Half Feel Engaged Yet Plan to Leave: Bullshit Jobs, the Clarity Crisis and RTO as Stealth Layoffs

[00:00:09] Welcome to Frequency, I'm Chuck Gose. 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 the reality that a culture problem is a communication problem. We're going to talk about some return to office stats and some employee engagement stats for North America and the UK, and the fact that someone did no work for a year and no one noticed.

[00:00:37] Before we get into those, Jenni, I'm very excited for that last one. I came across this image on Instagram from The Economist and then I went and wanted to find the original source for it. And I think this gets to the unique nature of our partnership and friendship and working on this podcast together. Is it talked about how Britain, which I will admit, Jenni, I sometimes get confused or don't really pay attention to the difference between England versus Europe.

[00:01:06] And then kind of what everybody means by this. So I'm just going to say you all over there. Okay. Is rethinking its quote special relationship with America. And what was interesting looking at this chart was it goes all the way back to 2000 to look at this. And it's been a pretty steady, like how I guess the US favorably looks at the UK or Britain is pretty clear.

[00:01:36] And it's like close, like it kind of goes up a little bit and then down a little bit. But man, you all have not thought a lot about us for a while. And I'm guessing this might have started around, it looks like around 9-11, which wasn't our fault, Jenni. But it's a pretty steady decline. And then it seems to get a little bit better with our Barack years, which we all love during that time.

[00:02:03] And then funny enough, since 2016, it's been dropping off the counter. So what is this? What are you seeing, hearing, feeling over there that is causing this? Do you know, when you said about the decline sort of started in 9-11 and this is about the special relationship between the UK and the US, my immediate thought was, is that when love actually came up?

[00:02:27] Because I feel like that was such a massive cultural moment about the special relationship. I think it might be similar timing. What are we seeing and hearing? I think that at the moment, there is just a sense of like, you know, what's the purpose and the need necessarily for that relationship? What's it bringing on both sides?

[00:02:49] And everyone I speak to just doesn't want to go to the US at the moment, which is a shame because there's lots of parts of the US, like you said, like, there's lots of things going on that are not the fault of the American people. I think it's yeah, I think there's a question about what that special relationship is, but it was brought up brilliantly by Hugh Grant and love actually many years ago. And I think now it's just coming to the fore. It's all I've got all I've got.

[00:03:17] The just look, I wonder too, if there's because as we're recording this over this week, we're recording it. Your king is over in the US. Yes. And a lot of Americans have always had this romanticized view of the royal family. And I wonder if we just don't know enough that we just sort of look at that and think, wow, that looks really. That looks really cool over there. We've romanticized it a bit.

[00:03:44] And I wonder whether there is that I think there is a media play out here, because I say to people a lot, just because what you see in the news that doesn't necessarily impact people every day on the ground in America, like in America, this is the different stuff. Whereas I think you guys might see all the lovely romanticizing of the monarchy, whereas we just see the opposite of your leadership over here. And I think that's probably the biggest thing that's playing a role, really. Could be, could be. Let's get into the content this week.

[00:04:10] So the first story is the headline, I did no work for a year and no one noticed. Now my dad sent me this last week, and it's a piece from Leila Kazim with a personal essay confessing that she spent an entire year doing no work at a software company and nobody noticed. Disillusioned after a great manager left and replaced by someone with no real management skills, she found herself in a role that nobody could really define. So rather than raise that, she ran an experiment. I love, I've got that in quote marks here.

[00:04:40] Stop working entirely and see how long it takes to get caught. Her tactics were simple. She had spreadsheets as camouflage, a few padded emails, the occasional PowerPoint knocked up a few minutes before her weekly one to one. And she was never found out, left of her own accord a year later. Now the piece draws on David Graeber's concept of bullshit jobs, roles so pointless that even the person doing them can't justify their existence.

