Internal Communications Best Practices: Informing and Leveraging Middle Management

To survive in a competitive marketplace, organizations need effective internal communication practices to ensure that critical leadership messages around products, strategy and goals are successfully conveyed to employees. In many companies, middle management acts as the communication bridge between corporate leadership and employees.

Unfortunately, middle management can also act as a communication barrier or bottleneck that inhibits effective internal communications. Best Practices, LLC conducted this research to spotlight winning approaches, tools, and technologies that help leadership effectively communicate to and through middle management. Specifically, this study measures the effectiveness of different communication message types, channels used, and sending frequencies. It also addresses the role of communication skills in hiring, evaluating and training middle managers.

Industries Profiled:
Energy; Pharmaceutical; Research; Construction; Non-Profit; Biotech; Communications; Chemical; Academic; Consumer Products; Health Care; Hospitality; Professional Services; Consulting; Insurance


Companies Profiled:
British Petroleum; AAI Development; MSA; GlaxoSmithKline; World Vision; Janssen; GA Communications Group; Genentech; University of Phoenix; Shire; LaVoie; KimberlyClark; illumina; Merck; AspenDental; Novo Nordisk; Pizza Hut; Thomson Reuters; Taylor Corporation; Inter Valley Health Plan; sandia natural laboratories; Franciscan Health System

Study Snapshot

For this benchmarking study, Best Practices®, LLC gathered insights and performance data from a total of 26 communication leaders representing 23 leading national and global organizations.

Key topics include:

• Study Overview
• Key Findings & Trends
• Message Channels
• Message Recall
• Strategy Alignment
• Hiring and Training Communicators

Sample Key Findings

Company Strategy/Goals Disseminated Quarterly: Most leaders believe middle managers are well-informed regarding overall company strategy. These leaders tend to communicate company strategy and course updates to middle management on a quarterly basis.

• The Communication “Importance vs. Measurement” Dichotomy: Most leaders say communication skills are pivotal in middle management hiring; however, few provide any sort of communications testing or feedback in the application process or during performance reviews. Of those companies that do provide training, much of it is merely on-the-job training rather than formalized.

If you purchase Best Practice Database document(s), you will have 30 days from the date of purchase to apply some or all of the cost of the document(s) toward the cost of a Full Access Individual, Pharma, Group or University Membership. Write us at DatabaseTeam@bestpracticesllc.com or call David Guinn at 919-767-9179 if you have any questions.