Almost half (49 per cent) of CEOs see internal events as a cost rather than an investment, a new study by Involve has revealed.
This may be an issue for marketers working on internal marketing campaigns.
The research showed that 84 per cent of marketing departments use internal events are used to influence employee engagement (84 per cent) and 81 per cent to influence revenue/profit.
However, directors believe that only half of CEOs (51 per cent) see internal events as an investment compared to almost two thirds of employees (67 per cent).
Meanwhile, CEOs in low spend organisations (those that spend between £100,000 to £250,000 a year on internal events) see events as more of an investment than those in high spend organisations (with spend of £250,000 to £1 million a year).
CEOs may be critical of internal activities because only 54 per cent of directors claim to measure the ROI ‘extremely’ or ‘very robustly’ for these events.
The majority of brands evaluate internal events by post-event surveys (73 per cent), direct feedback (46 per cent), and ‘happy sheets’ on the day (31 per cent).
Jeremy Starling, MD of Involve, commented on the findings: “There is a clear disconnect between the CEO’s view of internal events and the views of the rest of the company.
“A prime cause of this has to be a lack of proof that internal events are delivering long-term behavioural change or hitting other indicators of success. The long-term growth of this industry depends on securing buy-in from CEOs across the board. Using robust measurements to track ROI is vital to determine whether internal events are truly effective and successfully delivering against an organisation’s ‘business critical’ goals.”