[00:05:06] And Graeber estimated 20 to 50% of all jobs fit that description. And a 2015 YouGov poll found 37% of British workers felt their job contributed nothing meaningful. Kazim's conclusion is damning, really. So modern work is just theatre. Perceived effort matters more than actual output. I should also say that this article has come up in conversations with a few CEOs this week as well. So it's definitely done the rounds.

[00:05:33] But this proves the point that managers are key to motivation and meaningful work. But my question for you, Chuck, is what about the personal work ethic here? And also, could you do this? Let's get into the first part first. The work ethic. When you said she did no work, but it sounds like she did a little bit of work, which what you described seemed like some previous colleagues of mine, of places that I worked, where it was just enough. Yeah. Just enough to put in there.

[00:06:03] And I think to your point, it does show a connected and engaged manager would notice this. And so clearly, that is the case here. Um, I would, when you ask if I could ever do this, the easy answer is to be like, no, of course not. Jenni, I have all this. But I've tried to really reflect on it.

[00:06:26] And I was thinking through some situations where, yeah, but that's not, I would probably be doing a bunch of other things. Mm hmm. But if, if somebody could just do the bare minimum and still get paid, and that's all they really care about. I don't know, maybe they feel like they've earned that right. I'm not, I'm not sure in practice, this would actually be something I could do. But I could rationalize it in a way.

[00:06:50] And when I was looking at this article, there's another one that popped up about a similar instance where this employee had quit. But their manager didn't say anything to anyone and redirected that person's paycheck into their own bank deposit and kept parading around as this other person, even hiring Fiverr, like Fiverr freelancers to do it.

[00:07:19] It was basically like a data entry job. Oh my God. And they went on for this for like a year of this going on. And so I, I wonder if it's a bigger topic of just how out of touch and the lack of connection that exists in the workplace. So the story I was just talking about, this person would actually have this fake employee log on to zoom calls, but say like their camera wasn't working or the microphone wasn't working, but they participate in the chat. So all kinds of shenanigans are going on.

[00:07:49] And I think it just speaks to the fact that this goes on, but it goes on for so long at some organizations. I mean, I'm enjoying the use of the word shenanigans here immensely. Like it's just, so it made me reflect on that. There is an ethical thing for me that I just, there's no way I would be able to do it. Cause I'd be absolutely terrified. I'd get caught, but I have had a job where I wasn't able to do the stuff that I really wanted to do or knew that was the right thing to do because of all the corporate stuff that kind of goes on.

[00:08:19] And I remember thinking, it's cool. I'll just stay here for a year and I'll just take the paycheck and I'll just do what I need to do and it'll be fine. And I did about two months of that. And I was like, no, that's not where my values are. Like I just, I can't do it. It's just not how I'm built. But the bit in this story that I hadn't come across before was this David Graeber's concept of this estimation of 20 to 50% of all jobs fit this description of just being utterly pointless.

[00:08:45] And that, I feel like no one's talked about that for ever in terms of the, these sort of the padding that's gone into corporate life and whether any of these jobs are actually having a difference or are they just different kinds of jobs? I think that's some of it with knowledge work is you've got peaks and troughs and, and stuff like that. Maybe that makes it harder to make them make sense sort of in that full time consistent perspective. I do think that the jobs have changed.

[00:09:14] I do think that, but there's this other data point that I think is worth digging into as well that, and it really speaks to the fact that so much of work that people do is, is theater. It has a little bit of performance to it, 88, 88% of remote workers say they actively go out of their way to look busy. So there's things that whether it's consciously, subconsciously, whatever, this sounds more conscious than anything. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:42] Of being rewarded with busy, not being rewarded with productive. Yeah. Or efficient. And I'm hoping that that is the shift. We spoke a few episodes ago about that question about how many hours are you spending at work or whatever it was that was, I was like, that's a stupid question. And it's that same thing of, it's about the time, not the output. And I'm really hoping that does shift this year, which would be good. And the piece about meaningful work as well, this sort of lack of meaningful work keeps coming up.

