Fake Posts, AI Stories & an Aging Workforce: When Authenticity Becomes a Skill

[00:00:09] Welcome to Frequency, I'm Jenni Field. And I'm 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 going to be talking about leaders outsourcing their own thought leadership, new research on the battle between humans and AI on storytelling, America's aging workforce and an employee getting paid for their manager missing a meeting.

[00:00:36] Jenni, I'm excited about these, but before we get into that I have just got back from the Gallagher Summit in London and I just thought it was worth sharing a couple of things from there. It's a two-day event in London from the team at Gallagher and they have different tracks about AI, change and insights, I think I might have been in the insight session. I was with Advita Patel, we were sharing our Compass framework for internal comms, people to have more influence and impact, so I'll pop a little link in the show notes to that.

[00:01:04] But there was a couple of things from the session that I thought were worth bringing here. The first was the theme of the conference, which felt very much about humanity, the human connection, the kind of gap, that humanity gap piece, even though we've got all this digital stuff going on. There are a couple of quotes that I really liked. There was one which talked about, the quote was, trust travels socially, not structurally. And I think that came from Chris Andrew from Gallagher, and I really liked that yesterday.

[00:01:32] And then there was some quotes today, which was Nadia, who works for SSP, who I used to work for. She was talking about change and taking people on a change journey and how to do that. But she made the point, which I really liked of, it's your job in internal comms to enable leaders. It's your job to coach them. It's not your job to own it.

[00:01:55] And I just really liked the reminder of that, because I think sometimes we hold on to a lot of stuff in internal comms, especially when we're being told that we are responsible for everything inside an organization. And I thought it was good. It was a very good couple of days, a little bit tired, I would say. It feels like it could do with a little zhuzh up as a conference. I have the same format for about five years now. And I just, some of it feels a little bit 2005. There's a lot of events that could use a little zhuzhing that have been around for a little while.

[00:02:26] But I really love the trust quote. Will you say that line again for me? Yes, you're gonna make me get my notes back out again. Trust, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. I think you said trust travels socially, not structurally. Yes, that was it. Okay. Yeah, that's great. I really love that. Yeah, just makes you think a little bit more about it. And there was also something today that reinforced that, which was the keynote in the morning, where she was a lady, I think she was from Hewlett Packard. I've only just got back. I think she was Hewlett Packard.

[00:02:54] And she said that change is operational, but it's also emotional. And I'm sure it was her who also talked about the fact that you need to have a trust strategy to go alongside your change program. That's what she said, there needs to be a trust strategy. And that's often what's missing. And I thought that was very important as well. There was just there was a lot of change stuff that was that was worth taking away some good reminders of what to do if you if you haven't done them for a while, or you're new to internal comms.

[00:03:23] But some nice anecdotes about some of those important foundations for some things as well. So it's good. Mm hmm. Well, Jenny, let's get into our stories for this week. We've all seen some of these same LinkedIn leadership posts, things like quote leadership isn't about titles. It's about kindness. And underneath you then see a slew of executives nodding along in the comments like beautifully said.

[00:03:47] Turns out that this is probably a guy in case on city making seven bucks an hour running it all through chat GPT. This rest of world publication talked to six virtual assistants in the Philippines who write the posts and the comments on behalf of Western executives. One woman generates 30 to 40 comments a day off of a four page memo about her clients favorite books.

[00:04:11] They've got WhatsApp groups or even tip each other off to go like and comment on each other's clients. So this engagement then looks very real. One of them. I love this story, but not. But yes, accidentally posted, quote unquote, huge win. Unfortunately, this is under a 9 11 Memorial post. This is the quote I want us to focus on.

[00:04:34] Quote, it's all AI comments by fake people answer with fake replies by other fake people. This is now the world we are all in. So the question for us, Jenny, if the exact didn't write it, didn't think it and didn't even comment back, whose voice is it? And is this one of the reasons why we don't trust anything anymore? I love this story. And I've got so many thoughts about this.

[00:05:04] And it's and I was having breakfast with someone yesterday before the conference. And she was saying to me, she's an in house head of internal comms. And she was saying, I can't bear LinkedIn anymore. Like it's just so full of this. Right. And I think that this is the problem, because there are so many people, whether you work inside organizations or your consultants or your leaders or whatever you might be doing, where you can feel that you're writing something for the attention. You're writing it for the clicks, you're writing it for the comments.

