Understanding Your Worth: Metrics for Technical Communications

Have you proposed a new tool or a training program and received feedback like, “How much does it cost?” or “Is it worth it?” If you are in technical communications, you’ve probably come across this at least once in your professional life. Developing content is akin to anarchy—sometimes you’re on a roll, batting out hundreds or even thousands of words in a matter of hours, and other times, a minuscule 40-word blurb takes days because the experts are unavailable, the graphics are too complicated, or the software is bugged out. So, how do you justify this unpredictable process to leaders in a manner that will make them loosen the purse strings? The answer lies in metrics—the compelling story that data tells about the company, the team, and the potential value of investment.

Monitoring Time: The Pulse of Your Data

To construct a robust argument, time tracking is required; it is the first step. Having a definitive understanding of how much time each project requires is like having a compass in the ever-changing world of business. It will streamline your organization’s workflows and help in setting proper expectations. Tools like the Controlio app offer solutions by allowing easy monitoring and reporting of time spent on tasks altogether as a whole.

When embracing any time-tracking tools, I recommend first establishing certain parameters that need to be followed. Is it necessary for your team to round their time to the closest 15 minutes, or should every second be tracked literally? From my experience managing a small documentation team, tracking precise time worked best. Reports looked chaotic at a quick glance due to odd numbers like 3.72 hours, but they were accurate nonetheless. Rounding at the final edit stage without changing the base logic was reasonable, and that’s how data inflation and deflation were avoided.

Another critical step is organizing projects in the tracker. Name them appropriately based on either the company’s content hierarchy or more informal project names that speak to your team. Maintain consistency by having properly defined buckets such as “meetings,” “administrative tasks,” and “content creation.” For example, I once participated in a project where there was a vague “miscellaneous” category. This caused a lot of confusion, but things improved once we defined what went into each bucket.

Bringing in a new tool requires some level of subtlety. Tell your team ahead of time that you are testing the tool, and you might change it based on their suggestions. It’s okay to give it a few months to sort out the kinks. I remember trialing a time tracker that seemed great on paper but was clunky in practice. After a year, we switched to a better one, and the team appreciated the flexibility.

The Controlio app can also show the relation of work done compared to the project duration. Consider this: a project may require 40 hours of actual work but may span 4 weeks due to other priorities that take up the employee’s time. This insight allows the employee to respond with confidence to leadership’s “How long will it take?” After a couple of projects, averages can be computed to establish baselines, such as how long a user guide or an infographic takes, which tremendously improves future estimates.

Computing the Expenses: Costing Out Your Efforts

Now that time tracking is in place, let’s discuss finances. It is quite important to understand how the spending on employees is justified. If you can access salary data, for each team member, take the annual salary and divide it by 2,000 hours (the average working hours in a year); this gives you the hourly rate. To get a more accurate picture, you may wish to include benefits or bonuses too. In one of my past roles, I left out bonuses, thinking they would not make a difference, but adding them later painted a clearer picture of our costs.

Do not forget to include non-billable hours, such as basic admin work and professional development. Including these factors gives a realistic picture of the investment made in the team’s work. If leaders are looking for detailed information, then, based on your time-tracking data, you may present billable and non-billable hours separately. If information regarding salary is not accessible, then working with HR can assist.

Forming Metrics: Speaking Leadership’s Language

Crafting metrics becomes simple when you have time and cost data. Think about document pieces and their associated costs, efficiency improvements derived from new tools, or reduced time to market. These figures transform the team’s work into the language of the executives.

For instance, while assessing a new tool, figure its ROI against your cost data. Some vendors have ROI calculators that estimate potential savings based on user data input. Another way is to take a tool’s purported productivity increase, such as a 20% reduction in project time, and apply that to a prior project. Assume there is a 100-hour project, and with the 20% claim, it could have been done in 80 hours—that’s 20 hours saved. That amount of hours, when multiplied by your team’s hourly rate, presents a convincing dollar figure for leadership.

To justify a new content management system, I referenced and analyzed processes in other companies where time savings of close to 15% were achieved. We secured the funding, and the tool delivered as promised.

Leadership wishes to compute return on investment and does not care about the squishy nature of content creation. Finding the value in these tools is much easier when you track time, lower costs, and build metrics. The Controlio app makes collecting this type of useful information a simple task.

That said, every number correlates to something greater. Illustrate how the additional tools and resources will increase time and enhance content excellence. A reasonable approach will properly shift raised eyebrows into agreeable nods.

Key Metrics Table