Most communications teams cannot prove engagement leads to action.

Sixty-two per cent of communicators say meaningful engagement means an employee doing something. Eight per cent can show whether it happened.

Michael Reaney  ·  11 September 2026  ·  4 min read

New research from the employee-experience platform Interact and Ragan Communications, drawn from a survey of up to 188 communications professionals fielded between 4th and 30th June 2026 and published on 8th September, isolates a specific gap in how internal communications functions measure their own work. Sixty-two per cent of respondents said meaningful engagement means an employee taking a specific action, not simply reading or reacting to a message. Only 8 per cent said they can connect their communications data to whether that action actually happened. Fewer still, 2 per cent, tie their data to a business outcome such as productivity or retention, and only 6 per cent use internal-communications metrics to support a budget, staffing or technology decision. Seventy-nine per cent said a clearer link to business outcomes would be the single biggest reason senior leaders would invest more in the function.

The finding should be read with its source in mind. Interact sells the employee-experience platform this research indirectly promotes, and a report commissioned by a measurement-tool vendor has an obvious interest in dramatising the gap it also happens to sell the fix for. That caveat aside, the scale of the gap, an eight-fold difference between what communicators define as meaningful and what they can actually evidence, is consistent with the wider pattern already established elsewhere: comms functions report reputational metrics far more often than economic ones, and most still cannot tie their key performance indicators to a business goal.

What closes a gap like this in practice is deciding, before a piece of leadership content is made, what specific action it is meant to produce, then checking the finished piece against that action rather than against engagement volume after the fact. Our own production experience points the same way. A weekly executive interview built around one defined listener outcome, a specific point the sales or advisory team is meant to be able to repeat within a day of publication, gets judged against whether that happens, not against how many people opened it. The measure exists before the content does, not after.

A short checklist worth running against your own leadership content programme:

1. For the last five pieces of leadership content your organisation published, what specific action was each one meant to produce?
2. Can anyone currently show whether that action happened, or only whether the piece was seen?
3. If your output doubled tomorrow, would your ability to answer the first two questions get easier or harder?

Worth reading

• Interact and Ragan Communications, "From Engagement to Impact: The New Employee Experience Mandate" (up to 188 communications professionals, fielded 4th to 30th June, published 8th September): the anchor study above. Only 8% of communicators can connect their data to the employee action they say defines meaningful engagement; only 2% connect it to a business outcome; 79% say a clearer link to outcomes is what would unlock more investment from senior leaders. GlobeNewswire, 8th September 2026
• The Interactive Advertising Bureau, "Measuring Visibility in the AI Era" (released 3rd August 2026): the trade body's first standardised set of measurement guidelines for how brands and publishers are tracked inside AI-powered discovery, written because more than 20 companies now sell AI-visibility measurement tools, each using a different methodology and each capable of producing a different answer for the same brand. It organises the metrics into what the IAB calls the four Ps of AI visibility: presence, prominence, portrayal and persuasion. Useful for any reader deciding which of those 20-plus tools, if any, to trust. IAB, 3rd August 2026

The moves

• Walmart has announced the departure of Allyson Park, senior vice president and chief communications officer, after three years in the role. She moves into an advisory position from 1st September, supporting Dan Bartlett, executive vice president of corporate affairs, while Walmart runs an external search for her successor; and she remains with the company through 1st February 2027.
• Zürcher Kantonalbank has named José-Manuel Pombo Lanz head of marketing and communications, effective 1st January 2027, succeeding Jan-Hendrik Völker-Albert, who left at the end of June. Pombo Lanz joins from LGT Group, where he has led marketing since 2023, and previously held senior marketing and communications roles at Pictet and UBS.