[00:05:34] And that's where it's falling down. It's not necessary that it's someone else doing it, because most of those posts you can see are pretty much generated from AI. But it's the reason behind why people are doing it. And that's what I think is the issue. These virtual assistants are just filling a gap in the market where people feel that they need to do this. But they're doing it for for glory, for ego, for all of those things, whereas that's not why you should be posting on LinkedIn or any social platform. You should be posting on it to be helpful or to support people or whatever it might be.

[00:06:03] But if you're just on there to get the likes and the comments and the ego boost, then please go away because you're clogging it up for those of us that actually want to have meaningful conversations and share insights and debate and have a social media platform like social. That's the point. Okay, my follow up question, Jenny. Are you saying you've never posted on LinkedIn for a little ego boost? No, I haven't.

[00:06:30] I've posted to promote the stuff that I'm doing in a way to show people that I'm doing it, but I'm not post. My reason for posting is not. I need a little pat on the back. Like that is not my reason for posting. I love that for you. If we get if we, you know, it's nice to get the like, it's nice when people say about our session that we did at the summit, they, you know, best session of the two days. That's lovely, right? That is always nice. But that's not my reason for posting. My reason for posting was to share.

[00:06:57] These are the things I took away from the two days and I hope they're helpful to other people. But yes, it does always feel nice. I'm not dead inside. I'm not dead. That's good. That's good. I think the point for me is there's this expectation or pressure that maybe these leaders are feeling that they have to be visible. They don't want to take the time.

[00:07:18] They don't think it's valuable for their time, but yet they think it's valuable for other people to consume this content from them that actually isn't even them. And so I just wonder where is the slippery slope on this? If they're doing this on LinkedIn, where's then the jump for internal? That's a pretty, that's a pretty easy jump to take for a lot of leaders. So my question is like, what do they ultimately gain if they aren't personally investing?

[00:07:48] Then what is their benefit? They're not probably seeing this stuff. If they were, they would probably go in and do some of it on their own. I just think again shows that when we want authenticity from leaders, this is the authenticity. This is how they are showcasing their authentic self by simply outsourcing thought leadership in air quotes when it's not even their leadership. Yeah. And I don't know the thing that would worry me.

[00:08:16] And I've had conversations with people about doing this, right? This is quite a, it's quite a conversation. Certainly I think in the entrepreneurial space where, you know, my job is a communications consultant and speaker. My job is not to be, you know, an influencer and a content creator. I do that, but I could outsource that if I didn't love doing that. But to me, I can't do that because if somebody came up to me and said, oh, I saw your post about leadership isn't about titles. It's about kindness. And it wouldn't even resonate. And I'd be thinking, oh crap.

[00:08:46] I don't, I don't know what I said. Like that fills me with absolute dread and horror. So I would never outsource it because I wouldn't want to get caught out. So I wonder what's going on around this for these leaders that are outsourcing it. And is it leadership inside organizations or are these, or are these entrepreneurs and or speakers and or authors who are doing it because they want to create a brand? Like, and I think there's maybe different reasons behind it, but it gives me the ick. Mm-hmm.

[00:09:16] Same, same, same, same, same. Well, right off that, here's the flip side to the, to this stuff. University of Maryland looked at 61,000 stories, both human and AI and pulled out 304 features. Per this, they can spot AI writing with 93% accuracy. But here's the kicker. It has absolutely nothing to do with the words.

[00:09:40] You can strip out the em dashes and the cliches, and you can still tell because AI makes different choices about how a story is built. AI over explains. It spells out the lesson, ties everything in a bow, resolves the conflict cleanly. We humans, we leave gaps. We trust the audience to connect the dots. The writer's point is that too many business presentations have gone AI shaped, way too linear, way too neat, way too rational.

[00:10:08] The leaders we actually remember wander a bit, sit in the tension and then admit the doubt. This matters for communicators because we're the ones drafting these all hands scripts and the leadership update. The tell isn't the words used anymore. It's the nice, tidy, clean ending. Jenny, based on this, if everyone's using the same tools, is being a little messy on purpose now an actual comms skill? Do you know what I think it is?

[00:10:36] I've seen so many people say if there's like a typo in something, it's like, well, at least you know AI didn't write it. But the bit for me that's interesting here is the structural point of stuff. And I do think that that is really important. And I think there is a time and a place for using AI to help draft stuff.

[00:10:54] But I think when you're trying to tell a story or you're really genuinely trying to do some thought leadership around certain things and want to talk about that, the story that you're telling in that and how you're doing it has to feel genuine. And I think if we can easily see that that structure isn't quite right, then that's a worry because that's really hard to navigate around. And I think that it's going to get even harder for people to say, oh, no, no, this wasn't AI.

