Want AI in your paycheck? Most don’t

Jenni: Welcome to Frequency, I’m Jenni Field.

Chuck: Chuck Gose. Frequency is your go-to for real talk about comms, culture and employee experience, beyond the buzzwords and straight to what matters. Jenni, this week we’re talking about Microsoft making comms moves, job bait and switches, AI in your paycheck, Gen X winning AI, and who gets the training budget.

Jenni: I’m excited about all of those five again, I can see. But before we start, I thought it was worth saying that we are here in person today because we were at Unite 26, Unily’s conference, this week in London. So we are now a little bit out of London in a studio near where I live, which is exciting. And what were your thoughts on Unite 26, having just stepped off the conference?

Chuck: Yeah, it was my first time attending Unite in London, which I had always watched from afar to see what it was like. And I would say it lived up to those expectations, what I saw. Very well put together, great group of people. First chance for me to meet some people in person, either for the first time or just in a very long time, to get to see them there. So shout out to the Unily team. It was a really, really great event.

Jenni: Yeah, as I always say, it’s my favourite event in the UK. I think it blows every other event out of the water and it was really good. And it was a nice international mix. I think when the London one was here a couple of years ago, it felt more UK. Whereas this had people that had flown in from all over the place, which was really nice. So kick us off.

Chuck: Let’s get going. Microsoft is pulling communications out of marketing and putting it under the corporate, external and legal affairs group. Satya Nadella’s memo says the media environment is, quote, “fragmented and noisier than ever,” and that, quote, “the people closest to the work have the best opportunity to shape how Microsoft is understood.” Another internal memo adds that more employees and executives will act as Microsoft’s public voice, including on social media.

The personnel side is a bit messy though. Frank Shaw, who’s been comms chief for 17-plus years, announced his end-of-year exit two weeks ago and has been moved to an advisory role early. The interim leader, Brent Colburn, has already announced he’s leaving in October and is staying through December. The permanent search runs through Smith, the CMO and the chief people officer. Here’s what doesn’t add up for me on this, Jenni. The pitch is, quote, “build in public, like OpenAI and Anthropic,” but the function is moving closer to legal, antitrust and government relations. Loosening voice while tightening the reporting line is a bit of a strange pairing for me. Now, I don’t want to get into the where-should-internal-comms-report conversation, but does putting comms under legal and policy make employees more likely or less likely to speak publicly with any real candor?

Jenni: Well, I think what you have to probably acknowledge is that by putting it in that function, there’s going to be some governance and some rules in place. So I feel like they probably will speak more, because the rules of how and why and what will be much clearer. Whereas I think if they were still in marketing, I’m not saying that marketing don’t have rules, but I feel like they wouldn’t have maybe quite so many parameters around it, or be maybe as focused on that risk and reputation piece as that legal and external affairs team.

Chuck: I’d imagine so.

Jenni: I think it’s strange that it was sitting in marketing already, that it hadn’t moved across, because I feel like so many functions are corporate affairs functions now, which covers all of those different landscapes. So it feels like it’s maybe a little bit late to that party in terms of bringing all of those different places together. But I think that with some rules and guidelines, employees will speak more. Whether it is candidly, I think is probably another question.

Chuck: See, I worry if there’s too many rules and too many guidelines, is it even going to be worth the effort for the employees? Are they even going to take the time to learn all the rules and learn all the guidelines? And if they get told no a few times, then they’re probably going to give up ever speaking up. And I think it’s one thing for the CEO to say this is how it’s going to be done, but Microsoft is a massive organization. Will his wishes or what he’s saying really carry throughout the organization? It’s fair. Just anytime you involve legal anything, it seems like stuff just grinds to a halt and it doesn’t become fun anymore. It doesn’t become interesting. It becomes very legalese very quickly.

Jenni: Yeah, well, I would hope that they would make it not. I think it’s more about what you can and what you can’t say. I always think there’s a reason when you’re dealing with legal. I remember someone saying to me, “I’m not allowed to post on LinkedIn.” And I was like, “Why?” “I don’t know. We’re just not allowed.” And I was like, well, I need to know my rules and regulations, otherwise I’m just going to break them. And I think that you would get that rationale. But I don’t think it means there’s going to be loads, I guess. Let’s see whether LinkedIn becomes flooded with Microsoft employee voices in the next six months.

Chuck: I think instead of it being “here’s the rules, here’s what to do or not to do,” it’s going to be more “here’s what we want you to say.” Because that’s what legal does. Legal is like, here’s the direction, here’s the stance. That’s where I think it’s going to be.

