How to help managers beat communications burnout

As burnout rages on in this age of remote and displaced work, your managers are an essential resource.

But, those managers may be overwhelmed themselves. Senior leaders can work to equip managers with proper training resources, corporate talking points, metrics and more to ensure managers deliver the right message to their teams—and maintain an employee feedback loop.

Megan Witherspoon, VP of communications at Altria, and Rick Knudtson, CEO of Workshop, offered tips for promoting stronger manager communications during a panel at Ragan’s Employee Communications and Culture conference on Feb. 16. The panel was moderated by Ragan Consulting Group co-founder and senior partner Jim Ylisela.

Here are three of their top suggestions:

1. Provide managers with resources and training to reduce their stress.

Managers are the first line of defense when delivering messages to employees and need to be treated as such. But as expectations of managers to support initiatives like diversity and inclusion have evolved over the last couple of years, they may be asked to do more without feeling fully equipped or trained to do so. This can cause them to be overwhelmed.