Why More Budget, More Messages, and More AI Won't Fix Employee Experience

[00:00:10] 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 I'm back with two reports, one about employee experience and one about employee attention. We're also going to be talking about whether work from home helps or hinders your mental health, and why effective leaders get mistaken for problems in organizations.

[00:00:37] Before we get into this week's content, Jenni, I just want to share, like, I am absolutely exhausted this week. And it's going to be part of my freak out, so we're going to come back to that a little bit later. But I am exhausted, but I'm going to bring the energy for this week's episode. Because when you're listening to this, Jenni and I will be in Toronto. I have a session at IABC World Conference. Jenni is hosting her comms reboot in Toronto.

[00:01:07] We pitched to do an episode of Frequency live at IABC World Conference. But for some reason, the organizers, the PAC, couldn't quite get their head around what this would actually look like, even though we've literally done this now for 60-plus episodes. That being said, we are going to still record in Toronto and get some video from a studio, get some audio from that studio. So the next time we are recording for an episode, Jenni will be the first time we're in the room together.

[00:01:36] It will be. I'm excited. And the studio looks insane as well, which I'm really excited about. I'm excited. Yeah, it looks really cool. It'll be fun being there in person. It'll be great seeing you in Toronto. It's always lovely to be together. I'm very excited. So let's kick off with our first story this week, which is about work from home help or hindering our mental health. So we're back with Nick Blue, one of our firm favorites this week. It's been a while since we've mentioned him here.

[00:02:02] And he's been talking about how to tell correlation from causation on the topic of whether work from home helps or hinders mental health. He believes data and research shows that it improves mental health. And here's why. A new science paper reports a strong correlation between work from home and mental health. The two interpretations of this, though, are very different. The first is work from home causes mental distress. This is the interpretation emphasized by the authors.

[00:02:28] The story is that work from home isolates people and isolation increases mental distress. The second is that mental distress causes work from home. So the interpretation from surveys and prior research, people facing stressful life circumstances, disabilities, child or elder care, long commutes. So you negotiate or change job for more work from home to cope with the stress. So in the observational data, these two stories look quite similar. People in work from home occupations report more stress.

[00:02:55] People with rising work from home show rising stress. But the hard question is causality. So how to tell cause from effect. And I love this because I'm a data nerd. So he talks about randomized control trials where it shows that in those work from home employees report better work life balance when they were randomized into work from home. And then the second is ask workers directly.

[00:03:21] So in surveys, people who choose work from home report that it improves their mental health. Now, when I was reading this, I did a little comment to say that it feels like it's reinforcing the choice element. So if we get to choose and have that flexibility, that's what's better for us. And I think that's true for anything, as autonomy is a big part of human motivation. I have said, is there data about people who are forced to work remotely and that impact?

[00:03:48] Because I do agree that isolation is not good for humans. So, Chuck, what is your take on this? Well, that's something that I am experiencing this week when we're recording. This sense of isolation because I have worked remote slash from home since around 2009. So it's not this is this is how I know to work. It's actually awkward at times for me to go into an office to work.

[00:04:15] But what I'm also used to then traveling and being on the road from time to time. So then it's nice to have those couple days in the office where it's nice and quiet and you can focus on things. But this week I am home all week long. But I'm also home alone all week long. It's just me and Alan, our dog. And I realized I was getting pretty stir crazy. This was not the natural state. I was basically having lengthy conversations with the dog about things that I'd normally be talking to my wife about.

[00:04:43] So I get it's a little bit of all of this chicken and egg conversation, as you pointed out, like, what's the real causality of it? And I think it does. As we've talked about many times on this episode, it comes down to choice. So for people to choose when they want to work from home or not work from home. A week ago, I was in Omaha and I spent time with the Mutual of Omaha comms team. And it was interesting.

[00:05:08] We were talking about they're building a new corporate headquarters there in Omaha and there's still this topic of, well, what's the expectation of people coming in? Is it going to be based on departments? Is it going to be mandatory? There's still some decisions are still up in the air. And one of the communicators mentioned she's like, ah, how great would it be to just be an employee again? Yeah, you just go to work.

[00:05:32] You're not trying to juggle teams calls and zoom calls and also getting laundry done and managing kids home from summer. She's like, man, you just go to work. You can just work. And so this is where that choice comes in. And it's when people can make the choice that's best for them. That's then when we see increased motivation and increased well-being because they've got that autonomy. They've made the choice. I think you raise a really good point there as well around what people are juggling when they're at home.