Jenni: Yeah, absolutely.

Chuck: All right, moving along. ResumeBuilder surveyed not 1,022, or 1,024, but 1,023 US employees and found 18% say their role has changed significantly or is completely different from what they were hired for. Another 20% say the day-to-day expectations are often unclear or unpredictable, and 30% feel undervalued and overlooked. Two things worth questioning here. First, “bait and switch” implies intent, but roles drift for plenty of other reasons that aren’t deception: reorgs, new leaders, AI changing the work. Secondly, the headline claims that 74% say career conversations are inconsistent, delayed, or addressed only after issues arise. That’s built by lumping in the 25% who say delays are rare and generally addressed. The honest number, though, is 24% who say the conversations are frequently delayed or avoided entirely. But the underlying story still holds here. The promise gets made in the recruiting process, often by people who won’t manage the hire, and the gap shows up months later with a manager who never saw the job that got posted. So, Jenni, I don’t know if something like this has ever happened to you before, but is a role change after you’re hired a broken promise from the organization? Or is this just what jobs look like now? And is there a line between what you should be doing and not doing?

Jenni: So I think most of my jobs have been brand new jobs to the organisation. Because I’ve set up comms and internal comms functions, there was nobody always doing it before. So mine’s always changed, because someone’s gone, “This sounds about right. We don’t really know because no one’s done it before.” And then you get in and you shape it and you make it yours. And I think even if it wasn’t a brand new role, whatever’s written down on paper, you’re still going to shape it and make it yours. Having looked at various job descriptions for clients over the past sort of six months, helping them shape them, change them, adapt them, they’re still very similar things. They’re very broad. I don’t think job descriptions are that specific, and I think that’s probably the thing that shifts. But I also don’t think it’s a bad thing. Unless you’re being told this is what you’re here to do and actually you’re now doing something wildly different that you’re unqualified for, don’t know how to do, that’s a different conversation. Or it’s just an entirely different role. They’ve hired you to bake bread, now you’re making soup. They have completely different skills. So those are the things I think are important. I mean, I’ve also had job interviews where someone said, “You seem really smart, we’ll just hire you,” and there wasn’t really a job description. So I think it’s a messy process. I don’t think it’s ever changed. How about you? Have you ever had that?

Chuck: Yes, it has happened, but it’s because I’ve been the one that has changed it. I’m the one who has added things to it, or saw gaps and went and built. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that the job has changed. Bait and switch would be if you think, “Hey, I’m being hired to do this thing over here,” but now they’re expecting you to do something else over here. I think that’s a little bit different. But I would think you would want your job to evolve over time. So I don’t view it as a negative unless there was deception involved. Going back, though, to your soup and bread analogy, that does work if you’re at Panera. Because one day you might be making bread, next day it might be soup.

Jenni: I did think I chose two quite similar examples.

Chuck: You could say, like, running accounting or cleaning the bathrooms.

Jenni: Much better.

Chuck: Right. But again, let’s say a CFO’s told, “Hey, tomorrow you’ve got to clean the restroom on your floor.” I really doubt they’re going to do that.

Jenni: I do think, though, there is a point in here about the conversations. So people are saying the conversations are delayed or avoided in terms of the job change. I think that’s probably the issue from a culture and HR perspective. How are those conversations being handled? And I think that’s worth looking at from a process and governance perspective, all those things, in terms of how you’re having conversations with your team about job descriptions, the future, all those things. So that’s the bit to focus on, I think, probably more than anything else, because things will change. You can’t possibly stay the same.

Chuck: Absolutely. I was also thinking, when you brought up job descriptions, so many job descriptions are centered around outputs. We want you to do these things. And not outcomes: this is what we want to accomplish. That would be an interesting shift to see on job descriptions, to say these are the outcomes, but in the job role, you’re going to determine the outputs. You’re going to determine how we get there.

Jenni: Yes. That would be nice. And we spoke a while ago on the podcast about somebody having a title that was communication and impact or something. I can’t quite remember what it was, but it’s that focus on: this is what we need you to achieve in the next five years, you tell us how you’re going to achieve that. The answer will be “with this budget and this massive team.” But I think that would be a nice context switch.

