Avoid undermining your credibility as an internal communicator

It’s Budget week in the UK, and that makes it a perfect time to talk about numbers specifically, the ones IC teams use that undermine their credibility.

“Disengagement costs the economy over £200 billion a year."

“A new intranet will save us £16.8m a year in productivity.”

I saw these numbers doing the rounds again on LinkedIn this week and I sighed not because the issues raised aren’t real, but because I know some internal communicators will take these generic numbers and use in business cases where they simply don’t belong.

Internal communication is worth investing in, and unhappiness at work is a real issue organisation need to take seriously. But we undermine our own credibility when we rely on generic consultancy stats that have no connection to our organisation’s size, shape or reality. To a CFO, it’s the equivalent of back-of-an-envelope arithmetic.

When I was in-house, I spent a fair amount of time producing business cases for various investments and I learned quickly: numbers only work when they’re credible, contextual and directly tied to the organisation’s actual problems, risks and opportunities.

Why productivity gains are a flawed metric

Let’s take the intranet example. It’s based on the calculation that time saved looking for information can be multiplied by the average staff salary to get productivity benefits which can then be claimed to demonstrate the benefits of a new intranet. It sounds impressive at first but remember, productivity benefits only count if they can be realised, which means the time saved must convert into cash or an equivalent outcome. Saving someone ten minutes a day doesn’t guarantee they’ll spend it creating value, they may use them to grab a coffee!

How to make your business case

It is possible to make a compelling investment case for IC but only when we stop recycling generic calculations and start grounding the numbers in our organisation’s data: reduced time wasted, higher adoption rates, less duplication, lower compliance costs, reduced rework.

Here are five tips to help you produce a business case your CFO will read and take seriously:

1. Start with the business problem, not the IC request. Rather than saying “we need a new intranet” or “we need a bigger budget for a campaign,” frame your request around what leaders care about and what the organisation is trying to achieve and show how IC will help solve a defined problem. For example: “HR data shows that 62% of exit interview comments relate to unclear expectations and inconsistent communication. Here’s how this campaign will address that gap.”

2. Use the language of your business. Rather than relying on broad promises like “help people feel more connected,” articulate the operational outcomes your work will deliver — cutting duplicated effort, reducing time wasted, improving process adherence, or enabling faster decisions.

3. Ask for investment, not budget. Budgets are costs; investments have returns — and your case needs to show how your ask will generate measurable value, not simply require more spend.

4. Co-create the numbers with the people who own them. That means HR for people data, Finance for cost models, Risk for breaches, IT for adoption and licence utilisation, and Operations for rework, safety and downtime. Cross-functional numbers carry weight because they’ve been built with the specialists leaders already trust.

5. Show how you will measure impact (not activity). What leaders want is a measurement plan that draws a clear line from what you deliver, to what people do differently, to the business outcomes that follow. That’s the difference between “we ran a campaign” and “we changed something that matters.”

There’s still a place for external research, but your business case must be anchored in your own organisation’s evidence so let’s stop leaning on borrowed statistics and start using the data leaders recognise and trust.