[00:10:11] It's come up several times, I think for us in, in recent episodes, which links me nicely into the next article, which is from first up who have done some reports into employee engagement. So they've done a couple of reports looking at employee engagement. This was published in March, 2026. So they've made over 3000 employees across corporate manager and hourly worker roles. And I looked at reports that you sent over, which was the UK one and North America.

[00:10:39] So in both of them, engagement scores look really healthy on paper, but they are really covering up this sort of significant and growing retention crisis that's going across the globe. I think the core argument is that it's a communication failure, not a culture failure. And that seems to be kind of going through. So I thought it was worth sharing some of the data that's in both reports. And then what are the differences in UK versus North America?

[00:11:05] So in terms of both reports, we've got sort of consistent data saying that employees say they're engaged, but nearly half are planning to leave within 12 months. 60 to 76% have missed an important policy or procedural update despite receiving communications regularly. Managers are the most trusted source of information across all roles, but are overloaded and under equipped to carry that responsibility. 70 to 77% of managers report challenges communicating effectively with their teams.

[00:11:35] Miscommunication causes stress for around 44% of employees on average across both regions. Around one in four employees say poor communication specifically makes them want to look for a new job. Frontline hourly workers are the most underserved by communication systems. And the top three things employees want beyond pay across every role is show me you care, improve communication and give me better tools.

[00:12:00] Now, when you look at this from the UK and the North America, it's not a huge difference, I don't think, in some of the stats. Some of them are a bit bigger, but not tons. So engagement is lower in the UK, but the intent to leave is higher. And UK managers are even more overloaded. Not massive, 77% versus 70%. I don't think that's huge. UK workers miss more critical updates. It's not looking good for us over here.

[00:12:27] The trust gap in leadership is consistent, but stark in both of them. So in the UK only 11 to 19% of employees trust leadership as a communication source in North America. That's 16 to 23%. The AI access gap is more severe in the UK. And Gen Z stress is called out specifically in the UK report as a problem. So what are your thoughts on these reports, the data, the insights that are coming out from first up?

[00:12:57] It's interesting that there is so much similarity, especially after a little kickoff topic about how little you all think of us over here. That there's so many similarities between the two. And I was trying to think through the one part that stood out to me was around that the engagement numbers are about the same, but that UK employees are more likely or like planning to leave basically.

[00:13:23] And I was trying to figure out like, why, why is it that they are more likely where I was thinking more? Why is North America or us less likely? And I think it truly comes down to one thing. I have no science or facts behind this other than just, this is my, this is my gut feeling on this. Okay. It comes down to benefits and healthcare. And in the U S your benefits and healthcare are typically tied to your employment.

[00:13:51] So if you're switching, if you're good, it's not so much that you're leaving a job. Sometimes it's like, I'm not going to leave until I've got the next one, no matter how bad it is, because you don't want to have that gap. In healthcare benefits. And I wonder if just that one thing is enough to make that difference that, that are people more likely to stick around or maybe phrase more less likely to leave because they simply don't have benefits backing them up.

[00:14:18] Whereas in the UK, if you leave your job, you're still covered for healthcare. You still have all the right, all of that in the U S that is not the case. Yeah. And so just that alone, I wonder if that coverage was there for North American employees, or maybe this is where Canada, which does have universal healthcare and the U S doesn't, maybe that's even skews up more. If they had that, would they be more likely to leave regardless of, of engagement? Hmm.

[00:14:44] And that's making me think about the overall definition of engagement as well, which is something I'm separately looking at. But as you were talking then it was like, well, what are we really measuring then in terms of engagement? Because that's the, the, the things that are going to have a sway on whether you stay, go, are engaged, not engaged are so, there's so many of those. And, and some of that is going to be some of that natural human instinct around sort of safety and health and things like that.

