Welcome to Day 1 of our Internal Communications Strategies to Connect Frontline Employees Virtual Conference!

Corporate culture may be drawn up in the C-suite, but it lives (and either thrives or dies) with the frontline. Too often, culture and change programs fail to reach or resonate with the very people who shape the daily employee experience, and end up being little more than words on a poster. This workshop will guide you through building a sustainable approach to culture and change that empowers managers, maintains momentum, and drives positive business outcomes. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Conduct effective audits to identify gaps and opportunities across the organization 

• Engage all levels in shared change plans and forging a collective, non-combative culture 

• Train and equip managers with practical communication tools, messaging and feedback mechanisms 

• Design rewards and recognition programs to reinforce and sustain meaningful change 

Every communicator knows the moment. A transformation you learned about this morning needs a communications plan by Friday, and the instinct is to start producing: emails, town halls, and talking points. The moves that actually determine adoption happen before 

anything gets drafted. This session covers what to do first, then goes deep on the channel that decides whether a deskless, shift-based workforce ever hears the message: people managers. Most organizations spend that channel badly by letting managers learn about the change alongside everyone else. Attendees will leave knowing how to build the manager cascade before the announcement, drawn from direct experience leading rollout communications across large, distributed workforces. 

The Problem This Session Addresses 

Most rollout communications plans are built for the workforce the organization wishes it had: connected, at a desk, reading every message. Frontline workforces do not look like that. When the plan meets reality, the frontline hears about the change late, secondhand, or from a manager who was never prepared to carry it. Employees are not resisting. They were never actually reached. The communications profession has the fix, but only if it treats people managers as a channel to be built and equipped rather than an audience to be copied on the announcement. This session shows what that looks like in a complex environment, starting from the day the transformation lands. 

Key Takeaways 

• A first-moves sequence for the day a transformation lands: testing whether leadership can state the why in one sentence, identifying the sponsor whose credibility is on the line, and mapping impact before drafting a single message. 

• A practical model for building the manager cascade before the announcement, including what frontline managers in shift-based environments need in hand to carry personal-impact conversations, and what they will ignore. 

• Language for making the case to senior leadership that an equipped manager outperforms another all-staff email, and that cascade readiness belongs on the project timeline, not after it. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to reaching frontline and deskless employees. From manager cascades and team huddles to mobile apps, digital signage, email, text messages, and old-fashioned bulletin boards, communicators are using a wide range of channels to get information where it needs to go. 

In this candid discussion, communicators from organizations with large frontline populations will compare what they use, what employees actually pay attention to, and which channels simply haven't delivered. Join the conversation to hear real-world successes, failures, and lessons learned as panelists debate what it really takes to cut through the noise and reach employees where they are.