[00:06:02] And I know people that, you know, stopped having childcare. So they were juggling children and working, which I think is against the law. I don't know that it is, but I feel like it should be because that's in that's insane for you to have to juggle all of those things together at home. But I I think that is one. I'm wondering if that's part of what we're seeing where people are feeling more burnt out, more overwhelmed, more exhausted is because to that person's point, like it was lovely to just go to work and you weren't trying to do seven things.

[00:06:31] Even if I think about being at home today, I was like, oh, I need to get to the post office and I need to collect that delivery from a shop and I need to go to the dry cleaners and I need to. And I've done none of those things. But it's like, where can I squeeze these extra things into my day? And I do think that that probably isn't helpful about being at home as well. But I'm interested if there is this data on you've been forced to be at home, because I don't think that is good for anybody.

[00:06:56] I think, well, let's look back at where this all started with the pandemic, where people were forced to work from home. And that just became the way we worked. And so now there's this other change that, again, as we said, clearly organizations are struggling with these decisions. And ultimately, when we talk about autonomy, it also comes back to fairness, because you're going to have some parts.

[00:07:18] And this is what we talked about in Omaha, where some organization, they're part of the organization is saying, nope, you're our team is in three days a week. You have to be in three days a week. Other ones that they haven't been told anything yet. So one person was like, well, how is that fair? Well, fair and equity, fair and equal are different things. And so if your if your team, if your boss says, hey, our team's got to be in three days a week and everybody is in those three days a week. OK, that's fair.

[00:07:48] They might not be equal to other teams. And so it's worth like talking through this at an organizational level to make sure that it is truly best for your people. And again, going back to your previous episode, imagine creating an office environment where people are choosing to want to be in the office. Yeah, like imagine creating that environment. And even then, again, I'm so great spending time with the Mutual of Omaha team because they talked about this new office building and there's a gym that's going in there.

[00:08:18] And one of the employees was like, oh, that'd be great to either go in early or stay late or get a class in like that would be awesome. This other employee was like, you think I'm going to stand there and sweat next to other coworkers? Like I'm not doing that. So even something like a gym is very divisive and how people are going to use it or not. Yeah, I feel like the gym is divisive between men and women. I feel like there is a definite difference between men being totally cool with that and women maybe not. But maybe I'm maybe I'm that's just my experience.

[00:08:48] Right on to our next article, which is why effective leaders get branded as problems. This was a piece in Harvard Business Review, which talks about when a leader creates friction, organizations default to a single explanation. The leader needs to change. Now, the opening of this article for me is spot on. So it says a high tech executive is told she had a blind spot just a year into her role and her CEO admired her decisiveness, respected her clarity, valued her confidence.

[00:09:14] But at the same time, he began receiving complaints, which he relayed to the individual quickly. A pattern was clear. She moves too fast. She makes decisions before the rest of us are ready. And people felt like they were always in catch up mode. Now, the individual took the feedback seriously. She adjusted her approach, but nothing changed. A few stakeholder interviews later, something became clear. Her decisiveness wasn't the problem. Her company had normalized over consensus. Speed wasn't valued.

[00:09:41] It was treated as recklessness and urgency as inflexibility. So her decisiveness didn't create friction. It exposed it. Now, it says the experience isn't unusual. You know, a leader is told to show up differently, be more strategic or slow down. When they try to adjust, nothing actually changes and the feedback stays the same. The narrative stays the same. The leader becomes more frustrated while the organization begins to question the fit. And then they start to initiate performance plans and then they quietly plan a replacement.

[00:10:11] And then you have to figure out whether or not the organization is actually diagnosing the problem correctly. Now, the article suggests there are actually four different sources for the friction. And these are the capability, perception, the identity or the system that the leader is operating in. Now, I've seen this play out with clients and I have been this leader that has had this sort of feedback. I can think very quickly and easily to a time where I've gone in as a consultant to lead a team where I was fast, decisive, taking action.

[00:10:40] And the team hated me. There's still people that hate me from that team even today because I was brought in to do a job. And the friction was this was the system. So this feels like a very common problem. So my question is, what could be done to help leaders land better from the off? Because I think it's often about knowing the culture that you're going into, which is the system. And I think there is more to be done. So what would your advice be?

[00:11:03] Well, I'm glad you mentioned this felt very similar to you because it felt like a past performance review that I might have had at a job where it's not that you're not doing the wrong things. You're just doing them at a pace that is different than what other people are comfortable with. And I love that that over consensus term. Yeah, I think that that then becomes the truth. That's not actually what's happening. It's what they once experienced then becomes the experience.