[00:15:11] So if that's part of it, then that's, that's a very different thing to have to fix address, look at than communication problem, you know, which gets banded around as the issue for all things, which is what we're going to talk about today. But that's, that's just a very different way of thinking about engagement. And I think some of these reports and industry stuff don't think of it that way. I think they're thinking it much more around, you know, naturally because of what they do, the tools, the channels, the communication and how that can address engagement.

[00:15:41] You could put all the tools and channels in that you like, it's not going to fix the issue if the issue is, I'm not going to have any healthcare. So I'm just going to stay here resentfully for evermore. That's you can't, you're never going to address that really, if that's your reason for staying. Yeah, I think if the benefits, whether it's healthcare related, financial related, whatever, are tied to that, that is going to keep people there, even if they necessarily don't want to be there.

[00:16:06] And I think that goes to your very first item that you talked about where you said employees say they're engaged, but nearly half are planning to leave within 12 months. I think we can get rid of the butt part. Yeah. Say they're engaged and nearly half are planning to leave. The engagement is not the sole indicator of people sticking around. You can be, and you see this all the time in these somewhat ridiculous LinkedIn posts where people like to throw out the word bittersweet, and they're leaving one job to go to another job and all that.

[00:16:36] They could have been the most engaged employee, but a new opportunity presents itself as I'm like, well, you know what, I'm super engaged here. So I'm not going to take this new opportunity. That's just not, that's not how it works. Do you know what made me laugh even more about when you just did that bit was how little we use the word engaged in real life outside of work. Like I don't think I've ever like been at dinner, but like I'm super engaged in this conversation and food right now. It just doesn't come up in any world other than the corporate world where it's really normal to talk in that way. It's truly strange.

[00:17:05] I think I am going to do that now. Next time I see you, I throw that in just to make a point of it. It's going to become our phrase now every time we're together. The next article is from startups magazine. It's called the clarity crisis, why your culture problem is actually a communication problem. So the article argues that what leaders diagnose as a culture problem is often at its root, a communication problem, specifically around clarity. So in the rush to scale, many organizations operate on the assumption that people inherently know their role.

[00:17:35] They know the rules. They know the direction of travel, but they don't. And teams are frequently drowning in ambiguity. And this isn't a sign of poor work ethic or disengagement. It's a symptom of leadership complacency around fundamental communication. The piece is particularly pointed about flat hierarchies. So it talks about agile structures are great for speed, but they often create a vacuum where clear operating principles should be.

[00:17:59] And interestingly, it extends this critique to AI adoption, arguing that leaders are asking AI to solve problems that they haven't even clearly defined for their human teams. I could talk about that all day. So the fix they're saying is really to invest in clarity, clarity around roles, boundaries, decision making progression. When people understand what they own, who they need to consult, who approves what, you really do unlock that genuine empowerment for people. Empowerment is different to engagement, but I'll leave that there.

[00:18:29] They talk about practical tools like a RACI or RASCI framework to help. But the core message is really that culture doesn't fix itself with a values workshop or something like that. It has to fix itself when leaders communicate with precision and consistency. Now, this isn't new, but I suppose my question for you, Chuck, is how do we help leaders and managers really understand this? Because this is the same stuff just, you know, focused in the startup environment. So how do we really help make this shift?

[00:18:57] Yeah, I think this, this gap in those experiences is that it's not that leaders don't experience this or know this. They just don't experience the same things that normal employees do. And so they don't feel the downstream consequences of their decisions, whether they're clear or not. They just get the data and the reports and then hold others accountable for that. So it gets those downstream consequences that creates that clarity.

[00:19:27] And then they're actually shielded from that because they're not the ones doing the work. That work they've sort of delegated off their walls and that person's now responsible. They're sort of absolved of it. So I don't think that RACI charts or anything like that fixes any of it. But it comes down to accountability. And that's a bit of a personal thing for individuals. We've all worked with leaders who are not just held accountable, but, but own that.