Chuck: Next up, PayrollOrg’s 2026 Getting Paid in America survey found 46% of more than 9,000 respondents are uncomfortable with AI being used in payroll processes. 24% somewhat, 22% very. Only 25% are actually comfortable with AI in payroll. In 2024, 39% were uncomfortable with AI calculating their pay. So the direction isn’t moving toward trust on this. The release pairs it with a UKG study saying only 11% of payroll teams use AI features and that caution cannot become stagnation. That’s a payroll software vendor telling payroll people to go faster, in a release about employees wanting them to go slower. So it’s worth noticing whose worry gets pitched as the problem. People can shrug at AI summarizing a meeting. They can’t shrug at a wrong paycheck. And they know exactly who they’ll call when it happens, and they want that to be a real person. So is payroll the canary in the coal mine for every other AI rollout out there? And if you can’t earn trust here, what does that say about AI in things like performance reviews or scheduling or other parts of the business?

Jenni: I mean, it feels almost like a bit of a non-story, like a vendor just trying to get their people using tech and using AI, because it does say only 11% of payroll teams are using AI features. I heard a really good quote at the Unily conference, Unite 26, we were just talking about, from Hattie Roach, who said that AI moves at the pace of trust, not at the pace of tech. And it just stayed with me as such a nice framing of what we need to think about. This is such an example of that. Being paid your correct amount, and how it should be, is a massive piece. I mean, in the hygiene factors, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it’s one of those basic things. So if you don’t trust the organisation is even going to get that right, then you definitely aren’t going to trust it if it’s AI. So it probably signals a broader challenge. But I think to your point, it’s just a human piece. We just want to be able to pick up a phone and say, “Hey, my pay’s wrong, what’s happened?” or whatever it might be. That’s the piece. I don’t think you could not use AI. We’ve talked about this a lot, but AI with a human is what you want, right? So if you’re using AI, but I know you and I can ring you up, then does it matter? Because actually there is a human intervention. If you’re just running robots doing stuff, then that’s not advisable to anybody.

Chuck: Yeah. The worst thing you can do is mess around with somebody’s paycheck. And I think that’s one of the elements, when you start and join an organization, you should trust the payroll process. So maybe it’s not a canary. Maybe it’s a bit of a cautionary tale to HR to say, let’s not do it. AI’s probably going to be involved somewhere in the process, but again, that human leadership or that human involvement absolutely has to be there. I just saw a story, I think it was out of the state of Rhode Island, where simply switching vendors in their payroll process caused massive havoc. And now lawsuits as a result of people not getting PTO corrected or bonuses paid or all kinds of other things. The mistakes just keep happening one after another. And so I think this is just a good lesson to remind you that this is a very sensitive process. Don’t screw it up.

Jenni: Yeah. And I think to come back to that hygiene factors point, if you’re looking at where you can use AI to help, you’ve got to think about those things that are really important to your employees. You might think, “This is going to be great. We can be more efficient. We can save some time.” All those things you might be looking at. But the importance of that is so massive to people that you’ve got to make sure you’re considering that implication, and just always keep the human in there.

Chuck: Moving along, LinkedIn’s AI Confidence Index says US workers feel a bit better about AI than earlier in the year.

Jenni: Just a bit better.

Chuck: Just not in the paycheck. 53% said it makes them more efficient, up 2%, and nearly six in 10 plan to build AI skills in the next six months. Gen Z trails every other generation on every measure. Only 38% of Gen Z workers plan to learn AI skills, compared with 63% of Gen X, and 52% are nervous about AI’s impact on their jobs, compared with 26% of boomers. Let’s be cautious here. The headline talks about warming up to AI. That’s a two-point move. LinkedIn does not share a sample size in this piece. It’s also LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, which sells AI courses and AI, telling young workers that AI literacy comes with a 48% higher chance of being hired and roughly $30,000 more in pay. That’s correlation. People who pick up AI skills early may simply be the people who are going to get hired and promoted anyway. The more interesting thread around this is why. Gen Z went to school during a pandemic and walked into a very shaky job market. And now the entry-level work they learn on is the work AI is allegedly taking first. I say allegedly. Most of the article puts the burden on Gen Z to get over it. The employer gets one line at the end from LinkedIn’s chief economist: quote, “access to tools isn’t enough without the skills and the confidence to use them.” So I’m curious here. There’s a lot of interesting data points I think would surprise some people. Is Gen Z skepticism a problem to fix? Or do they have the most rational reaction to all of this, because they’re the ones whose first jobs are allegedly being automated?