[00:11:33] And so to me, this is it's hard to blame someone just 12 months in to a role. And I think that's the biggest mistake that we make so often with leaders is that we view this failure too quickly. Like they already they a lot of times begin to higher up the leader, the more they already have their style in place. You hired them for a reason to come in.

[00:11:57] And it sounds like she took that feedback and actually tried to adjust, which is exactly what you want from leaders. But what we see is that nearly half of these senior leaders fail, fail within a year and a half, purely for relational culture reasons, not performance reasons. So I think this is really tricky. I think we're too impatient with the stuff. It's great that they were listening to the feedback. Like, think about that side of it.

[00:12:27] Now, I don't like necessarily that they went around the manager to the boss. We could talk about that being a cultural problem. The boss shared that with the supervisor. The supervisor made adjustments, but it didn't matter. So to me, it's and that's not a that's not a supervisor problem or a manager problem. That is a culture problem. Yeah. And I there's a few things in here like you.

[00:12:50] I like the over consensus piece, because I do think we now operate in organizations where everybody feels like you have to have a view and everything has to take quite a long time. But if I'm I'm thinking about a leader that I've been a team that I've been working with, which pops into my head as you were just talking then about a head of internal comms joining an organization and and not landing well. Right. To use this expression. But the the the reason that's happened is because of the difference between that person and the previous leader.

[00:13:19] And I'm not sure if I think about the questions like what would the advice be? What should they do? I don't think there is enough time and space given to this was the person before you. And this is how they operated. This is what the team are used to. This is how we know you're going to operate because we can see your style and your approach. So you just need to be aware of this difference and manage that accordingly. Whereas I don't think that conversation is often had when people come in or the conversation is had around.

[00:13:48] Oh, yeah, I know they were like this and I'm like this. But, you know, onwards we go. It's not quite the right. And I think I don't think enough is done there to help people bridge that gap, because I do think that is hard when you've gone from a leader who might be one way and then you've got one that's totally different. That is really uncomfortable for people to manage and deal with.

[00:14:08] I think the phrase like, you know, moving too fast is is maybe interesting to me and perhaps a little triggering for me as someone who does move fast, even with ideas that I pitched to you. You'll be like, hey, should we stop and pause? And I'll be like, boring. I know. I know. Let's just go do things. And then you just stop. So like, because you do like we'll talk about stuff and I'll be like, oh, let's just think about this. And then I sort of come back and go, so I thought about this, by which point you're like, no, I'm bored of that now. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

[00:14:37] But I think when it's really when it's you're being accused of moving too fast, I think what it really means is you're just not bringing people with you. Yeah. Which I think is those are different things. Moving too fast just means they aren't ready yet. And so I think that's actually something, a skill that all of us, present company included, can develop. Absolutely. Yes. I will. I agree. Now we're on to report land now, which you know is my favorite place to be. So this is a report from Scarlett Abbott.

[00:15:05] So thanks to Paul Benin, who tagged me in this on LinkedIn. It's the World Changes report. It comes out from Scarlett Abbott, I think every year. I'm not sure, but I'm going to go with a regular report. So we had a quick read through ahead of recording this week. And for those that haven't seen it, it's a report based on a survey with 752 senior leaders across HR and internal comms. And the report identifies seven themes for organizations to consider when it comes to employee experience.

[00:15:34] Those seven themes are investment priorities, employee experience, maturity, feeling valued and seen, leadership effectiveness, recognition and performance. Vision, EVP and strategy. And then the seventh is internal communications. Now I want to pull out some highlights from the report. So stay with me, Chuck. So the first is 63% of people surveyed say their employee experience budget has increased year on year.

[00:16:00] Yet 30% see misalignment between employee needs and leadership priorities as the biggest blocker to converting investment into meaningful action. Where the budget is going is interesting. So the top three priorities are performance management, followed by leadership development, followed by recognition. Now I'm really interested in the fact that the number one is performance management. So we'll come back to that. The report says the case for employee experience no longer needs to be made.

[00:16:30] It then goes on to say just over a quarter of those surveyed, 26%, say employee experience is strategically embedded in their organization. So I'd say there is still a case to be made. I think we've got a bit of an issue there. It says that more than one in five, 22% of respondents consider their employee experience activity to be market leading. So that feels like a real mess of messaging.

[00:16:55] If I'm honest, you're kind of saying it no longer needs to have a case, but then a quarter of people are embedding it. So that doesn't feel like it's really very joined up. The next point I want to bring out is that 81% believe employees are clear on the long term vision. That's of everybody surveyed. But just 29% are extremely confident the organization knows which behaviors need to change to get there. What's interesting in the report is the difference between how HR and internal comms see this.

