How can we benchmark one company against another? Steve Doswell asks the question 

“To judge – properly – is difficult”

We talk a lot in internal communication about benchmarking, about seeing how – and how well - what we do stacks up against practice elsewhere. But how far is it possible successfully to compare our work when organisations have such distinct cultures? I pondered this question a couple of years ago after studying the workings of the EU, a unique organisation that – love it or hate it – really is in a category of its own. The question returned in November, at the FEIEA Grand Prix European internal communication awards ceremony in Zurich. After all, what does a company that sells building materials in Denmark have in common with a bank in Italy? What links a brewery in Britain with a national railway operator in Austria? What does a supermarket chain in Slovenia have to do with a telecoms business in Romania, or an insurance company in the Netherlands? How can we compare a tabloid newspaper for the energy sector, with an in-depth broadsheet newspaper for the chemical industry?

On the surface, these organisations have very little in common, except that they are all in business to achieve results, that they rely on their employees to do so and that for this, they must communicate with their employees.

In fact, simple comparison is easy. This campaign took place over six months and involved 20,000 employees across 30 locations, that one involved the top management team at a single conference over two days. This event presentation used Prezi, that one Powerpoint. No, the real challenge lies not in comparison but in making a fair judgement, in evaluating the impact and outcome of our work. To judge – properly - is difficult. And yet we must do it in competition. After ten fascinating years of being involved with FEIEA, the European federation of communication associations, I conclude that the most profound evaluation challenge is to recognise how different national cultures will produce different answers about what’s appropriate and what isn’t.

Here’s an illustration… We see in one part of Europe, a trend towards simpler, more intimate dialogue, with less mediation between the employees of an organisation and its leaders. In itself, the quest to narrow the distance between leaders and the wider workforce is nothing new. When pioneering IC managers first began to portray executive teams in shirt-sleeves and without ties, (note the implied masculine dress style – this trend goes back to the 1980s) it was based on a perception that the formality was old-fashioned and created an unnecessary barrier. Now, as we look for less mediation between speaker and audience, we develop a greater tolerance for a raw, less finished, less polished style. However, not every culture prefers to present its business leaders in that way. I see a continued formalism in the way senior figures are portrayed in some parts of Europe. This may look somewhat sepia-tinted when seen through a British communication ‘lens’, but to adjudge such a portrayal to be ‘wrong’, without taking account of the context in which such images were presented, would reveal a lack of cultural sensitivity, even arrogance.

Ethics (another culturally relative concept) play a part here, as judges do their collective best to treat each entry fairly and to arrive at decisions that ‘work’ and that do justice for organisations as diverse as a hardware retailer in Scandinavia, a national railway in central Europe or a telecoms operator by the Black Sea. Conclusion: for evaluation to be meaningful, assessors need to be lucid about their own assumptions and make it their business to understand the context for which a project, campaign or other work assignment has been created. It’s never easy but it’s always fascinating.

Steve Doswell is chief executive of the Institute of Internal Communication You can find him on Twitter @stevedoswell