Jenni: So I think that, like you said, there’s loads going on in here. And I think there is something around “they’re not planning to learn AI skills.” I think that’s really broad as a statement, because they probably are using some elements of AI in their lives, whether they’re using it for search. You can’t really not use it, do you know what I mean? But you might not want to invest in learning how to write skills, how to do all the stuff to actually build agents. You might not be interested in that because it doesn’t fit what you need, or it doesn’t feel like something you’re going to need to learn. So I think there’s lots in here about the different kinds of jobs people might be going to do, how relevant AI is in that job, how important it is now as they’re entering the job market. Also, there is this “we’re a bit anti-AI.” I heard this at the Unily conference as well, people saying that the younger generation are a bit anti-AI. So we’ve just got to watch that while we’re all talking about it a lot. I just feel like there’s a lot of complexity in this, and I don’t think it’s a blanket “they’re not going to learn.” I think it might be, “I haven’t quite figured out how I want to learn or which bits to learn.” And I think maybe it’s more that, rather than just a huffing, “I’m not playing.”

Chuck: I would love to go back and see if you could ask these same questions, let’s say, twenty-five years ago when the internet became more readily available, or the information superhighway, as it was called. Was there a similar response then? Were there demographic age differences, where there was a lot of enthusiasm or excitement from some because they immediately saw the opportunity? Whereas I wonder if a younger generation entering the workforce don’t really know yet what work is like, and how AI would even impact them. So what some people might view as hesitancy might just be being a little cautious. They just don’t know yet what they don’t know. And so when they enter the workforce, they’re going to start to learn: this is what work is like, what work is not like. This is where AI can help, not help. Right now I don’t think they know what that is.

Jenni: Yeah. And it’s okay, you know what I mean? People feel this huge amount of pressure to learn and get up to speed and know what you’re doing. No one knows what they’re doing with AI. And I think that pressure that articles like this put on people probably isn’t helpful either. We don’t need that sort of pressure. Let them figure it out. Let them decide. It will happen eventually. The technology is there. It’s not going anywhere. For me, I just think it will all kind of level out. But when you were talking about whether this happened before when the internet came in, I remember researching or talking about some stuff to do with when email came in, and how people were really like, “I’m not using it. I’m just going to keep faxing this, or I’m going to go and speak to them.” And then gradually it becomes more of the norm and people use it. And I think that’s the bit that isn’t happening yet. It’s not become a collaborative technology platform in that way, that I now have to use it. Those change steps that you have to go through, we’re just not quite there. It still feels a little bit like it could be quite individual for people. Until that turns and organisations really do, I think that’s where that tipping point might be.

Chuck: I was thinking about something you said, and I was going to share something, and I realized I was actually going to share something wrong. With the internet, my mind went to, you kind of have to use it now. And you are, but then I look at the way my children use the internet, and it’s not the same way I do. It’s app-based. They are not going to a browser most of the time, the way I think of going to a browser. So the behavior has changed. We think about using AI as going to Copilot, going to Claude, going to ChatGPT. I wonder if for them it’s going to be the next level, the next layer, where it’s integrated in. You’re not going to a place, it’s part of where…

Jenni: Part of what you do. And this is the thing about AI and what we think of as AI generally. You’ve just listed off some of those tools that we use quite a lot. But even if you think about Siri on your iPhone, that’s AI, and that’s been around for a really long time, but we don’t seem to link some of those things together.

Chuck: Or the way Netflix serves up content for you. There’s no one in the back of the room looking at Jenni’s thing, being like, “Well, let’s see what we can send her this time.”

Jenni: “Here’s another series of Virgin River, we think you’ll like it.”

Chuck: And finally, a study in the Journal of Accounting Research looked at who gets scarce training budget: the high performer or the person who’s behind. Most managers in the experiment picked the lower performer, which makes productivity sense. And as Martin Wiernsperger put it, the dollar, quote, “typically goes further” with someone who has room to catch up. In meritocratic cultures, high performers reacted badly when passed over. In egalitarian cultures, lower performers expected the training, took it more for granted when they got it, and felt slighted when they didn’t. Same decision, different fallout, depending on what the culture says it rewards. I’m curious about your answer to this question, Jenni. If you’re a manager and you have $5,000 to spend on training and two people, do you split it equally, or do you send more one direction than the other?

Jenni: So my view on this is that I would always, and have always, had the conversation about what do you want to learn. So there might be a skill where I think, we really need to up your ability to use Microsoft Excel, as an example. We need to do that because that’s actually stopping your performance. That’s conversation A. Conversation B is, what do you want to learn? What are the skills that you feel you’re more interested in, you’re more passionate about, that are more helpful for the things coming up? And then let’s talk about how you like to learn, and then let’s find the right solution to that. And that’s always how I frame it with my team, with my clients, everything. So it’s not necessarily about the budget and splitting that equally. For me, it’s always about the conversation. What I will say is that I wonder if the lower performers maybe don’t know what they want to learn, or aren’t as interested in learning, because maybe they don’t have that growth mindset mentality. And is that okay? Because you can still be annoyed that you’re not getting it, even if you don’t want it. And I think there’s that question in there. Whereas I think sometimes high performers have got more of that growth mindset, that eagerness to learn, to get better, to improve. And that might be naturally why that budget goes there, because they are more engaged in that type of development.