[00:11:22] This was a person when the structure is different. And I think that it's going to be interesting to see how people start to behave and respond to that from a trust perspective as well. Is this, you know, this feels too neat. Like the skepticism that employees often have inside organizations when things feel too neat, then it's going to go even worse, isn't it? Because you're going to be looking for that gap or that something or you're just you're just going to be second guessing it even more, I think. Mm hmm. It's interesting to me that it's a viewing these A.I. attributes as a negative.

[00:11:52] That we're saying, like over explaining something and spelling out the lesson and tying everything up and resolving the conflict cleanly like that somehow that's the negative. And and where it's then points out this that we trust the audience to connect the dots. Therefore, there's there's gaps, there's misses. We're leaving it in their hands, which were a lot of miscommunication can happen. So it's this weird paradox of wait, let me finish.

[00:12:19] Let me finish that the human writing or story is better. But because but people distrust A.I. But what what if the A.I. narrative is actually better because it over explains it spells things out, it goes into the depth, whereas with human storytelling. I'm not saying that's bad, but we are we're saying we trust that audience to connect the dots. What if they can't connect the dots? But the A.I. story did.

[00:12:47] I'm not saying A.I. is better than human storytelling. I'm just saying we're assuming that A.I. is therefore that those qualities are negative. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And my mm hmm as you were talking was around the the fact that one of the things that separates humans from other species, there's many things. But one of the things is our ability is our ability to imagine. So we have that ability, which is different to a lot of other species.

[00:13:12] And I think the risk of A.I. being so specific and tying the bow and finishing and making it neat is what does that do to our imagination? And I'm talking about storytelling as a whole now, not just in sort of a corporate setting. But, you know, we'll be watching a film or something at home and it just sort of ends and it sort of it finishes the story. But I'm like, I want to know what happens to this bit and that bit and what happened over here. And I've still got questions, which really annoy me because I like it all in a nice little bow.

[00:13:39] But it lets my mind wander and imagine and think differently and stuff. And I think if all stories end up tight, neat and all done, then that ability, that cognitive ability stops because there's no need to do that because everything's given to you. And I think that's a bit risky for us as human beings. Next up, one in four U.S. workers is now over 55, up more than 17 percent in a decade, outpacing everyone else.

[00:14:07] Some industries are running on it more than half of farm managers, over half of school bus drivers, nearly half of transit drivers. People are staying in or coming back mostly because the maths of retirement doesn't matter. There's an individual upside, though. You can delay Social Security, get a bigger check. But the org level story is the one for our listeners. This impacts things like succession, retention and knowledge transfer. You've got a whole functions where people who know about how everything works are now five years from the world.

[00:14:37] You've got a whole bunch of people who know about how they're working on the door and no one's written anything down. Now, the quieter, uncomfortable thread underneath. Looking at the age of these people, how much of this is I want to keep working versus I can't afford to stop working? That distinction changes everything about how you communicate with that workforce. So the employee experience question here, Jenny, is are our comms and culture still built for a workforce that's getting younger?

[00:15:04] But the data is actually saying the opposite. I mean, there's there's lots in here, isn't there? And I think your question about your point around why are people saying is it I want to keep working or I can't afford to stop? And I was watching a Instagram real, I think probably about six months ago. And it was a it was in the US and it was an older chap working at some kind of DIY store. And he was like, I have to keep working because my wife died and we don't have enough.

[00:15:33] And and it was a guy talking to him who I think goes and like crowd funds money. And so then he went in a few weeks later with a massive check for this guy so he could stop. And it was really emotional watching it. And you could see that he didn't want to be working, but didn't have any choice. And that is, to your point, very different in terms of want versus need. And I think that's important for managers to know and understand about their people rather than maybe the comms team and stuff like that.

[00:15:59] But this point about the workforce is aging and that's the biggest sort of population of the workforce versus all of this narrative about the younger generation, how they want things short and sharp and short videos and 10 seconds and no one wants the detail and all of this stuff just feels like that's wrong. You know, the data is telling us you can't just focus in on that. You've still the same rules apply as they've always applied where we've had different generations at work, which is you have to have content multiple different ways in order to reach multiple different people.

[00:16:29] That's still the same. And I do think we've probably, based on this, drifted too far the other way. When I read this, when I first saw the one in four workers now over 55, that sounds really old. And then I realized I'm just five years from this old decrepit workforce that's hanging around too long. I think there's a lot of things going on here.

[00:16:53] I think there's also an element where this illusion of retirement is now an illusion that people just work in new ways. And also people's health is better than it was decades ago. Like people are living longer. They are in a lot of, not every case, but a lot of cases, people, the same 55 now is not the same 55 that it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. I mean, I remember people that work with my dad that retired at 50. I can't imagine now retiring at 50. What the hell would I do with myself at this point?