[00:19:54] They, they admit when mistakes happen, they celebrate those who have, who have stepped in and fixed things. So I think that accountability comes into play, but it's, they're shielded from it. Mm. I also wonder whether we are at that tipping point of this because of some of the stuff we've touched on today around, I did no work for you and no one noticed type stuff of if we have got a workforce that's now working more remotely in a more hybrid way. And then people are thinking, I don't know what people are doing.

[00:20:24] And then you haven't got any of this sort of process or clarity around your role because that structure isn't there. And I, I do feel like there is this question from leaders around what are you all doing at home? Come back to the office and then we can see you rightly or wrongly, which is kind of layered within this. People don't really know what they're doing. And I think that's part of the challenge.

[00:20:48] I think if you, if we start to smooth some of that together, there is a clarity element in there that will impact the culture that I think leaders haven't taken the time to do in the past because they didn't need to, because we were all in an office together. We were all doing stuff together and you could easily navigate priorities and things like that because of the natural conversations that would happen in that environment. Whereas now that's so much harder.

[00:21:10] And I, I think just thinking about the clients and the teams I'm working with, I would say this is their biggest challenge in any organization is I don't really know what my objectives are. I don't really know what my development plan is here. And I'm, I'm just feel like I'm just ticking a box. And I don't really know what the meaning behind it. Yeah, I think leaders are expecting people to figure it out themselves. Yeah. And there was this, I guess you want to call it a comic. Maybe it was like a kind of rallying cheer or whatever, but it said like, what do we want?

[00:21:40] And it shows all these CEOs like AI. And when do we want it? And it's like now. And it's why do we want it? They don't, they don't know. They just feel like it should be there. So go figure it out. But I'm the leader and I'm telling you, this is what needs to happen. The clarity is out the window. Yeah, totally. And it is that we don't really know what we need, but we just need you to figure it out and do it.

[00:22:02] And I think that the task orientated nature that work has become hasn't, hasn't followed this suit of suddenly this empowerment has gone. People don't feel as empowered, but leaders to your point are so far away. They're not feeling that friction and that's make it making it much harder. Our final piece today, which is a report that you sent over and just went lots of stats in here.

[00:22:26] But as it was the essential return to office stats and trends for the USA, I thought this is a topic you're going to want to talk about. So I had a look through it and it basically, basically says that despite all of the headlines and all the RTO mandates, the data tells a more nuanced story in that only 27% of companies have returned to a fully in-person model, while 67% continue to offer some form of hybrid flexibility.

[00:22:52] Remote work levels have barely shifted since their 2024 peak. So a few key data points relevant for you are 64% of US employees would prefer remote or hybrid over full-time office working. 64% would quit or start job hunting if that flexibility was taken away. High performers are the most at risk of leaving. So there are 16% more likely to have low intent to stay if there is an RTO mandate.

[00:23:21] 80% of companies have already reported losing talent because of their return to office. 25% of executives and 18% of HR workers admit that they hoped some employees would voluntarily leave because of an RTO, effectively using that mandate as passive layoffs. 74% of HR professionals say RTO mandates have led to leadership conflicts.

[00:23:44] Required office time has increased by 12%, but actual attendance has only increased by about 1% to 3%, meaning that mandates are being ignored. 76% of companies report greater employee retention by allowing remote work. 78% say it improves engagement, probably gets it to about 10% because it's not anywhere else. The top reasons companies give for RTO are collaboration, productivity and communication. But their research on whether office working actually delivers those benefits remains pretty mixed.

[00:24:14] And then the final stat is that 88% of remote workers say they go out of their way to look busy, which is what you were talking about earlier. So thoughts on your favorite topic of return to office? Yes. This goes great to our earlier conversation. I'm going to scroll to find this data point, make sure that I have it right, because it was right at the very beginning. Oh, and we got to say that people are engaged, but they're planning to leave.

