Sam Altman’s line is that a post-superintelligence world will leave everyone busier than they expected, still complaining about it, and secretly happy. Chuck’s verdict is the definition of delusional, and his objection is precise: the framing moves responsibility for long hours off the employers who set headcount and workload and onto human competitiveness. The episode opens on a US jobs report showing 23,000 jobs lost and labor force participation down to 61.4%, then works through the Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire and whether satisfaction is even the right thing to measure, bink.’s Culture at Work study and its say-do gap, and the workplace conversations GLP-1 drugs have made possible that nothing in HR is ready for
Chuck opens on the US jobs report published the Friday before recording: 23,000 jobs lost, with revisions taking more than a hundred thousand off previous months, and a labor force participation rate now at 61.4% against something above 63% before the pandemic. His reading is that the falling unemployment rate alongside it is not the good news it looks like — the rate drops when people stop actively looking and fall out of the system — and that a single point of participation is millions of people. Jenni’s UK read is more hopeful in their own corner of the market: over lunch that day, recruiter Andrew Holland of Comms Leaders told her the comms job market has shifted noticeably in the right direction over the last year. The wider British conversation, she says, is about specific pockets rather than the whole board: young people struggling to get into work at all, and middle-aged women struggling to get back in.
Speaking on Ti Morse’s Relentless podcast, Sam Altman argued AI will not deliver the long-promised four-hour work week even as it raises productivity, and his reason is psychological rather than technological: people are very focused on how they are doing relative to other people, so as they get more productive they get more competitive and want to work more. It puts him at odds with Elon Musk’s prediction that advanced AI makes jobs optional, and it ends on the line that gives the episode its title — everyone will be busier than they expected in a post-superintelligence world, still complaining, but secretly happy. Chuck calls it the definition of delusional and does not want to give it oxygen: organizations are still arguing with people about five days in the office, and the blame for longer hours is being placed on the people working them. His data point is SHRM’s finding that AI saves employees around six hours a week, of which roughly four go on fixing what the AI produced, for a net of two. His advice to listeners, borrowed from the AI creator who posts as Cat GPT, is to own their own experience of the tools and ignore the marketing. Jenni’s discomfort is with the setup itself — being told in advance that what you thought you could have is not really what you wanted, so the outcome is your own doing — and she notes nobody is actually expecting a four-hour week; the four-day week trials that have gone well required organizations to be reimagined, not squeezed.
Jenni brings Ana Tkalac Verčič’s LinkedIn post on the short-form Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire, written with Nina Pološki Vokić, which cuts the original 32-item, eight-dimension instrument down to 13 questions scored one to seven. The line that has stayed with her is the paper’s own: the absence of a shared conceptual framework across internal communication instruments, because measures disagree about whether internal communication is a process, a relationship, a structural condition or an evaluative outcome. What she likes about the short form is its breadth — how much communication helps someone feel part of the organization, identify with it, or see how their contribution counts, rather than how often they open the intranet or turn up to a town hall. Chuck answers her US question first with research: a communication satisfaction questionnaire was developed at the University of Kansas in 1977, roughly 50 years ago, and was eventually displaced by eNPS. His reservation is the word satisfaction, which points at neither impact nor difference, and an organization can be entirely satisfied with its internal comms while failing as a business. He is also wary of “how much” as a scale — the same portion is generous to one person and thin to another — and of what happens when any of this becomes another score to beat, chased the way a car repair shop chases a five. Jenni’s counter is that the messiness is the point: a question like how well organized are the meetings you attend belongs to organizational communication rather than the comms function, and a subjective read on that may be a better number than employee engagement.