[00:17:23] I actually don't imagine myself ever retiring. I just don't know what that looks like. I think the dangerous part is that people say when they can't afford to stop working. That's, that's the sad part of this. And that's where as a society, we should look at systems in place to support individuals. Because we know that when you're 70, 80, 90, you can't do the same work when you were 30, 40, 50.

[00:17:51] It's just not, it's just not possible as much. You want to believe it. But I do think there are some people who truly enjoy working. Maybe not this gentleman at this DIY story you talked about, but there are people, even if it's 15, 20 hours, I've also seen some of those sad stories of people that are doing like door dash in their 80s. And this guy shouldn't even be driving. Yeah. Probably, but he felt like he needed to contribute. He felt like he needed to earn money. So there's not an easy answer here.

[00:18:18] It's just more of a reality for people to take in mind of, of looking at your workforce that it's not, if your leaders are looking at things that happened decades ago, it's just not going to be the same math going forward. Jim, you've got me thinking about the reasons why we work. And I know I've chatted a bit on frequency over the course of us doing this show about my bee in my bonnet, about employee engagement, not being the right measure. And I will get that out my brain at some point.

[00:18:42] But I'm not sure in any of the employee engagement surveys that people are doing or things like that, that we ask the question about why do you work here? Like, and I, and I feel like, actually, that's a very interesting question in terms of engagement. Like, why do you work here? Like, do you work here because you love the brand or your, your parents did so you're following in their footsteps, you know, or do you work here because it's Chris to my home and it's a good paycheck.

[00:19:08] So why do we do that? And I, we did this research when I did my research with deskless workers, not about why they worked there, but we could start to understand a different relationship for deskless workers when they worked in a, in a sort of retail type environment versus a sort of skilled manufacturing environment. And their relationship to the organization was different in terms of their content needs. I'm interested in that now from a knowledge worker perspective of, do we ask people that?

[00:19:33] And I'd love to know from our listeners, if you do ask people that, and if you have that data and insight, because I, I'm going to pull that into my engagement stuff. Because I, I think that could be really interesting in terms of what content you give them, what's useful, what's helpful, because you'd know why they were turning up. I think this is also an indictment of the changing in relationship between the employer and the employee.

[00:19:56] And it used to be that if people took retirement or even early retirement at 55 or 60 or whatever that age was, they were taken care of by that company. There was an exchange that happened that no longer exists. That I think that's the, the reality that employees now face is they don't have that same protection that they used to have from their employer where everything will be taken care of. That that's simply not there anymore.

[00:20:26] So they're probably going to keep working because they don't feel protected by the people that they then worked for. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, and it's that safe, isn't it? I don't feel safe. Yeah. This it's yeah. Yeah. I think you're bang on. All right. It's story time, Jenny. There's a real story. Beth Littlewood is a canoe polo champion and a personal trainer at a gym chain for more than 10 years. She's at the European championships in Germany.

[00:20:51] Her manager tells her mid competition that her leave isn't approved and she has to be back in bridge and in person for a meeting. So what does she do? She drives 800 miles through the night to make it. And the manager doesn't show up. He's away on training. She represented herself in court. No lawyer, just in her words, meticulous records of her employment.

[00:21:20] She won about one hundred and forty nine thousand pounds from this. The judge said, quote, common sense was wholly departed from and called the no show contemptuous. And the part she cares about isn't the money. It's that she exposed a systemic holiday payment calculation that could now help personal trainers across this company's hundred plus clubs. The employment tribunals own words are these. These are trivial management issues that should never have been escalated.

[00:21:50] Beth submitted several complaints and claims over the years. Jenny, I have so many questions about this. So I'm going to let you pick which question you answer here. Do you want to talk about the judge blaming poor communication for this whole thing or the fact that Beth won because she kept meticulous records and what she said? What does that say about trust? Oh, I think we'll probably cover both.

[00:22:18] But I think the judge blaming poor communication was what made me think we need to talk about this story because it's everything I believe about work like it work. If you can improve communication, work will be a better place for everybody. And this story about Beth is horrendous, like in terms of how she was treated and the fact that she felt she had to drive the 800 miles.

[00:22:46] It was it's it's everything that is wrong in organizations. People talk about having toxic bosses and all this sort of stuff. And this is such an example of exactly that. And it's it's like the person was just on a massive power trip and to not show up and then be at training. Honestly, it makes me boil, makes me boil inside. Yeah, I think that we've all been let down by managers over the years.