[00:24:41] This is a great example of that it's not the engagement that could be deciding whether or not people leave. It could be simply what is your workplace policy on style? Yeah. Are you flexible? Are you not? Is it hybrid? Is it not? Are you mandating workplaces? That employee could be one of your most engaged employees. And if that's what you value, you are then damaging that by saying you need to work, you need to be in the office five days a week or whatever it is.

[00:25:06] And it's interesting to me that in spite of all these stats, which I applaud them for saying that only 27% of companies have returned fully in person. So that just shows that the ones that are doing it are getting a lot more noise out there around it, that it's not the realistic view of a lot of workplaces out there. But none of these data points point to the fact that it works.

[00:25:30] Unless I have this stat where 25% of executives and a fifth of HR workers are using RTO to get people to leave. How weak is that? That rather than just like you want this person to leave, rather than have the gall to just or nerve or whatever to say, this person's got to go. Yeah. If we do this policy, maybe they'll just leave on their own.

[00:25:57] How weak is that? Yeah. And also, what kind of culture is that? I mean, you just don't, I don't think anybody would want to work in that sort of culture anyway. But to the point about the data and what it means, all I could think about then was open plan offices, because open plan offices don't work. And yet everyone did those for years and years and years, even though all of the data pointed to the fact, this is not a good idea. It's never going to work. And they still did it. And that's how people worked for a really long time.

[00:26:26] So it's almost like the data doesn't help anybody make any decisions. It's almost to your point, several episodes ago of this is about your lease. This is about a financial reason. This is nothing to do with collaboration or communication or productivity. It's about the financial investment in that building that you want people to come back to. I do still think hybrid is the way forward. And I think that's basically what this is saying in that it's only really about a third that are going back for that fully in person. The majority are doing the hybrid.

[00:26:55] The issue that probably wasn't talked about much in this report that I see from friends, clients, all sorts, is the hybrid policies coming in. But that includes an RTO mandate. So even though it's saying you need to be in the office three days a week, that's being enforced. Like that's like we haven't seen you tap in this week. So, you know, you're in trouble. And that's still a bigger risk because this is almost implying that if you're doing hybrid, people are fine.

[00:27:25] They're having the time of their lives. Like, this is all good. Whereas I think the reality is hybrid comes with some of these constraints that I don't think that messy middle is necessarily being looked at in enough detail about the impact that's having. Well, I think work comes with all kinds of constraints by the nature of it. But I think the challenge I would put to leaders out there who are setting up a hybrid work policy but really wanted five days a week.

[00:27:55] Let's say that's what you really wanted, but you're actually pretty emotionally intelligent. You didn't want to lose engagement. You wanted your best people to stick around. You weren't doing this to try to get your people to leave. Like there's actually like you want people there, but like it's not best for everyone. So let's do hybrid. Imagine if you created a workplace where people wanted to come in five days a week. Yeah, that should be the goal. Like create that environment, create that culture where people want to come in.

[00:28:23] Then imagine what these data points would look like at that point. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's such a good flip, isn't it? Because and I wonder if you did an exercise with a leadership team to say, what would that look like? Like if this was an environment where people wanted to come, what would this office need to become or be like? And they probably don't know because no one's asked that question. And I'm not sure that employees would know either. Do you know what I mean? I'm not. It's a bit like the Henry Ford example of when you say to people what they want, they'd say a faster horse.

[00:28:50] They wouldn't have said a car like that's I don't know that people know what they want. But I would imagine there's some element of, you know, cleanliness, tech that works, you know, a decent environment that's not, you know, broken chairs, all those sorts of things. I just think we've accepted a bit of sloppiness sometimes, I think, in places that when you're at home and you've got those comforts, why would you then want to go somewhere else?

[00:29:12] So that's a really great question. And I think that is one that's going to stay with me in terms of what would this workplace need to look like if people wanted to come to this office? What would it, what would it look like? I was, I was gonna zip it. But then you brought up one of my least favorite quotes of all time, which is the Henry Ford. Oh, man, I hate man, I hate that quote. I mean, it serves a purpose. I don't like adore it. Here's why. Here's why I don't like that quote.

