Supporting Manager Communications as an Internal Communicator

There’s no doubt about it: people managers play a crucial role in shaping how employees perceive and respond to company communications. As the ones with direct relationships with their team members, it’s not unreasonable that employees look to their managers for answers, support, and understanding, especially when company communications are heavy (such as with layoffs).

When internal communicators inform and prepare managers with the background, context, and confidence to support an organization-wide message, employees will not only have stronger relationships with their managers, but they will also have more trust in leadership, too.

However, it’s much easier said than done, especially when leaders view internal communicators as drafters of company-wide messaging, rather than audience-specific messengers. But internal communicators are the bridge between senior leaders and managers, and managers and their teams. Internal comms pros can provide managers with the tools, context, and clarity they need to support their teams and succeed.

In this post, I’ll show you how best to support manager communications as an internal communicator, step-by-step, so your all-staff messages land with impact and your managers feel empowered to help their team members navigate changes.

For many employees, their managers are a trusted source of information. Makes sense, right? This is someone they converse with regularly, discuss their job satisfaction and growth with, and trust to lead them in their work.

But it’s not just gut-feeling alone that suggests this is true. Prosci’s Best Practices in Change Management research consistently shows that people have preferred senders of key messages, including:

• Wanting to hear from the person in charge (senior leaders or executives) for messages about the change impacts on the organization
• Wanting to hear from their manager about the implications of the change-related effects on their daily work

Managers are the first point of contact for questions, concerns, and clarifications about a company message. When we prioritize this group as a layer of the communication cascade, we can equip them to:

• Reinforce key messages without creating a different employee experience across teams
• Serve as a united front behind senior leaders
• Build trust and credibility by providing timely information confidently
• Reduce confusion and squash rumors before they spread by addressing employee concerns quickly
• Gather unanswered employee questions and raise them with senior leadership

When we leave managers out and they don’t receive information before an all-staff announcement, the opposite happens.

A team member asks their manager a question about a recent announcement, and they utter, “I don’t have an answer because I found out when you did,” eroding trust, creating frustration, and widening the gaps between hierarchies in the organization.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Proper planning timelines, helpful resources, and transparent processes can (and will) set managers up for success, leading to better all-staff communication rollouts. Here are three practical ways to support manager communications as an internal communicator:

It goes without saying, but doesn’t happen nearly enough: one of the most effective ways to support managers as an internal communicator is to ensure they receive information before big announcements go public.

That means it’s imperative to build this portion of the announcement into the overall timeline (and you might need more to extend your company announcements timeline to accommodate this step accordingly).

There’s no magic number when it comes to notifying managers in advance. It all depends on your team size, cultural practices, and the announcement itself. Though notifying managers at least 72 hours before an all-hands meeting or company-wide message gives them time to:

• Digest and understand the news and context
• Ask questions to ease and clarify their uncertainties
• Review the documentation to ensure they feel ready to echo key messages
• Prepare thoughtful responses to their teams (beyond what the communications team provides to them)
• Work through their feelings (because we’re all human!)

Early manager involvement not only gives managers enough time to work through the announcement details and prepare, but it also shows them that senior leaders value their role. Every time you loop managers in early, it reinforces their value in leading their teams.

And if you’re an internal communicator and your senior leaders say things like, “We can’t tell managers that early, because the news will spread,” or “We want to give them a short heads up to prevent a company news leak,” the first thing you need to address is the lack of trust between these groups and how that lack of trust is hurting internal communications across the organization.

Give your managers resources they can use and refer to! (And yes, I’m talking about more than meetings or meeting recordings.)

A well-prepared FAQ is one of the most valuable resources internal communications professionals can provide to managers. When done well, it ensures that managers have access to consistent, reliable information about the announcement and answers to questions their team members will ask, right at their fingertips.