bink.’s Culture at Work study surveyed 300 culture, communications, HR and strategy professionals and concluded that culture breaks down not through a communication problem but through a say-do gap: culture is shaped by what leaders reward, tolerate and reinforce rather than by what they say they value. The numbers are blunt — 91% call the gap between leadership messaging and leadership behavior one of the most damaging forces inside organizations, 87% say culture has influenced business performance and 84% say it has influenced retention, 68% say structural systems matter more than messaging, and 78% say employees learn the real culture by watching what senior leaders tolerate rather than by reading values statements. The finding that lands hardest for comms is the authority gap: 54% say the people responsible for improving culture cannot change the systems that shape it. Asked whether leadership behavior is the strongest signal of culture, Chuck says strong but not strongest, and points instead at the 14% who say senior leaders view culture as a strategic lever tied to performance — everyone repeats that culture drives performance, and almost nobody believes leaders actually think so, which Jenni ties straight back to the say-do gap: it is not believed because it is not seen. The 18% who say leaders treat culture as an HR or people initiative prompts Chuck’s question about where the other 82% think it sits, since it is clearly being filed as somebody’s job rather than as who the organization is. Both land on the same closing move: more than half the respondents say middle managers are expected to drive culture change without support or resources, and that is the layer organizations keep eliminating.
The closing story, from Business Insider on Ozempic causing awkward work conversations, is that GLP-1 drugs have blurred the workplace’s unspoken rule against commenting on colleagues’ bodies, because the subject reads as medical and therefore askable — producing scrutiny, speculation about who is using them, and what is being called GLP-1 fishing. In the US it also carries a cost argument, since shared health insurance means coverage decisions land on everyone’s premiums, and an employment lawyer notes persistent unwelcome body talk could edge toward hostile work environment territory. Chuck’s answer to the cost complaint is a benefits meeting he sat in 15 years ago where a young engineer objected to paying the same premium as a man in his sixties who happened to be the COO: pooled risk is what insurance is, and nobody itemizes the colleague who had a baby. He cites a bank that spent around $250 million on GLP-1 medications for employees, reads that as a statement about drug pricing rather than about the people taking them, and points to benefits now emerging well beyond weight loss. The example that stays with Jenni is the man who overhauled his diet and lifestyle as the drugs arrived, lost around 20 kilos, and was badgered so persistently that he went to HR feeling harassed and disbelieved. Both land in the same place: HR can set the norm, but the norm is that people’s business is their own. Chuck’s version is knowing enough not to say anything, and his reason for caring is his father, who fought his weight his whole life and might still be here if these drugs had existed.
Why does Sam Altman say AI won’t create a four-hour work week? His argument is about people rather than technology. Altman says people measure themselves against each other, so as AI makes them more productive they become more competitive and choose to work more, rather than banking the gains as leisure. His closing line is that everyone will be busier than expected, still complaining, but secretly happy.
How much time does AI actually save at work? Chuck cites SHRM research putting the saving at around six hours a week, with roughly four of those spent fixing the work AI produced — a net gain of about two hours. That is a long way from any version of a four-hour week.
What is the ICSQ, and what does the short form measure? The Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire is an academic instrument that has been in use for more than a decade, originally 32 items across eight dimensions covering feedback, communication with superiors and colleagues, informal communication, information about the organization, communication climate, media and meetings. Ana Tkalac Verčič and Nina Pološki Vokić have published a 13-question short form, scored one to seven and reported as the mean of the items.
Is measuring communication satisfaction actually useful? Both hosts see the appeal and the limit. Chuck’s objection is that satisfaction does not demonstrate impact — an organization can be satisfied with its comms and still be failing — and he notes a US equivalent from 1977 that was eventually replaced by eNPS. Jenni values the breadth, because questions about meetings and change reach into organizational communication rather than channel performance.
What is the say-do gap in bink.’s culture research? It is the distance between what leaders say they value and what they actually reward, tolerate and reinforce. In the Culture at Work study of 300 professionals, 91% called that gap one of the most damaging forces inside organizations and 78% said employees learn the real culture by watching what senior leaders tolerate rather than by reading values statements.
Should HR set rules about talking to colleagues about weight-loss drugs? The episode’s answer is that a norm helps but a policy will not solve it. There is no HR playbook yet, and the Business Insider reporting shows the harm is real — including a man who lost weight through diet and exercise and was badgered so persistently about GLP-1s that he went to HR. The workable norm both hosts land on is simply that people’s business is their own.
Chuck: Welcome to Frequency. I’m Chuck Gose.
Jenni: And I’m Jenni Field. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture, and employee experience. Beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters. And this week we’re talking about why AI won’t lead to a four-hour work week, an internal comms satisfaction survey that’s been around for around 10 years, some new culture research from bink., and why Ozempic is causing weird work conversations.
