Latest news with #middlemanagers
Fast Company
2 days ago
- Business
- Fast Company
From messengers to meaning makers: 4 ways to transform middle managers into comms superstars
In today's always-on work environment, clear internal communication isn't a nice-to-have—it's a business imperative. Yet many organizations overlook the people most responsible for making it happen. Middle managers sit at the intersection of leadership and the front line, tasked with translating strategy into action. When they're equipped to deliver messages with clarity, context, and confidence, they can turn communication into a powerful driver of alignment, engagement, and trust. Many companies are finding that today's hybrid environments are not ideal for traditional cascade communication models, in which information flows top-down from leadership to managers to frontline employees. Today's employees are working across multiple time zones and using countless digital communication channels, resulting in more opportunities for message dilution, distortion, and deprioritization. According to Gallup, 74% of employees feel they're missing out on company news because the company's internal communication is not effective. And the impact of poor communication is costly. An Economist survey found that communication barriers in the workplace can lead to project delays or failures (44%), low morale (31%), missed performance goals (25%), and lost sales (18%). Caught in the 'middle' of today's challenges are middle managers, who are expected to bridge the communications gap between leadership and frontline workers while also managing both in-office and remote teams. The result? Messaging fatigue, professional burnout, and a perhaps unfair reputation as less-than-stellar communicators. In fact, 47% of internal communications specialists call out poor middle manager communication skills as a main barrier to success. And only 56% of employees say they fully trust their line managers as a source of information. Even so, middle managers play a crucial role as primary communicators, with 83% of employees saying that communication with their immediate supervisor is important. This represents a significant opportunity to invest in middle managers as effective communicators who drive employee engagement and connect the dots between high-level strategy and day-to-day realities. The key is offering the right support. 4 WAYS TO EMPOWER MIDDLE MANAGERS AS COMMUNICATORS Here are four ways to empower middle managers to become 'meaning makers' for your organization: 1. Offer Training And Development Opportunities Communication doesn't come naturally to everyone, but it's a skill that can be developed. Support managers by offering different types of communications training, like workshops on effective messaging, courses on strategic planning, and guidance on how to tailor information to different audiences. By investing in their development, organizations can empower middle managers to be not only better communicators, but better leaders overall. One training success story is Cleveland Clinic, which faced a growing internal communications gap as it expanded to over 70,000 caregivers. As a solution, the clinic launched communication workshops, training managers to become message drivers, not just administrators. Managers learned skills like active listening, emotional intelligence, and message framing—including how to translate top-level strategy into day-to-day relevance for clinical staff. The model helped lead to a 33% increase in managers' confidence in their comms role and a 15% boost in team engagement. 2. Provide Clear Direction And Helpful Assets A study by Gallup reveals that only 30% of middle managers strongly agree that they understand what's expected of them at work. To be strong communicators, managers need to understand the full context and goals of communication efforts. Leaders can help by providing managers with messaging briefs and clear talking points for all comms efforts. Consider preparing a toolkit with assets they can leverage for their teams, including emails, social media posts, videos, FAQs, and more. In the case of Cleveland Clinic, middle managers received manager briefing templates aligned with organizational priorities, allowing messages to be shared consistently and concisely across teams. 3. Equip Them With The Right Tools And Technology Empowering middle managers with the latest comms technology can pay huge dividends. Many of today's platforms offer analytics dashboards with open/read rates, allowing managers to understand what's resonating with their team and what needs adjustment. There are tools that allow managers to share upwards feedback, push out real-time updates, conduct surveys, and more. For Unilever, investing in digital enablement paid huge dividends. Their internal communications process was slow, top-down, and overly formal—causing a disconnect between leadership and frontline teams. To solve this, they rolled out 'Unilever Connect,' a mobile-first internal comms platform where managers could share updates and celebrate wins, and employees could react, comment, and post updates. The platform included internal manager forums with best practices on communication techniques, tone, storytelling, and listening strategies—helping managers to find their authentic leadership voice. As a result, employee communications engagement rose 19%, and manager confidence in communicating strategy increased by 37%. 4. Create A Two-Way Feedback Loop Consider setting up regular check-ins with managers to talk openly about your company's comms efforts. By holding one-on-one meetings you can share context, close communication gaps, catch issues early, and shed light on your project's goals. You should also encourage managers to seek out feedback from their teams—a task that can be made easier by using modern comms platforms like the one embraced by Unilever. These types of tools make it easier for managers to curate team insights and deliver a 'boots on the ground' perspective to executives. Middle managers can be more than messengers—they can be meaning makers. With the right tools, training, and support, they can connect the dots between big-picture strategy and day-to-day work, turning communication into a catalyst for clarity, culture, and performance. When you invest in their ability to lead through communication, you're not just supporting them—you're unlocking a critical lever for company-wide success.
