Hey there, I'm Devin!
Most of the time you can catch me deep in the world of internal comms at Workshop (yes, the Happy Mondays folks!), and while I love AI, there are just some comms questions that need a human who really gets it… that’s me!
Hi Devin, congratulations on this initiative! Got a feeling I’ll be dropping by here a lot. I work for a large corporate with a mix of office bound and in-field staff and contractors – we have 1700-2200 pax. I’m looking at benchmarking our engagement rates. Can you please share the averages Workshop is seeing against comparables?
Oooh! I’d absolutely recommend starting with our Internal Communication Benchmarks & Best Practices report as a reference point — these metrics are a solid starting place to understand what’s possible and what “good” can look like (relatively speaking!). Equally, I’m a huge advocate for benchmarking your own comms first. Every company, audience, and send is different, so external benchmarks should give you context… not pressure.
If it helps with comparables, the report also breaks benchmarks down by industry. For example, in Professional Services, we’re seeing an average open rate of 83.7%, an average click rate of 10.4%, and a click-through rate just under 15%, which is on the higher end overall. That said, the report includes a wide range of industries — healthcare and finance to tech, hospitality, etc. — so you can focus on the categories that feel most aligned with your workforce. Hopefully one of those is a close match and gives you a more realistic point of reference.
And don’t panic if your numbers don’t look amazing right away. Everyone starts somewhere, and benchmarks aren’t about chasing perfection — they’re about creating a baseline so you can see what’s actually changing over time. If your open rate is 60% today and 65% a few months from now, that’s progress worth celebrating.
At Workshop, we do tend to see higher engagement than average (I mean… we are an internal comms company!), but even for us, not every send performs the same. Our weekly All Hands usually lands around an 87% open rate, our CEO emails tend to be a bit higher, and department newsletters often sit closer to the 75–80% range. The point isn’t that every email should hit the same number — it’s that different messages serve different purposes.
Finally, give yourself time to actually see change. I’d suggest looking at trends over at least 90 days before drawing any big conclusions. A few sends won’t tell you much, but patterns over time absolutely will. If engagement is moving in the right direction, you’re doing something right, even if you’re not “there” yet!