Chuck: Before we get into that, Jenni, I want to talk about some nerdy labor stuff that I saw that just got announced. So if you’re listening to this on the Monday of the week, it was just the Friday before that the US announced a total number of job losses to the economy of 23,000 jobs lost. That then factors into a revision of previous months that have now found another hundred-plus thousand jobs lost, which really just shows — I mean, anybody who I’d say is probably in the job market, actively looking, is probably like, yeah, no kidding, we see that every single day. But I was curious if similar types of things are happening in the UK.
Jenni: So interestingly, I was having lunch today with a recruiter, a chap called Andrew Holland, who runs Comms Leaders, and we were talking a little bit about the market, and he was saying it’s actually moving in the right direction. That’s in just our little comms bubble, but he was seeing quite a big shift in that, I think, in the last year. I haven’t had a look at the stats recently in terms of the job market here, because there’s just been a lot of talk about the unemployed people coming out of work, that population. There’s still a lot of talk about that over here, young people not getting into work, young people not getting jobs. There’s also a lot of talk over here about the sort of middle-aged female worker not being able to get work. But I haven’t looked at the stats to know whether there’s anything significant across the board. It just seems to be certain pockets of demographics that are struggling over here.
Chuck: Yeah. The other number they shared, which is the number I was not really familiar with, is this term labor force participation rate. Typically the US was around — a good number is like mid sixty-three percent somewhere. Apparently that was right pre-pandemic that we hit. And then the number obviously collapsed during the pandemic, and was now at sixty-one point four percent. Meaning that is, of the available labor force, the percentage of people that are actively working. That is now dropping down to about just a little bit after the pandemic — not that low, but it is trending that direction. That is how rough it is. We are now trending back towards the pandemic levels. And then people like to point out, they’re like, but the unemployment rate also declined, which those numbers you would think wouldn’t work together.
Chuck: But all that’s pointing out is that the unemployment rate declined because people have just stopped looking. So they’re not actively in the unemployment system. They’re not submitting information. They’re not saying they’re looking for jobs. So it’s not great here. And I know that anyone in that job market would echo that. They’re like, yes, we are experiencing that. But I don’t know that people realize the numbers of this and truly what a bad spot the US economy is in, despite what the administration keeps trying to tell you. From a true employment standpoint, it’s just not good.
Jenni: Did it give you the percentage of the number that it was in the pandemic that it’s heading to? If it was sixty-three before, it’s now sixty-one point five, sixty-one point two?
Chuck: So it was like over 63 pre-pandemic, the pandemic it dropped down to 60, and now we’re at 61.4. So it went back up and then it’s coming back down again. And when you look at this, it’s not like you want 100%, because some of the countries that do have really high labor force participation rates, it’s like you have to work. That’s the only way you’re going to survive, is to work. It seems like most mainstream economies are somewhere in those mid sixties. I looked at the UK, it was around 62, 63%. So you might think, that’s not a big deal, it’s 1%. Well, 1% is millions of people. It’s millions of people that are now not participating in the workforce. I just thought those numbers were quite sobering to see come out.
Jenni: Well, and it also links us nicely to the first story we’re talking about today, which is that four-hour work weeks won’t happen. So even if you do get back to work, the joy that we thought was coming of four-hour work weeks apparently isn’t coming. And that’s according to Sam Altman, because he’s saying that people are competitive. He was speaking on Ti Morse’s Relentless podcast, where he argued that AI won’t deliver the long-promised four-hour work week, even as it dramatically boosts productivity. His reasoning isn’t about technology, it’s psychological. So Altman argues that rising expectations and competition will keep people working even as AI becomes cheaper and more available.
Jenni: He framed it as a status game rather than a labour problem. He said people are very focused on how they’re doing relative to other people. Rather than banking productivity gains as leisure, he said that as people become more productive, they will also become more competitive and want to work more. Now, notably, this contrasts with Elon Musk’s prediction that advanced AI could make jobs optional and money less important. Of course, you’d feel that as a billionaire. So there’s a real split there among some of those AI leaders on what abundance actually does to work. Altman’s closing line was, I think we’re all going to be much busier than we thought we were supposed to be in a post-superintelligence world. We’re still going to complain about it, but secretly we’re going to be happy.
