Companies often neglect to consider the impact that internal podcast communications have on their bottom line, or figure that it’s too difficult to accurately measure. However, especially if you are needing to expand on budget or resources for your internal communication programs, you will need proof that your efforts are making a positive difference within your workforce.

There is at least one resource involved in communications that is relatively easy to quantify: time. An employee’s time does not come cheap, and any on-the-clock time where they’re not working amounts to a significant cost to the company.

One of the key benefits of an enterprise private podcasting solution is that it enables you to deliver key communications to employees during times that they might otherwise be idle or offline, notably when they’re doing household chores or traveling for work. We refer to these largely idle hours as “windshield time.”

Windshield time, and downtime, is usually extremely unproductive. It becomes much more productive and delivers a greater ROI if employees are able to use it to receive sales enablement guidance, product information, workforce motivation or other important corporate communications that are successfully delivered through private podcasting. In a time where health concerns are spiking, the thought of remote working is something more and more businesses are starting to consider. Through a private podcast, employees can listen and watch company updates anytime, at their convenience - no matter their time zone, location, network bandwidth and more.

Of course, simply making private podcasts available to your employees does not guarantee they will become more productive. The productivity gains are only realized if workers are actually taking advantage of a private podcasting solution. That’s why it’s key that you opt for a private podcast solution that allows you to track individual named-employee use. With uStudio, you can build custom dashboards with podcast data pulled into the system of your choice - like Salesforce and more.

A solution that includes private podcast analytics also allows you to rapidly test your content strategy by varying private podcast show and episode format, length and frequency, to see which is most successful in getting key business messages through to your employees. Visit our website here to learn more about the podcast analytics available through uStudio.

The uStudio ROI calculator helps clients understand the time –– and therefore dollars –– they are saving by implementing an enterprise podcast solution. We calculate ROI via the following inputs:

• Number of employees
• Average cost per employee (salary & benefits)
• Average monthly hours of commute/travel per employee
• Number of podcast users
• Average monthly hours played per podcast user

All you have to do is plug in whatever you’re spending to put in place the podcasting solution. With that data, we can estimate the value you are gaining each month from employees who are making use of your private podcast content as well as the value you are losing on employees who are not.

For example, the average cost of productivity loss per employee, per month, is calculated by the average monthly hours of downtime per employee multiplied by the average hourly cost per employee. Note the average hourly cost per employee is the average annual cost of employee, calculated by adding salary and benefit cost, divided by 2080 (hours). To calculate this average cost of productivity loss per employee, per year, you take the above calculation and multiply the end number by 12 (months).

To maximize the ROI of implementing an enterprise podcasting solution, you need to consistently monitor how your workers are interacting with the content. uStudio allows you to not only track each employee’s use of the solution, but to segment the audience to understand how the content is performing among different parts of the workforce. Not all teams within your enterprise will respond the same to your private podcast content and it is important that you are able to present them with targeted shows and episodes that they will genuinely enjoy.

A successful podcast program can be used to slash to-dos and costs for web enablement, remote learning, excessive intranet or training systems, operating costs for businesses and much more. Use cases for podcasting in the workplace are truly endless. By tracking how employees use the private podcasting solution as well as seeking feedback on their content preferences, you’ll be able to make improvements that will lead to increased employee use, reduced lost time and, ultimately, a greater ROI.