Only 16% of Communicators Can Tie Their KPIs to Business Outcomes

Only 16% of communicators say they know how to set, measure and align KPIs with business outcomes — even though 94% agree business acumen matters. That gap comes from research by Ragan and the Institute of Public Relations, and it frames a problem a dozen senior communicators tried to crack at a recent focus group hosted by Ragan's Communications Leadership Council at the Internal Communications Conference.

How wide is the knowing-doing gap?

The gap is wide, and the numbers tighten the picture. Ragan's 2026 Communications Benchmark Report found that more than half of comms teams report no alignment between their comms KPIs and business goals, or align only inconsistently. A quarter have defined their alignment. Just 23% have put those KPIs into practice and report on them regularly.

Mike Prokopeak, director of learning, community and content at the Communications Leadership Council, laid out the stakes: communicators tend to describe their value in terms like building trust, creating alignment, protecting brand and creating strategic clarity — all worthwhile goals, but all at least one step removed from the financial and business results corporate leaders measure and report daily. KPIs close that gap. A well-defined comms KPI tied to business objectives makes communications' contribution to enterprise value clear.

The measurement problem is real, though. "Being able to measure how what we do actually drives those numbers is the really difficult part because there are so many variables that feed into that number," said one focus group participant from a large healthcare provider. Anchoring the work in the business's priorities, Prokopeak writes, is a way to shape how leadership perceives the function's value.

What does an aligned KPI look like in practice?

The linkage is clear, if not always formally defined. Higher employee engagement boosts retention and cuts the cost of losing key employees. An effective crisis response preserves brand equity. Employee engagement and corporate reputation top the list of KPIs communicators tie to business goals, followed by stakeholder engagement, revenue growth and change adoption.

The focus group produced concrete examples:

• A software company communicator ties her work to annual recurring revenue (ARR), the company's core metric. Comms keeps sales staff informed about product trainings, commercial changes and marketplace shifts — for example, news that an existing customer won a new project that could drive increased demand. Sales team engagement in training, correlated with customer data, is a potential KPI. "From a comms perspective, whatever we're communicating out to our sales colleagues has to go back to: How is it helping them increase adoption and consumption of the software?" she said.
• An internal communications leader whose team sits inside HR aligns KPIs with HR priorities: employee engagement, culture survey scores and external recognition as a top workplace.
• A healthcare company links comms to patients' length of stay in the hospital and the readmission rate. Nurses drive those outcomes but are hard to reach — and activity metrics like distributing 3,000 flyers to nurses don't demonstrate impact. That problem remains unsolved for the team.

What's the takeaway?

Trust, alignment and clarity still matter, Prokopeak concludes, but communicators who want a seat at the table should start with a different question: not "What value do we bring?" but "Which number does our CEO watch, and how do we help move it?" Answer that, and comms' value becomes much clearer — a shift the benchmark data suggests most teams have yet to make.