[00:17:24] 40% of HR folks agree that employees are clear, but only 22% of internal comms pros agree employees are clear. So I have questions about the different metrics these two functions are using and why there is such a big difference between those two. I've got two more points to make. The next one is 96% say building a culture where people feel seen and valued and heard is a priority.

[00:17:48] And the business case is well established, but intent and action are not the same thing because just under half say this is a strong priority. I mean, there's just such a misalignment here. And then the last thing is that the survey assessed four core leadership qualities, role modeling values, communicating clearly, managing change and translating strategy into action.

[00:18:09] Now, the net effectiveness across all four sits between 87.5% and 89.5%, which is good numbers on the surface. But when you look underneath them, quite effective is really doing that heavy lifting. So only 39.6% of respondents rate their leaders as very effective at translating strategy into action on managing change. That figure rises a little bit to 42.4.

[00:18:36] Well, Chuck, I've not covered everything because we would be here all day. But any standout stats for you or any comments on the things that I have called out? I think first, talking through those themes, the seven themes are interesting to me. I don't disagree with them. I just haven't seen it sliced and diced in that way before. Obviously, bias. I do like seeing internal comms as one of those key themes.

[00:19:04] But I feel like I need to sit on those other six a little bit more to figure out like they don't feel all, not that they all need to be equal, but they don't feel the same. Yeah. But I'm going to call out something that you mentioned about that performance management was deemed the number one EX budget priority. Yeah. Because I don't know of anyone that enjoys that, has gone through a performance management system and like, wow, that was really good.

[00:19:34] That was really great. And yet somehow that is the budget priority and that we're labeling that as an investment in employee experience. Yeah. That. I know. I don't know about that.

[00:19:48] I also want to call out the fact that this is a report from internal comms and HR and how they are viewing things, which is wildly different from the report that Ecology partnered with Corbett and reworked on, which is from employees and what they viewed things because where you've got 40% say employees are clear on vision from the HR side and 22% from internal comms.

[00:20:15] I think the number was like nine or 10% of employees said they were clear. So that's even a bigger gap. It's like double that to comms, double that again to HR. So is it is. Oh, here's here's gonna get some HR is HR like out of the loop. Are they out to lunch on this? Yeah. I mean, I'm with you on the performance management because I also think that's a bigger signal about the challenges inside organizations today.

[00:20:44] And if I think about the people I talk to a lot, it's there's a lot of challenges around employee behavior and alignment and all of those things. And I feel like the performance management investment in employee experience is linked to poor management of employee behavior and accountability. And I think we're trying to deal with that over there. But I'm with you on the disconnect here between HR and the organization because 40% in green.

[00:21:10] And I mean, there's been no report that you and I have talked to in over 60 episodes that even comes close to that 40% figure. And to your point, Ecology partnered on that report. The IC index for IOAC is also with employees like there's enough stuff out there to go. That's just not true. And if HR do think that's true, I'm mildly terrified. Yeah. The other part that I think is interesting to talk about here is that you've got it.

[00:21:40] They're saying employee experience budgets are up and I would love to know what is actually in that budget, but they're saying employee experience budgets are up. And regardless of how you define engagement, engagement is going down in organizations. So we're spending more money. If we're spending more money to solve engagement, that's clearly not working. So why are we spending more money and that's you got more money with a worse outcome.

[00:22:06] So what, what problem, what are we trying to solve by dropping in more money into employee experience? Is it truly just on performance management, which is not going to create engagement that is actually actively creating disengagement? Yeah, I think that I mean the top three, let's, I mean, let's take performance management off off the list because we, you and I both had slightly dumbfounded by that.

[00:22:26] But leadership development and recognition, I feel tracks with all the conversations we've had on here and the conversations we have with people around leaders, that gap between leaders and employees and dealing with that and developing leaders to be, you know, I would say more credible, which is obviously what I do. But there again, I would love to know, like, do leaders feel like they're being developed? I don't know. I don't think they do. I don't think they do. I guess it depends on the positioning, doesn't it?

[00:22:54] Yeah, like, I wonder, like, are we, are companies spending money in things that truly aren't getting the results, like the, the, the, we talk about outputs and outcomes. Yeah, we're not getting the outcomes that they're expecting with this investment. And it comes back to that employee level, we're spending money in leadership development. Do leaders feel like they're actively being developed? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, the report is packed with stuff. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. What I will say is, it's an entirely digital report.