Fast Company
04-06-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
The most underrated change agent in your company? Your middle manager
When organizations face disruption, whether it's a corporate restructuring, the sunsetting of a product line, or a shift in return-to-office policies, executive teams often turn to internal communications professionals to guide the messaging and navigate change. However, there's a missing link in this equation: the middle manager. As an employee communications cloud platform, we at Staffbase are always looking at what (and who) is impacting the effectiveness of those communications most. Our recently released communication impact study found that direct managers are the most trusted source of information for U.S. employees. Fifty-five percent of respondents reported that their immediate supervisor is their preferred communication channel, and 56% said they place a 'great deal' of trust in them. Despite that trust, there's a glaring disconnect: Non-desk workers, those on the frontlines in healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, logistics, and retail, say they are consistently less well-informed than their desk-based colleagues. Simply put, companies can't afford for frontline workers to miss out on their communications efforts. Internal comms teams can set the strategy together with executive leadership, but they must put the effort into fostering the pipeline that supports middle managers who bring these communications to life. The current state of the world is leading many organizations to lay off middle managers, but that's a grave error, severing one of the most vital communications lifelines between upper management and their workforce. Why internal comms can't go it alone The pandemic, ongoing economic volatility, and evolving employee expectations have fundamentally reshaped how companies communicate. In many cases, internal comms teams have shrunk, been centralized to one part of the organization, and generally had their reach stretched thin. The best communications in the world mean little if they aren't reinforced and humanized by the people employees interact with daily. Our research revealed that only 10% of non-desk workers are very satisfied with the internal communication at their companies. Furthermore, nearly 60% of employees who are considering quitting cite poor communication as a significant contributing factor. The implications are clear: If companies want to improve retention, reinforce change, and build trust, they must focus on improving both the quality and consistency of communications with all levels of employees. Since middle managers are one of the most trusted sources of information, organizations need to work toward empowering them to become stronger communicators who can provide that consistency and quality across the business. Closing the information gap between desk and non-desk workers One of the most striking findings in our study was the communication divide between desk-based and non-desk employees. While 67% of desk-based workers say their managers keep them well-informed, that number drops to 48% for frontline workers. This gap is about both access and equity. Frontline employees are often the most critical to day-to-day operations, yet they're also the least likely to receive timely or high-quality updates. Many don't use company email or sit at a desk, meaning they rely heavily on their direct managers to pass down critical information. When that chain breaks, confusion, misinformation, and disengagement follow. Creating dedicated communication processes can better equip managers with the knowledge and ability to deliver key information to those who struggle to receive it most. Tech can be a huge boon in this process. While there's no all-encompassing app that can replace employees' trust in their managers, utilizing an employee app as a main communication channel can help improve frontline access to information. These tools must be paired with training that ensures managers are both enabled and motivated to properly pair these communications channels with necessary in-person communications. Through posts, comments, and real-life conversations, managers will be better equipped to provide the communications support their various employees need. Coaching managers to lead communication, not just tasks We often assume that people management is synonymous with people leadership. However, just because someone oversees a team, doesn't mean they've been trained to navigate tough conversations, deliver clear change updates, or answer sensitive employee questions. Managers can subsequently become bottlenecks, delivering incomplete or inconsistent messages—or worse, avoiding communication altogether. That's where communications coaching comes in. High-performing organizations are starting to view manager communication as a core competency, rather than a desirable trait. They're investing in tools and training that help managers distill key messages, understand the 'why' behind changes, and create space for team dialogue. They're offering templates, talking points, and even in-the-moment coaching for big moments of transformation. The payoff is significant. When it comes to leadership communication, 91% of employees who say that the vision and strategy are 'very clear' also report being very or somewhat happy in their jobs. When managers communicate well, employees are more likely to feel connected to the company's mission, confident about their future, and have clear expectations. What does this look like in practice? Leading organizations are rethinking internal communication as a shared responsibility. They're not asking comms teams to carry the burden alone, they're making it a joint effort between leaders, HR, and middle managers. First, turn to training. Create or bring on formal communications training for all middle managers and leaders of the organization. This will help create a standard for the entire company and unify the skills for every voice across the business. Second, conduct an audit of your current systems and protocols to identify what tools are working well, which audiences are being underserved and what messages have resonated well to date. Third, create a set process for announcements, change and crisis communications. A team with representatives from the aforementioned core groups can work together to create toolkits and talking points that will help translating key messages much simpler and more direct for managers. Leadership may question the investment of time and money into the above efforts, so employee communications teams should work to measure success along the way. Develop a framework that measures the ROI of your communication efforts by tracking metrics like employee satisfaction, behavioral shifts, and impact on critical business goals. Doing so can help shine a light on the bottom line value of these efforts and create further buy-in across the entire team. In moments of uncertainty, employees don't need perfect messaging. They need consistency and transparency, and more than anything, they need to hear it from someone they trust.
