighted, member engagement calculation. Examples to consider include:
Forums/Bulletin boards: Activity per day/month/quarter
E-mails received and responded: How many and what topics are being received
Contributions: record units of value given by members
Skill enhancements: How many participants attended a session where skill enhancement occurred
Contributors: how many and from where in the organization they work
Participation: how many participants engaged in an offering
Members recognition: Identify active members to help evangelize community benefits
Channel engagement: learn which channels are used most and valued by members
Demographic: A quarterly review of active members, lost members, and non-member prospects can be performed
Group: perform analysis groups of members. New offerings or suggestions for offerings for some members could be suggested if historical information is available and accessible
Maximizing community impact
Once you discover more about your community membership you can begin telling their story to maximize impact across the organization. You can create a virtuous cycle as your members learn and grow. The community and its leaders can become a cleansing filter to help keep the community strong and vibrant.
Constructing your community story
You can emphasize what is most important to the organization. Consider constructing crafting your origin story in an authentic way.
Origin story
Tell the story of how it was formed, the problems the founders faced, and how they were addressed early on. Use data gathered to illustrate points and testimonials of the founders and early participants. Social validation is important to help provide context and connection for newer members.
Organizational Health
Identify ways to show how the organizations’ guiding principles influenced offerings and membership growth
Highlight how the community Strengthens and enhances organizational culture through belonging
Show how the community has adapted based on member feedback
Have members tell how new relationships formed as a direct result of a community interaction
Provide data showing how many people received new skills, cultivated a talent, attended a knowledge sharing session, or deepened their network
Organically reinforcing the organization’s guiding principles strengthens leaders and followers.
Share stories of how positive energy produced through community activity led to better outcomes
Illustrate how increased trust influenced better decision-making and organizational reduced risk
Have leaders share how the community influences positive interactions with more employees
Last thoughts
Sustainability depends on the foundation we build upon, the offerings we create, and establishing mechanisms to capture data points along the way. Leadership deserves to understand how community members are stewarding company resources. And employees should expect their community will provide continuous value in ways they need to feel more connected, learn and grow. When we delight our employees and satisfy the needs of leadership we will undoubtedly have a compelling community story others will want to hear.
Check out these resources for more on building community.