Jenni: Now, Chuck, Altman’s framing puts the blame for longer hours on human nature — so our competitiveness, our relative status stuff, all those things — rather than the employer decisions or economic structures. Do you buy that? Because could it just be a convenient story for the CEO of an AI business, that shifts responsibility away from companies? Or is it true? Is it actually a human nature problem?
Chuck: This might be, Jenni, the very definition of the word delusional. None of this makes any sense. It just shows how out of touch all of these people are: Sam, Elon, all of them. We’re struggling with people saying you have to go into the office five days a week, and now Sam somehow thinks companies are going to subscribe to a four-hour work week. Are you kidding me?
Chuck: I don’t want to give this any oxygen. It just doesn’t make sense. And then he’s putting that blame on people. And I love this part about, even if people complain, just so you know, secretly it’s going to be a secret, you’re going to be happy about it. You better be happy about it. It just doesn’t make any sense. And when you look at all the data — whether you believe in what the organization SHRM is doing or not, they’ve got their own problems out there — they found some data that says AI is saving employees around six hours a week. So we’re not even coming close to a four-hour work week. But they have found that in those six hours saved, four hours is spent fixing the work that was done. So it’s really just a net of two hours. Which again, how are we really measuring that? This is just delusional.
Chuck: So I just want people listening to this: just don’t believe it. Don’t believe it. There’s an AI creator who I see sometimes, I think she goes by Cat GPT. She does this really good thing where she’s like, you have to own your own experience. Do not listen to the marketing, do not listen to the PR. You have to define what your own experience is using AI. And this is a further testament to why that is so, so true.
Jenni: Yeah, like you, I really enjoyed that: you’re going to complain about it, but secretly you’re going to be happy. I was like, what a way to make people work to the death. It just felt really uncomfortable. But I also do think there is something in this in terms of setting it up for people to feel like, here’s what you thought you could have, but actually you won’t, because actually that’s not really what you want, so you’re going to be having this.
Chuck: Because you know what? It’s your fault. It’s your fault.
Jenni: Yes, and that’s the point. You’re setting people up almost to then be like, well, I’ve created this actually, because I want to be busy. It just felt really strange. And to your point, I don’t think anyone’s expecting there to be a four-hour work week. I think the trials of the four-day week have gone quite well in places, but you have to completely reimagine your organisation and structure to do that, rather than just try and squeeze everything into four days. So I just thought it was — you know. Don’t complain about it, because you’re really, really happy.
Chuck: I think what it was, Jenni: I’m just secretly happy about this. I think that’s what it is.
Jenni: You are. I think that’s exactly what it is. I want to take us over now to a bit of an academic piece. So this is a piece I saw on LinkedIn. It was shared by Ana Tkalac Verčič, I hope I’ve said that right, who shared it on LinkedIn about an internal communication satisfaction questionnaire. Now Ana is an academic, she works with her colleague Nina Pološki Vokić, and they have been talking about this satisfaction questionnaire. It’s called the Internal Communication Satisfaction Questionnaire, ICSQ. And in her LinkedIn post, she said this has been around for over a decade, which is what caught my attention, because I thought, I am not familiar with this.
Jenni: So they published a paper about how they’re taking the original questionnaire and making it short form. So I had a read of that paper, which I’m not going to read all of it out now, because that would probably be quite dull for you to listen to. But there were some interesting parts of it, including what this short form satisfaction questionnaire is about. And the reason I wanted to bring it here was because I think this provides a really good basis for anyone looking at doing audits around their internal communication or their organizational communication at the moment.
Jenni: One of the things that stood out for me was a quote in the paper where they say that a key limitation of existing internal communication instruments is the absence of a shared conceptual framework. Many measures are grounded in differing assumptions about whether internal communication should be understood as a process, a relationship, a structural condition or an evaluative outcome. Now, this has stayed in my brain since I read the paper, in terms of how do we think about internal communications in the organisation. They also call out the fact that communication satisfaction is one of few internal communication domains that has been studied consistently and measured systematically. So focusing on internal communication satisfaction, I think, is probably more important than focusing on the internal communication function and the outputs.