[00:23:14] I don't know that I've ever had something quite like this. My wife might disagree. She might say there's been some things that happened in things. But to me, this isn't just poor communication. This is awful management. And I guarantee you, if this happened to Beth, that was this was happening across the spectrum, probably not every personal trainer at every gym. But to me, this is one of those cultural things where they put up with it. They tolerated it for a very long time.

[00:23:44] And the fact that she had to keep these records, use the word meticulously kept these records is what ultimately protected her is what saved her. So this, to me, goes back to the thing I just talked about, the relationship between the employer and the employee. It is up to you to protect yourself. And a lot of these, not every company is going to be like this. But in some cases, the company is not going to protect you unless you've got it documented out there. And then in this case, she had to go to court for it.

[00:24:14] Yeah. And I don't think it says in the story how long ago this happened, because there was a story I was reading, which I don't think we've talked about because we read so many things in between. But it was about the fact that in the UK, it's now taking five years to get through tribunals. And so I wonder how long ago this actually happened and kind of how long that's been. But it's an industry that's very challenging. The personal training is very unregulated. It's it's and they are treated dreadfully. Like I've worked in with people in this industry and it is really tough.

[00:24:43] But to your point, it's just it's management. It's so many things. I wonder what the consequences have been for the people involved. And I'm not saying we should, you know, hunt them down. But I would hope that those people have either, you know, left the organization or are going through significant training and development in how to behave appropriately as a manager. And I hope it hasn't just been, oh, we'll just pay this off and sort of carry on.

[00:25:09] And nothing changes because that to her point is this is actually, you know, I've exposed something that's much bigger. And that's really important. I hope that the behaviors in the culture in this organization shift as a result, because if it doesn't, then that is a real shame. Not in the grand scheme of a company, I'm guessing they said they've got hundred plus clubs, 149,000 pounds is probably not that big a deal. But I'd be shocked and disappointed if this manager kept his job as a result of this.

[00:25:39] Yes. Yeah, I would be. Knowing the consequences of this, knowing the risk of other people being like, well, wait, he also did that. Yes. To me or this other. Well, that happened. Like all of a sudden, more of this starts to happen. So I'd be shocked if they found out. And we also know what about the layers above that, because clearly they were tolerating other behavior as well, that at least now, Beth got a little bit of pay out of it.

[00:26:05] But I bet if you were to go back and look at this over 10 plus years, she'd rather not happen all at all. Oh, yeah. That's our content for this week. Jenny, what are you freaking out about this week? So I'm freaking out about the fact that when I was on stage at the summit, I lost a decade. So I was sharing my story about going from a communications assistant to a communications director. And I was standing there and I said in 2012, I was a communications assistant. And in 2016, I was a communications director.

[00:26:34] And Advita Patel, who I was presenting with, went, 2012? No, you wish. And I went, oh, no, it's 2001. I just completely forgotten that entire decade thinking I'm still 25. So it was very funny. And I'm delighted that she called me out on it. And I've lost a decade. Yeah. I'm sure I got a good response from the room. Yes, it did. It did. I just had to keep saying I, you know, at an undisclosed period of time, this is what happened.

[00:27:03] Because I just clearly couldn't remember my dates. No. So yeah. My freak out is very ego driven. Jenny, coming back to that topic. So I went back and watched our previous episode, which has been episode 59. What people don't know is that was recorded at 7am. Eastern time that I had come off a long trip and then got up and was already in re-recorded. So everything recording, everything came out great.

[00:27:31] But I was staring at myself on the screen, Jenny. And what people may not realize is my hair at 7am looks very different than it does several hours later. My hair goes through these changes throughout a day. And so I saw, I was like, Oh my God, that's 7am Chuck. That is not midday Chuck. And now it's forever on YouTube. So as you see any clips out there, you probably be like, you don't get it. We know we're always hypercritical of ourselves. But I'm like, wow, the hair was kind of down and weird and all that.

[00:28:00] And by the end of the day, it's all up and high. And anyway, we all, we all have our, our little triggers out there and vulnerable. But yeah, watching that video was a bit harsh. I'm going to go watch it now and see what 7am Chuck. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you. Yeah. Please let me know what you think. I will. I'll let you know what I prefer. That would, that would be wonderful. And that's what we are freaking out about this week. The show notes have all the articles and links from today's conversation.

[00:28:26] If frequency is a regular part of your week, a quick review means a lot and goes a long way. Subscribe wherever you're listening and share this with one person who's interested in what we talk about. Thank you to my friend, Poet Ali for the music. We're back every Monday. See you next week. Kykartip呼