Chuck: So I noticed you didn’t answer my question.

Jenni: I did.

Chuck: You did not. Here’s how I would answer the question: everybody gets $2,500.

Jenni: But then that’s not fair.

Chuck: Listen, it is fair, because here’s where the conversation comes in. There’s a member of the ICology community who shared this story with me. Every employee at her company gets $5,000, no matter what level you are, no matter how long you’ve been there. It’s then up to you to build the business case for how you spend that money. So you could invest some yourself, if it goes a little bit over, but everybody gets the same amount. You then have to go have the conversation: okay, I’ve got this amount. Do you do it all in one? Is it a one-week training somewhere to help you build something else? Do you do 10 smaller things? That’s where the conversation comes in, how you divvy that up. But I like that the organization is, one, clearly investing in everybody, investing equally in everyone, and then gives the opportunity to have the conversation about how you as the employee want to go after the right training, the right development.

Jenni: So I think we’re saying the same thing.

Chuck: Answer the question.

Jenni: I like to have the conversation. I think actually what I basically said was the money is irrelevant. Let’s have a conversation, and then let’s figure out what you want to do, and then let’s build a business case to do that. I do like the idea of everyone having an amount. My team have an amount every year they can spend, and we have conversations about how you might want to do that. But it’s all about the conversation for me, in terms of that business case and what you want to do. And if something ends up going over, then if it’s worth it and it’s got a good business case and a good reason, then so be it.

Chuck: Yep. All right, that wraps up our articles for this week. Jenni, let’s move along to our freq-outs. What are you freq-ing out about?

Jenni: I’m freq-ing out about Comms Reboot on Friday, because as you’re listening to this or watching this, it is on Friday, and we’ve got 130 people coming to London. You’re going to be there, which I’m super excited about. Your first London Comms Reboot, having done two in Toronto, a slightly bigger crowd than the Toronto team. But I just can’t believe how quickly it’s come round. I think that’s the thing for me. It feels like you’re planning something for such a long time. You know this, you do Flyover Festival and stuff, and you’re planning and planning, and then all of a sudden it’s like, bam, we’re here.

Chuck: Over here you’re running to Costco to get candy.

Jenni: I am. I’m like, God, I’ve got to go and get that. This is my one window to do that before I go. So yeah, that’s what I’m freq-ing out about. What about you?

Chuck: Mine is a bit of a disappointment, and I don’t know why I should be disappointed, because it’s recurring from time to time. I’m not going to out the person, there’s no value in that. But it was a LinkedIn post that I showed you that was all about waking up and shouting out loud, “No, you don’t need another newsletter,” or something like that. And then all the comments and reactions and support, thousands of them. And I’m just like, are we still there? One, approaching everything so negatively. Instead, and this is the point you brought up, which I think is a great point, why not approach these conversations with curiosity? If this theoretical conversation is happening in your organization, rather than come with a stance of “we don’t need another newsletter,” which maybe you don’t, why are they asking for that? Why do they want that? Why do they think they need another newsletter? It’s just so disappointing to see the pile-on, the rallying cry of it, when it doesn’t help us. It makes us look like the office of no, and copping out of things, and just criticizing other people all the time, instead of approaching it with curiosity and understanding why. But then we also say we want to be involved in things, and in this theoretical conversation someone’s asking us to be involved, and we’re like, “No, we won’t do it.” I don’t know, just disappointing.

Jenni: And it’s also, I think, taking us into the tactics, which we hear a lot of people saying, like, “I’m not just about the tactics, I’m about the strategy.” If you were truly about the strategy, then your question would be, “Let’s talk about why you think you need this and how this might fit strategically into our comms plans.” If you’re just about the tactics, then you’re going to say no. So actually you’ve just really cemented your positioning there.

Chuck: And that’s what we’re freq-ing out about this week. Thank you for joining us. The episode page has all the articles and links from today’s conversation at thefrequencypodcast.com. If we’re a regular part of your week, a quick review goes a long way. Subscribe wherever you’re listening, and share this with just one person who’s interested in what we talked about. Thank you to my friend Poet Ali for the music. We’re back every Monday. See you next week.