Communication metrics should describe actions that help work progress. Attendance and completion show training activity but do not establish whether employees clarify requirements or confirm the next step. The article recommends pairing observable behaviors with later operational and business outcomes.
A change in a metric should trigger investigation of actual conversations, not an immediate verdict about performance. Look for unclear expectations, ownership, or follow-up at a specific point in the workflow. Choose one recurring issue, define the behavior, and agree in advance on what counts as evidence. Practice the action, observe subsequent work, and use the findings to guide the next cycle without assuming correlation establishes causation.