[00:23:21] So when you're reading it, you can only click through stuff online to kind of read it. And I get why they've done that. They did this last time. But for me, it's wildly inaccessible. Like for us, we tend to download reports, read them and do that. So I had to like literally copy and paste every single section of each of these pages into a document that you and I could read. And so my feedback should they be listening is please make it accessible for people because how it is now is not accessible to everybody, regardless of anything.

[00:23:51] It's just not. I can see having both options. You want to walk people through a story. You want to get the narrative. But then, oh, by the way, you want to download all the stuff. Here's the link. Yes. Yeah, I have both. That's all I'm saying. Right. The next article is about employee attention. So this is the second report. And it is thanks to Mike Klein. He shared this report, which is from Fresh Intranet. And so it popped up on my LinkedIn feed.

[00:24:16] Fresh Intranet commissioned some independent research with a thousand professionals and employees across the UK and the US, surveying both the people who create internal comms and the people who receive them. So what they found is what they're calling the intent gap. We do love a gap, don't we? This is the distance between what organizations think is landing and what employees actually understand. The headline stat is that only 12% of employees read internal communications in full.

[00:24:44] So reading in full is now the least common active response to receiving an internal communication. The striking 88% of employees have used AI to summarize internal communication at some point and 58% do so regularly. So when you look at what employees actually do with any individual communication when it lands, 20% are going to reach for AI to summarize it, which means for any message you send, the AI summarization is already more common than reading in full.

[00:25:10] 83% of employees say they receive too much internal content with 35% saying far too much and they can't keep up. 91% say internal comms feels relevant to them. So the problem is volume, not willingness. The second, sorry, the single biggest factor in whether somebody reads something in full is not the format. It's not who sent it. It's not even whether it's relevant. It's how many other communications arrived before it, which I think is interesting.

[00:25:39] On the AI side, 92% of IC professionals are concerned that AI summaries distort the meaning. So that tension is really what this report is talking about. Employees trust AI to get it right. Internal comms pros worry it doesn't. And on measurement, only 33% of organizations have any formal monitoring of how content is being interpreted once it leaves any owned channels. So most are measuring reach. We've just talked about outputs and outcomes. That's the challenge there.

[00:26:06] The three things the report recommends is subtract before you add, design content to survive AI mediation, and start governing interpretation, not just publication. Chuck, the report says the single biggest factor in whether somebody reads an internal comms isn't the quality, the format or even who sent it. It's how many other communications arrived before it. So if volume is the enemy, not relevance, what's the one thing IC folks listening should be doing to address this?

[00:26:33] I, the part, and you called it out too, that about how many comms arrived before it is interesting to me because we're not always in control of that. We don't want to be in control of every single piece of communication that goes to every single employee across an entire enterprise. So that's, I always thought and other researchers said it really, it's the sender. It's the, whose message is it that's going to drive that? Yeah.

[00:27:02] So I wonder if that's now an extra layer of filtering that is coming in as saying, if I have to filter through, even if that person's important, it might not get read. I think the biggest stat here is something we should know, but maybe the data helps make it real is that the 12% of employees that read it in full. I don't know that any of us read anything in full anymore. Like I'm trying to like, we're such skimmers.

[00:27:31] So I don't think that should surprise anyone. And the data point about the employees have used AI to summarize at, at some point, it doesn't mean they're doing it all the time. It just means 88% have done it at some point. So if you sent out some big financial report, you sent out your annual report and they're like, Hey, I'm going to use AI to summarize this. They're part of that 88%.

[00:27:58] So we don't really know how endemic that is to the server. Other than that, some say they do it regularly. Mm-hmm. So I'm wondering then from a comms person, if you know, okay, not everybody's reading all of this, just fine. Some, some are. So is, is it a length problem or is it a lack of interest problem? So that's worth answering. And do we instead just bring AI into the conversation and we say, Hey, here's your AI summary.

[00:28:28] Yeah. Nice. And then you go into the full depth. So like, do you just call that out and say, Hey, you're, we, you know, you don't have to say, you know, we know you're going to read everything, but here's the TLDR. Yeah. Summary right here. And then the depth below for the people who do want to read it in full. I don't, again, unless it's impacting people's pay bonus benefits. I don't know that people truly do ever read anything in full. So how can we design the content?

[00:28:56] So people pick up the points. Yeah. I think it, for me, it brings the bigger question about why are you communicating this? Like what's the end goal? And I don't think we ask that enough. I don't know. I don't think, but it's beyond the beauty of it in just because of the hope, but I have people So if one of the, well, we think what's interesting? So that's, in fact, what's interesting, what's interesting? Thank you.