[00:29:37] It's assuming that people aren't creative, that they would have just wanted what they had, but just a little bit better. What if imagine what this world would be like if we hadn't had cars the way they're built now? Like we wouldn't have all this crazy pollution and all this other nonsense going on. Like maybe they just said, hey, you know what, instead of a faster horse, let's build an airplane like we don't know. So anyway, that's that's why I don't like that quote, because it's saying that people simplistic thoughts. Yes.

[00:30:03] But I do think the point you raised about asking people, I think asking the leadership team, if they don't know, that says a lot. If they don't know what would it take to bring people in? But let's say they did have some ideas, but then go to your employees, because in a lot of industries, there's not an option to not come in. If you're in manufacturing, you're in five days a week.

[00:30:30] If you're in health care, you're in five days a week, retail, whatever the like you're in there. What what would it be? I would love to know from employees. What what would a workplace be like where if you have the option to come in, you would want to come in five days a week? Is it something like, well, I don't want to be there from eight to five. I want to come in from 10 to three, five days a week, I want to make sure that I'm home for my kids get off the bus, like whatever that is, like, what if the five days a week isn't nine hours a day?

[00:31:00] It would be a really interesting conversation with an employee group. And I reckon as I'm thinking about what would I need thinking about when I used to work in an office, it's a chauffeur driven car that's going to take me from my front door. And that you can't like that's not within the gift of the of the company necessarily. But actually, that would be much nicer than having to, you know, have to figure out the commute or stuff like that, or a helicopter, actually, because they don't have to deal with the traffic.

[00:31:26] Like, I mean, you could go really extreme with it. But I think what's the friction that's stopping it that would make it a more enjoyable experience? And I wonder if some of it is that infrastructure that's around it, that is part of the challenge. But you've you've nailed it, Jenny. You figured it out. This is because the people who are oftentimes deciding these RTO policies, they have drivers. Do you think the CEO of Chase is driving himself in the work every day? No.

[00:31:55] All these people who are making that all of them, a lot of these they have drivers, they aren't experiencing what you just described. Yeah, they're there. They truly are out of touch. Yeah. Yeah. That was always my life goal when I used to see the CEO without the car was at the back, waiting for her to go downstairs. And I was like, man, that is a goal, isn't it? Like just to have just be driven everywhere. How lovely. But imagine what that that work experience is then so different. It's so different. It's so different. I remember watching the documentary.

[00:32:24] It was about the financial crisis. I can't remember what the documentary was called now, but maybe it's inside job. Maybe that was a documentary was called and it's about the financial crisis in 2008, 2009 in the US. They talked about that some of these bank executives thought so highly of themselves that they built private elevators. Wow.

[00:32:45] For these individuals so that they could just go straight to their floor, straight to their office, not have to hang around with the common folk and have to wait a few floors to get up there. Like that's the mentality. Yeah. Of some of these leaders. That's just yeah, no, not my world. Not my world at all. Right. That's the end of the articles this week. What are you freaking out about? Everything.

[00:33:09] Jenny, I was gonna say that I should flip a coin over what to talk about, but there's not an eight sided coin. Oh, no, because there's like eight different things that I feel I could go into. But I'm gonna go I was gonna do one but I'm actually gonna save it for the next episode because it's a really good. Not good. A really horrible thing happening that I want us to talk about. Okay, good. I'm really excited about that now. Yes, you should be. Because there'll be a lot of opinions on it. I'm gonna go back.

[00:33:37] We had a campfire discussion inside ecology this weekend. It was about dashboards, which basically give people like how are you telling the story? How are you telling the story through data? Who's asked who what's the pull? What's the push of dashboards? Hopefully a really helpful conversation to people that were in there. But there was one. One thing a member said. That I couldn't let go. And and for those listening and if you're in the world of internal comms, I want you to really think about this.

