Senior Manager, Internal Communications

Responsibilities

• Lead Strategy Communications & Change Activation
• Translate corporate strategy and annual business goals into a clear, compelling enterprise narrative and messaging framework.
• Define what strategy adoption looks like in practice by connecting strategy to employees’ day-to-day work and decisions.
• Partner with head of global communications to align messaging, priorities, and expectations across the organization.
• Create scalable toolkits, guides, and messaging resources that enable leaders to consistently communicate priorities, reinforce expectations and drive alignment.
• Establish clear roles and expectations for leaders in driving engagement and alignment.
• Build an employee content strategy that ensures ongoing strategy reinforcement through everyday workflows and tools, including an ongoing editorial calendar of strategy-driven content and storytelling.
• Create a structured employee learning journey to ensure communications connect strategy to behaviors, performance expectations, and business outcomes.
• Define the communication channel framework across executive, manager, and enterprise platforms.
• Align CEO town halls, earnings communications, and intranet strategy to reinforce strategic priorities.
• Partner cross functionally to identify and communicate the company’s progress in driving growth and strategic priorities across global business units, corporate functions and operations.
• Manage Internal Communications & Employee Engagement
• Manage the internal communications team to develop and implement integrated communications plans that align with enterprise goals, organizational transformation, employer brand and talent development.
• Lead and develop global internal communications channels, ensuring consistent, clear, and engaging communication across the organization.
• Improve communications and engagement for manufacturing and production employees using channels such as signage, frontline leader toolkits and training, and mobile-optimized formats.
• Support M&A integration to align new employees to Graco’s culture and strategy.
• Create high-quality multimedia content to engage employees, including executive videos and storytelling.
• Support Annual Report and ESG Report production.
• Implement new internal communication systems, tools, and processes to improve employee experience and engage a global workforce.
• Team Leadership, Collaboration & Culture Building
• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing communications team, fostering strategic growth and accountability.
• Build strong cross-functional partnerships to ensure cohesive, aligned communication across the enterprise.
• Balance strategic planning with timely execution.
• Measure Strategy Understanding, Alignment & Behavior Change
• Define success metrics that go beyond communication outputs to measure:
  Employee understanding of strategy.
• Alignment to priorities.
• Adoption of desired behaviors.
• Connection to daily work.
• Establish measurement frameworks that include business, attitudinal, and content performance metrics.
• Provide regular insights and recommendations to senior leadership to improve effectiveness and drive accountability.
• Establish, measure and present quarterly KPIs for communications effectiveness, including awareness, engagement, sentiment, trust, and reputation.
• Develop and communicate communications processes, workflows and strategies to drive consistency and quality of communications.
• Apply best practices, emerging trends, and modern tools, including agentic and generative AI, to enhance communication impact.

• Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, Communications, Public Relations, or a related field.
• 10+ years of progressive communications experience, including at least 4 years leading teams in a global, matrixed organization.
• Proven ability to develop and execute enterprise-wide internal communications strategies supporting executive leadership and major business initiatives.
• Strong business acumen and ability to align communications with strategy.
• Exceptional writing, editing, and presentation skills with the ability to translate complex topics into clear messaging for all levels of the organization.
• Experience leading communications for organizational change.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholders in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong interpersonal and leadership skills with the ability to counsel and influence senior leaders.
• Sound judgment, discretion, and ability to manage sensitive communications.
• Willingness to travel up to 15%.