Here’s how I recommend structuring your FAQ:

• 3-5 key messages to reinforce. Key messages are the most critical parts of the announcement, which is why you shouldn’t have over five of them. Ideally, these are short, clear, and unforgettable, so managers can quickly recall them on the spot without having to think too deeply about them.
• Key dates (complete timeline) of the communications plan. Bring the managers with you on the journey. What’s happening? When is it happening? What dates do they need to keep in mind? Ideally, by the time you lay out this timeline, the dates won’t fluctuate. Sure, sometimes plans change (and if you need to make changes, don’t forget to communicate them to your managers). But including a timeline in your manager FAQ serves another secret purpose: it holds leaders accountable to the timelines to prevent disruptions and last-minute scrambling.
• Employee Q&A with prepared responses (with approved talking points). These are the questions we expect employees to ask about the announcement, along with accurate information that managers can provide. They aren’t scripts (encourage managers to avoid sounding like robots), but they serve as a single source of truth with information that leaders have approved for sharing. They offer consistency so that teams hear the same responses regardless of who their managers are. (Note: You might also include Q&As for managers only, meaning they may be privy to information senior leaders don’t want to share outside management. That’s cool, just be sure to label which information managers can and cannot share accordingly.)
• Required actions for managers to take. After a company-wide announcement (and sometimes even before one), leaders can lean on managers to check in with their team members in team meetings or one-on-ones. Leaders may also ask managers to send a follow-up email with additional information or conduct some ‌other team-centric activity post-announcement. Whatever the case may be, this is where you lay out what managers need to do and when you expect them to do it. (And if you want them to conduct check-ins during meetings, prepare questions you want them to ask.)
• Process for elevating unanswered employee questions. Depending on your level of preparation, there’s a decent chance an employee will ask a question that you missed in the FAQs. It happens; no sweat! But your managers need to know how to elevate these questions, who to raise them to, and when they can expect a response by, so they can provide transparent answers to their employees. Lay this process out. If you want managers to submit a form with these questions, include it here.
• Supporting documents and related materials. Don’t forget to link to any additional documents and resources (including slide deck templates, meeting agendas for follow-up meetings, associated policies, etc.) that a manager might need for their conversations here.

While an FAQ for managers might require adjustments here and there for different announcements, ideally, you can follow the same format, so consider creating a template using the information above and save it for later.

You might have caught this in the FAQ sections above. Still, it deserves its own callout because it’s a step that we often overlook and unintentionally miss, especially under tight deadlines.

Even the best-prepared FAQ won’t cover every question employees ask. That’s not the goal. Employees will inevitably ask questions that managers can’t answer right away. To avoid leaving questions unresolved (which can lead to rumor mills or cause unwanted fear), internal communicators can help managers by establishing a process for elevating unanswered questions before the company-wide announcement. (Don’t wait until after and let this slip through the cracks!)

Here’s a basic formula for establishing this process:

• Assign a point of contact to direct all new questions to. (Ideally, this is a specific person or group of people; use names! Telling managers to send their questions to HR is too vague.)
  • As an alternative, consider using a form submission for all questions so they route to a larger group of people. A simple Google Form works for this.
• Set a regular cadence to update the FAQ toolkit or distribute answers to the new questions. I recommend updating your FAQs to keep a single source of truth rather than sending out the latest information via email or chat apps (however, you can always send a quick email or Slack message to let managers know new Q&As are available). Now, when will you update the FAQ? Weekly? Bi-weekly? Every Wednesday at 3:00 pm? Whatever cadence you choose, be specific, and stick with it (or communicate in advance if you cannot achieve the deadline).
• Include this process in the FAQs so that case managers can refer to it if they forget the steps to take. It’s that simple!

This process prevents information silos and ensures employees across the organization receive consistent information.

Don’t forget to tune in and evaluate whether your support structure is working! To continually improve, internal communicators can measure the effectiveness of their support for manager communications by:

• Using targeted pulse surveys to gauge whether employees feel informed by their managers, and whether managers feel equipped to support their team members
• Implementing manager feedback loops through surveys, meetings, and interviews to determine the usefulness of the provided resources following the distribution of an FAQ toolkit

Managers are the front line of employee communication. When internal communicators equip them with early information, FAQs, escalation processes, and talking points, they create alignment and build trust across the organization.

If you’re an internal communicator, now is the time to audit your manager communication strategy. Are your managers prepared to lead conversations with confidence, or are they still finding out news at the same time as their teams?

Read next:

• Ghostwriting for Executives: A Practical Guide for Internal Comms Pros
• 10 Tips for Creating Internal Newsletters People *Actually* Want to Read
• Asynchronous Workflows for Internal Comms Approvals: A Practical Guide