Jenni: Now the ICSQ was originally designed as a 32-item questionnaire. It covers eight different dimensions that look at things like feedback, communication with your immediate superiors and colleagues. It talks about communication climate, talks about communication in meetings. They’ve basically taken that and made it 13 questions. But the questions that they’re asking are things like, how much communication within the organisation helps me feel I am an important part of the organisation, or how much it helps me to identify with the organisation, or how much the communication promotes organisational values. So they’re much bigger topics, rather than just how often do you read or access the intranet, or how often do you turn up to a town hall. So I like this. I think it’s very simple, it’s 13 questions, it covers a lot of breadth. So my question for you, Chuck, is overall thoughts on this, and whether this is useful to adapt. And also this is from Europe, so I don’t know whether there’s anything similar in the US, or whether this would work in the US market.
Chuck: Well, let’s get to the second one first, because I did my research on this one. All the way back in 1977, the communication satisfaction questionnaire was developed at the University of Kansas. So something like this existed almost 50 years ago here in the US. What happened was that then evolved into, or was replaced by, eNPS. So you could debate which is more valuable. Something like this here did exist. I had never heard of it. I’m guessing a lot of others also have not heard of it. But it then switched into eNPS.
Chuck: I think anytime you can get a gauge on what you’re doing, that’s a good thing. The danger or risk, I think, is around satisfaction. Satisfaction doesn’t point to impact. Satisfaction doesn’t point to making a difference. And so you could have an organization that’s completely satisfied with your internal comms and yet failing as a business. So I don’t know that those are as well aligned. I also think, anytime when you ask a question how much, that’s going to be different. Jenni, when you and I go out to eat, how much we eat, how much we get on our plates, it might be the same, but I might need a bit more than you do. So the how much part is so subjective.
Jenni: Yeah, it’s one to seven, I think.
Chuck: That’s the struggle also with an eNPS: people, when they take those, they might say, yeah, things are great here, I’d just call it a seven or an eight. Well, in the NPS world, that’s not good. You’re actually a detractor. So it’s always good to evaluate. Is this the perfect solution? I don’t think so. Because I think I would rather look at impact and effectiveness than satisfaction.
Jenni: And do you know, when you said about satisfaction and about impact, it really got me thinking about whether if people are satisfied, does it inherently mean there is impact bubbling around? But I also think what’s interesting about these 13 questions and the breadth of this is that for me, this goes beyond most internal communication functions. So talking about meetings — there’s a question in here, I’m trying to find it in my notes, about the meeting element, whether or not meetings are well organised. That’s it: how well organised are the meetings that I participate in? That is about organisational communication. That’s not internal communication.
Jenni: I like the breadth, because I feel like I play in that organisational communication space. But if I was an internal comms function looking after channels and campaigns, is this relevant, or is this taking me way out of that space? So I just think it’s interesting. But I also enjoy the subjectiveness of it, because I think there is something nice about the reality of the human messiness of communication and the fact that it is subjective. And even if you do want to talk about impact in terms of, we need to run a campaign to reduce accidents by 60%, we can measure that in terms of how many accidents. There are a lot of other things, I think, that are very subjective in our world that are more linked to the employee experience and the bigger things. And maybe this does give a read on that, that’s a better number than employee engagement, for example.
Chuck: And I wonder though — great segue — because I wonder if this all comes down to numbered results. Does this become another score to beat? Does this become another, like, you better put a seven? I assume the higher is better in this case. If you’re going to put a six, let’s figure out why that is. That’s like when we go to a car repair shop and they’re like, hey, we’d love to get your feedback, it’s a five. If it’s not a five, let us know, because then we can see what we can do to get that five. I don’t know. Again, it’s never bad to understand. I just don’t know the validity of it. And does this become another score to beat in the organization, no different than engagement numbers or an eNPS?
Jenni: Yeah. And to bring us into the next article, ultimately this satisfaction survey feels like it’s looking more at the broader organisational culture and how the organisation communicates, which is just way bigger than a comms function. And that’s the next article, which is the research from bink., which is their Culture at Work study, where they’ve explored why workplace culture really breaks down. So the headline finding is that it’s not a communication problem, it’s a say-do gap — no surprise there. Culture isn’t shaped by what leaders say they value, but by what they actually reward, tolerate, and reinforce. The study surveyed 300 culture, communications, HR and strategy professionals, and found 91% agree the gap between leadership messaging and leadership behaviour is one of the most damaging forces inside organisations. A little cheer from me there.