[00:34:08] This person said I'm not gonna say who because anyway, it said she said, well, internal comms doesn't drive revenue. So dot dot dot dot dot and went on this big long story. I'm minimizing her long story. It was a lot. She made a lot of great points around what intercom should be doing. But I came back to this point around like, do we really believe that internal comms doesn't drive revenue? Do we really believe that?

[00:34:38] I believe that it does. I believe that great internal comms does drive revenue. But if there are people out there that don't no wonder we're minimizing our efforts. So it's got me spinning a bit of thinking like this is going to be a new thing. I'm going to be challenging communicators on is showing like the work that you're doing, connecting it to driving revenue, because that's what leaders care about. Mm hmm. Yeah. And you've made me think about the value of internal comms report.

[00:35:07] We talked about the doctor Kevin Ruck and I wrote which talks about the value ladder and how it can actually prove the value it brings in that commercial way. So let's send her a copy of that report, because that might be helpful if she's looking at how to prove the value. And we've got similar freak outs this week. So I had my senior internal comms roundtable, which is I've got two tables. I have a virtual table and I have a London table. And it was the London table last week. And we were talking about how to stay relevant in internal comms.

[00:35:34] And I had a bit of a light bulb moment that stayed with me about the profession of internal comms and really how as an industry for the last 10, 15 years, we've talked about how we need to go from being a tick box function. So can you do a poster? Yes, sure. I'll go and do that to an outcome based function. So we're asking the question. So can you do a poster? Hmm. What is it you're really trying to achieve? What is it you want to do?

[00:35:59] And that's been our industry world for years where we've talked about doing that. I don't think we've done enough work to take the organizations on the journey with us, which is why we're seeing AI come in to do that tick box work. Because if you say to AI, can you do me a poster for this event? That's not going to ask the questions about why. What are you trying to achieve? Is that really the right tool? Blah, blah, blah. It's just going to do the task that you want it to do. And you don't have to worry about any of that stuff because you can just tick the box and move on.

[00:36:28] And I think that's the reason why people are going to AI and those stakeholders inside organizations, because it's doing the thing that the internal comms function were doing, but are now being more impactful, commercial, outcome focused. And people don't really understand the benefit of that. So that's kind of staying with me and swimming around in my head a little bit about how do we address that in terms of the change element we need to do inside our organizations to take our stakeholders with us. So that's swimming in there for me.

[00:36:57] Yeah, because you can't have any outcomes without outputs, without action. Like you need their work does need to happen for that to occur. But yeah, it's in a similar vein of how are we connecting the work that comms is doing to the big top level items that leaders truly care about. Is it revenue? Is it retention? Is it stock price? Is it safety?

[00:37:24] Whatever it is, whatever those items are, we need to make very clear connections. And what's so interesting to me on this conversation was somebody's like, well, I'm, I know I'm contributing to it, but it's I don't really know the impact that it's having on that, but it's driving it. And I'm like, well, if you're not taking credit for it, somebody else is. Yeah. Somebody else is glad to take credit for the work that your stuff is contributing. So I do think there's this connection that needs to happen.

[00:37:48] And whether that's through a dashboard approach or something, how we've got to do a much better job of aligning and demonstrating that connection between what we do to those company goals on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis. Yeah, 100%. Oh, we could talk about this even more, but I'm aware we've come to the end of this week. So thank you for joining us this week. All of the articles that have inspired this conversation are in the show notes. And please don't forget to rate and review after you've listened.

[00:38:17] Subscribe as well so that you don't miss another episode. And if you've got a friend, relative, colleague who you think might want to listen or watch, please make sure you share it with them as well. Thank you to poet Ali for contributing the music to the show. And we're back every Monday with more news, insights and opinions about everything comms and leadership in workplaces today. So keep tuning in and turning up.