How to measure the performance of a Public Affairs team
Some secret advice for Communications pros - at least short-term...
A few days ago, I talked to a VP of Communications, Marketing & Public Affairs. He had recently taken over the responsibility for the Public Affairs function, but his own expertise was from a background in journalism and communications.
His department consisted of a total of 24 FTEs, so lots to do and many areas to cover.
Now, a new leadership challenge had arrived: How could he track the performance of the PA team? How could he know, if they were working on right things for the department?
I usually advise Public Affairs Professionals (PAPs), not communications professionals, but I could definitively relate to the challenge, and also in my view, the more Communication and Public Affairs understands one another, the better. We should not be adversaries.
So based on the insights gathered from 93 qualitative interviews in the Public Affairs Manager Survey 2025, I gave him a few pointers on how to approach this challenge.
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What is the problem?
The problem is this: A busy communications pro without expertise in Public Affairs, can’t necessarily know how to assess the work and performance of the PAPs. Lets just admit it, we (PAPs) can make fairly simple things sound very complex and demanding at times.
Now, before you start hammering on your keypad about trust, modern leadership and no micro-management, I have to stress, that this VP is a good leader and not at all interested in controlling or dictating the PA work. But the challenge, he sometimes felt, was, that the PA team could basically tell him anything, and he would not be able to really assess their choices and trade-offs.
And yes, this is a symptom of something deeper internally that is a challenge to the department, or at least not in place yet, but the VP needs to act now and he can’t short-term do a whole lot about the organization.
Quant or qual? The current state in PA in Europe
In the Public Affairs Manager Survey 2025, I interviewed 93 PAPs from 27 countries in Europe. One of the questions, I asked, was, how they measure their work - and get measured internally. And the results..
Most are still measured and measure qualitatively. Quantitative approaches to measuring are still in the early days in PA – count of stakeholder interactions is still the most common way to measure quantitatively.
Output and outcomes - what to make of it
So the typical situation is that most PAPs do not have quantitative KPIs. And why is that? With technology advancements like e.g. AI, ML, NLP etc. this should be possible, right? It is of course possible to measure outputs, but the essence is still, that it is a big challenge to measure outcomes. What caused a certain outcome e.g. a policy proposed, new regulation, new market opening up, or a new movement spiring? It can be very difficult to claim such victories from a PA perspective. We simply often just don’t know exactly what caused a certain development.
Now this is not the same as saying that we cannot with credibility say we influenced something - of course we can. And it can be done both quantitatively and qualitatively. But calculating or doing an impact assessment can be both very time consuming and costly. This might be different in certain industries, where PA is more grounded and needed to operate. Or, it might also be different if you organize PA differently than in this case example.
Most organizations chose to place PA under Communications or Regulatory Affairs. And their ability to measure PA can be illustrated something like this matrix below, inspired by Michael Tushman.
The reality is that most departments overseeing PA, don’t have the processes in place to measure on the performance of PA team, or they don’t want to prioritize it specifically. Either way, it ends up in the same place: they are not able to measure outcomes, but they can measure behavior.
And so, this is also explains why most of the 93 PAPs - I interviewed for the Public Affairs Manager Survey 2025 - answered that they had some overall quant objectives related to the overall performance of the business, and then some more qualitative KPIs specifically for the PA team.
So in short, what these organizations do, is that they measure PA based on behavior as this seems more tangible.
Short-term solution - two new initiatives
So just to finish were I started. My advice for the VP in the example was short-term to introduce two new actionable initiatives: A Public Affairs calendar wheel and a Public Affairs Code of Conduct.
Those two initiatives would short-term provide him with some boundaries for the PA team and also more transparency. Still mostly qualitatively, and still more focused on behavior. But its a start, and he will sleep better at night.
But once these are introduced and well-integrated, he can move to the next step: Introducing initiatives to measure outcomes.
/Kopp