Jenni: The business case is clear too. 87% said culture has influenced business performance, and 84% said it’s influenced retention. The most interesting finding from an IC and culture perspective is the authority gap. So 54% of respondents say the people responsible for improving culture don’t actually have the authority to change the systems that shape it. That’s paired with 68% agreeing that structural systems matter more than messaging, and 78% saying employees learn the real culture by watching what senior leaders tolerate, not by reading values statements. There are four things the report calls out, just to summarise those: that leadership behaviour is the strongest signal of culture, culture is reinforced through systems, culture requires authority not just accountability, and alignment strengthens organisational performance. Chuck, question. Leadership behaviour is the strongest signal of culture, yes or no?
Chuck: It’s a strong signal. I don’t know that it’s the strongest signal. And I know that a lot of people are going to focus on this 54% headline in there. But I think the number that stood out to me the most is that 14% of the people responded said senior leaders view culture as a strategic lever tied to performance. 14% believe senior leaders view culture as a strategic lever tied to performance. We always point to culture as this performance driver, but yet the senior leaders are saying it’s not. The belief and the data aren’t lining up, because we say, my gosh, yeah, culture leads to this, but we actually don’t believe that leaders believe that, which I think is an interesting shift.
Jenni: Do you think we don’t believe that because of the gap that the report highlights in terms of the behaviour, that say-do gap? That we don’t believe it because we don’t see it?
Chuck: 100%. We don’t see it from them, so why do we think they believe it? Because people follow through with their actions. I think the other part which stood out — this is for our HR listeners out there — is that 18% say senior leaders view culture as an HR or people initiative. So I wonder where the other 82% see it, because they clearly think it sits somewhere. Someone owns that. It’s not a part of who we are. That’s someone’s responsibility.
Jenni: But do you think that — I think that’s the case with culture, with comms and engagement. From a leadership perspective, I think a lot of leaders do think, no, that’s someone else’s problem to solve. That culture thing, the communications, the engagement, absolutely someone else’s. And I don’t know whether — I was going to say blame them, but that sounds unkind. But someone’s doing a disservice to leadership training in the masses, in terms of what your role is as a leader, if people still think it’s not their job. Given all of the data points from all different areas, this report, other reports about this gap, the importance of the signal from leaders — that they still think it’s someone else’s problem and someone else’s job.
Chuck: And that points to another data point in there, with something more than half — I want to say it was like 55%, something like that — said that middle managers are the ones expected to drive culture change when they have no support or no resources. Yet this is also the group that we’ve talked about in previous episodes that is being eliminated across the organization. So yes, let’s just keep shoving this responsibility further down. It’s not our problem. It’s not our behaviors that drive it, it’s on you. Right? It’s, you be secretly happy about this, but don’t actually show it, and it’s your problem to fix. It is not us. So it’s a great way to absolve any sort of responsibility. Let’s pile on the people that are already getting piled on.
Jenni: Yeah. In fact, even better, let’s pile it onto people and then remove them from the organisation. So it’s just gone away completely.
Chuck: Right. Which then shifts it further down, because they’re going to then add that to the next group.
Jenni: Yeah, no good comes of it. But it’s a really good report though. We’ll pop the link in the show notes for people if they want to grab it. Now, the last story I want to talk about today is Ozempic causing weird work conversations. This was a piece in Business Insider. It was talking about how the GLP-1 weight loss drugs have blurred the workplace’s unspoken rule against commenting on colleagues’ bodies. Because it reads as a quote-unquote medical topic, people feel freer to ask about it, leading to unwanted scrutiny, what’s being called GLP-1 fishing questions, and speculation about who’s using them.
Jenni: It’s also creating real friction beyond the social awkwardness. In the US, shared health insurance costs mean that GLP-1 coverage decisions affect everyone’s premiums, fuelling tension between co-workers who want access and those who resent subsidising it. An employment lawyer notes persistent unwelcome body talk could even edge into hostile work environment territory, but for now there is no real HR playbook or social norm that’s caught up with how common these drugs and the conversations around them have become. Chuck, where do you think the responsibility line falls here? Should HR and comms proactively set norms around this, the way they might for other sensitive topics, or is this really a manager training, individual boundaries issue that policy just can’t solve?
Chuck: Well, I think this is a specific problem here in the US, because of the way health insurance works. And I’m going to share a story around this. This is a company I worked at probably about 15 years ago. Everybody goes to these benefits meetings where you sit in this meeting and HR is up there doing their dog and pony show about the benefits, and selling you on how great it is and how much you’re getting out of it. And this very young engineer raises his hand — I’m going to say he’s in his mid-20s — and asks the question. He’s like, wait a minute, I’m paying the same amount as that guy. He didn’t know who that guy was. That guy was the COO of the company, who was in his early 60s. Who clearly, when you’re in your 60s, you’re going to have theoretically greater health insurance needs and medical use than, say, someone who’s healthy and 25. That’s just the nature of it.
Chuck: But that’s also the nature of health insurance. It’s a pooling of resources. It’s like, all of a sudden you’re going to point to people having kids and be like, wait, you just had a baby, I’m paying for that person to have a baby. I’m sure people have had that conversation, or maybe they’ve had that thought. This is no different with GLP-1. It’s a shared cost, it’s a shared responsibility. I think what’s interesting to note — I don’t remember what bank it was, but let’s assume this number is accurate — he claims that his bank, through benefits, spent around $250 million in GLP-1 medications for their employees. Massive bank out there, massive. I think it more shows the high cost of these drugs than necessarily the people that need it. More and more studies keep coming out about the benefits of this, far beyond weight loss. I know that’s how it started, but it’s proven that there’s some cancer reductions and sleep apnea and all these amazing results around it.
Chuck: It just more shows the profit motivations of the pharmaceutical companies, that these are expensive drugs. People are benefiting from this. So for the first time, people are actually truly benefiting from their health insurance, and now it’s becoming this calling it out, instead of seeing, wow, what an amazing resource we can now provide our employees. I did look this up, because I remembered seeing this number talked about — how much the US Department of Defense spent on erectile dysfunction. It’s in the tens of — I think it’s somewhere between 50 to 100 million dollars they spent. That’s a lifestyle thing. You can say health, also a bit of a lifestyle thing. GLP-1s the same. People just want to lead better lives. So let them lead a better life.
Jenni: I think it’s interesting, when I was reading the article, there is quite a lot in there about the benefits piece in the US, and you’re right, it is an issue over there. But when you read the stories in the article as well around how people are sitting around having a cup of tea at work or whatever, and someone’s lost a lot of weight — I think it was in this article where this guy was saying that he had overhauled his entire diet and lifestyle at the same time as the GLP-1s came out, and he’d naturally lost like 20 kilos or something from doing this. And everyone — this is where this GLP-1 fishing thing — everyone’s convinced that he’s on them. So they’re badgering him and saying, you must be though, go on, you did it, you did, didn’t you? To the point where he’s had to go to HR to say, I’m being harassed now, and people are saying that I’m lying and not telling the truth.
Jenni: And that, I think, is also happening across different continents, because I do think people are curious and interested, and it’s become such a normalised conversation among society, because we see it everywhere. But in the workplace it’s really different. And I do think that this is a challenge for HR folks in terms of how you’re going to navigate this, around people feeling harassed from other people who are curious. I think it’s really hard, this bit, because we’ve never had anything like this, I think, in the workplace, where people have been this invested in whether or not someone’s taken a drug, or whether or not they’ve just overhauled their lifestyle. And they’re not believing people that might have overhauled their lifestyle. That, and the tension that’s going to create, just feels really messy, I think.
Chuck: Yeah, there is a lot of curiosity around it and discovery around it. But I do think this is a chance for, whether it’s HR, whether it’s company leadership, to just say, hey, people’s business is their business. If they want to volunteer things and talk about it — like this event that I was at earlier this week, someone made the comment of, did you see so and so? And I was like, yeah. They’re like, well, she’s going to be leaving, she’s pregnant. And I’m like, yeah, I could tell. But I also know enough not to say anything about that. So sometimes you just have to mind your own business on this stuff.
Jenni: Yes. And let people have their stuff and choose to share or not share.
Chuck: And again, whether this person lost their weight through diet and exercise, or they lost their weight through the assistance of a GLP-1 and diet and exercise, it’s more like, man, what a life-changing situation for that person and millions of other people out there. When the GLP-1s first came out, I immediately thought of my father. My father struggled with his weight almost his entire life, and was trying all these crazy fad diets and trying to do different things, and no matter what he did, he’s just a big guy. That’s just how it was. And how life-changing these drugs would have been. I mean, it’s possible he might even still be here if these drugs had been available. So think about the longevity this might be able to give people. Yes, it might help them lose weight, but what does that weight loss actually help them do beyond just weighing less?
Jenni: Yes. There is something about the natural curiosity of people that I think leads to all sorts of troubles for HR. So I’ll be interested to see how HR deal with this, and how it differs, to be fair, in terms of what we’ve talked about about the US and UK — the benefits angle versus just the hostile work environment, how that plays out across different cultures as well.
Chuck: Well, for the people that are on my side of the political world, here’s a fun little stat that I learned. Please use this in your conversations. The US Department of Defense spends ten times the amount of money on erectile dysfunction drugs as they do gender affirming care for that community. So keep that in mind. We should be spending more time talking about erectile dysfunction than we should transgender military members.
Jenni: That’s staggering. Right, that brings us to the end of our articles. What are you freq-ing out about?
Chuck: Well, last week I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Got to spend time with the Sanford Health team, so thank you, Karen and Erica, for having me out there with the team. While I was there, I visited Startup Sioux Falls, which is the site for our annual Flyover Festival, and we are sold out again. Back-to-back years we have sold out our employee comms and culture Flyover Festival. I did a little walking video as I left the venue. People ask us, why are you doing this in Sioux Falls? And our response is, why not? You have to do an event somewhere, so why not do it in a community that values it, that treasures it, that brings new voices and new people to the first time they’ve visited Sioux Falls, South Dakota. So we love doing that, we love being there, we love having it there. It’ll be a great event. August 27th, sold out. Thanks, everybody, for supporting the event.
Jenni: It’s exciting. And I love that you’re still doing it there, because like you said, it’s got to be somewhere, so why not there?
Chuck: There’s a contingency of people that are actively trying to get me to move it. And I’m just setting the record straight: it’s in Sioux Falls. That’s just where it is.
Jenni: You’ll just have to do more than one a year. That’s what’s going to have to happen. Just going to throw that little one in there for you. So we both got a little event celebration freq-out this week. So I’m hosting Comms Reboot in October in the UK, Friday the 9th of October, which you’re coming over for, which is very exciting. And we haven’t quite sold out, we’ve still got 55 tickets left, but we finished our early bird ticket sales, and I wanted to sell a hundred of those and we sold 91, and I was just really pleased that everybody who has bought a ticket has bought a ticket. Because when you hit numbers and you set targets for yourself, as we all know, you just never know whether you’re really going to hit them. And it’s the fourth, fifth, sixth time I think I’m doing Comms Reboot now, and I’m just dead excited.
Jenni: I was having a look at the attendee list yesterday, I was talking to some of our sponsors about it, and I’m really excited to see loads of internal comms directors, internal comms leads, managers, all sorts of different people coming along from all over the world. So I’m really excited, and we have still got tickets if anyone wants to come. It’s on Friday the 9th of October, and I will put a link in the show notes for anyone to grab a ticket. So thank you for joining us this week. We hope that the articles and insights will help you think about how to improve comms, leadership and culture in your organisation. If you don’t yet subscribe or follow, please do, as it helps make sure you won’t miss an episode. And all the links to all of the articles we’ve mentioned today are in the show notes, so you can grab those to read if you want to. We’ll be back with you on Monday with more news, insights and opinions about everything comms and leadership in workplaces today. Appreciate you being here with us.
Chuck is a US-based internal communications strategist and the founder of ICology – a community and resource hub for IC professionals. He brings a practitioner lens to every conversation. Chuck is a recognised voice in the industry, a regular speaker and event host, and one of the most connected people in the North American IC world.
Jenni is a UK-based leadership and internal communications consultant, author of two best-selling books, and international speaker. She runs Redefining Communications, a consultancy working with organisations around the world to help them communicate better and close the gap between what leaders say and what employees experience.
