Four reports, and each one takes something the workplace treats as settled and pulls the floor out. Gartner finds that 80% of companies deploying autonomous AI cut staff and that the cuts bore almost no relationship to return — layoffs made budget room, not returns. A Graphite analysis says the feared AI takeover of online writing stalled at about half of new articles and has sat there for over a year, which raises a sharper question for comms teams than who wrote it. A Harris Poll catches the DEI rollback mid-motion, with 62% of LGBTQ+ employees noticing a change in how their workplace talks about them and 64% self-censoring because of it. And Integral’s index picks a fight with the entire engagement survey industry: three quarters of the workforce counts as engaged, a third of them are captive contributors held in place by benefits, and 38% of that group expect their colleagues to behave badly. Before any of it, Jenni asks Chuck whether men think about their wardrobe as a personal brand.
Gartner surveyed 350 executives at billion-dollar-plus companies and found roughly 80% of those piloting or deploying autonomous AI made workforce cuts — with almost no relationship between those cuts and return on investment. Companies reporting strong returns laid people off at nearly the same rate as companies reporting weak or negative ones. Gartner’s own line is that workforce reductions may create budget room but do not create return, and that the organizations improving ROI are the ones investing more aggressively in the skills, roles and operating models that let people steer autonomous systems. Chuck’s framing for communicators is that the cost-cutting story and the AI-investment story are being told in the same breath to the same workforce, and the gap between the message and the math is where trust dies. Jenni’s answer is to take the finding at face value: if the reduction creates budget room, then budget room is the story, and the mess is what happens when someone tries to simplify it into a growth narrative it does not support. She picks up Gartner’s other prediction, that autonomous business becomes a net-positive job creator by 2028 to 2029 through work AI cannot absorb, and reads it against every previous wave of workplace technology, where roles shifted rather than vanished — which raises the possibility that this is simply the dip while companies free up money to invest. Chuck makes it concrete with his own son, a creative kid drawn to marketing who has already concluded the field is going away because of AI, when the honest answer is that it changes. His second point is that AI is now in some cases more expensive than the people being cut to pay for it, and that the pattern looks like monkey-see-monkey-do among leaders who will not be questioned for cutting in AI’s name. Jenni adds the argument she has watched go quiet — the climate and sustainability cost of all this, raised passionately by an internal communicator who could not reconcile it with the organization’s own values — and expects it to resurface, while Chuck notes that some of the environmental claims are being poked at too, since data centers use water because it is the cheapest coolant rather than the only one.
The feared AI takeover of online writing stalled. Axios reports a Graphite analysis of tens of thousands of English-language URLs from Common Crawl showing AI-generated articles climbing fast after ChatGPT — 36% of new articles within a year, 48% within two — then flattening at around half for over a year. The worry underneath is the feedback loop: once models train mostly on machine-generated text, the internet feeds on its own output, and as one UC Berkeley professor put it, these models are smart because of everything humans created independently of them. There is also a measurement asterisk, since a human who outlines, drafts with AI and then edits produces something a detector could flag either way. Chuck’s question is whether internal comms has its own version, where every CEO message starts sounding identical because it came out of the same handful of tools. Jenni thinks it is already happening and will get worse — she remembers a CEO crisis statement that turned out to be near-identical to another airline’s years before AI, and says the tell is now unmistakable, citing an AI-written comment on one of her own LinkedIn posts. Her advice to a business-owner friend who asked for feedback on a draft was not that it was bad but that it did not sound like her, and her structural concern is that if everyone is drafting in Copilot on the same foundational model, company data on top will not stop the output converging. Chuck’s angle is linguistic: language has always evolved through what people absorb, and his own was shaped by hours of MTV, so the fix is to read and watch widely enough that your own voice survives contact with the tool. Jenni connects it to the echo chamber problem social platforms already demonstrated, and both land on the same practical test — Chuck dropped the word boondoggle before recording and Jenni had never heard it, which is exactly the kind of thing that only comes out when a real person is talking.
A Harris Poll survey of 650 LGBTQ+ and 2,432 non-LGBTQ+ employees catches the DEI rollback in action: 62% of LGBTQ+ employees noticed at least one meaningful change in how their workplace talks about LGBTQ+ issues, 40% say the conversation has dropped off or never started, and only 35% report a workplace with both strong policies and a supportive culture. The support did not disappear so much as go quiet, cautious and compliance-flavored — and 64% of LGBTQ+ employees have self-censored at work because of the climate, avoiding personal conversations, staying silent when issues come up, editing how they show up. The business numbers are blunt: 80% are more likely to stay somewhere that visibly supports them, 80% are less likely to trust one that goes quiet, and 62% of non-LGBTQ+ employees say how a company treats its LGBTQ+ colleagues signals how it treats everyone. Asked how to advise a leader who genuinely believes silence is the safe choice, Jenni does not hedge: silence is a position, it is a choice, and it comes with consequences the leader has to own. Her practical route is the values statement — if a company claims inclusion, collaboration and kindness, those words should decide the messaging, and if they cannot, the values themselves are the bigger conversation. She also puts a methodological caveat on the data, noting the report captures perception of change rather than a year-on-year comparison, which matters because a climate telling people not to talk about something makes the silence easier to notice than to measure. Chuck’s addition is that leaders read silence as status quo when not saying something is itself saying something, and when most non-LGBTQ+ employees treat it as a signal about everyone, it stops being one group’s issue. He then corrects his own language on air: there is nothing safe about not supporting your employees, and calling silence playing it safe gets the risk exactly backwards. Jenni’s closing point is that almost nobody intends the harm — these are unintended consequences, but people feel social pain on each other’s behalf, which is precisely why 62% figure is not a surprise.
Integral’s index picks a fight with the entire engagement survey industry, arguing engagement is a poor predictor of how employees actually behave. Three quarters of the workforce counts as engaged, yet a third of them describe workplaces where they expect destructive colleague behavior at triple the rate of their peers. The culprits are what Integral calls captive contributors — 33% of the workforce, engaged but locked in place by benefits, who show up and care, and 38% of whom predict a corrosive environment, a higher share than the people who have checked out entirely. Five conditions move behavior: manager activation, freedom to speak up and trust help, while job lock and AI job concern hurt. Manager activation is the biggest single lever at a 55-point swing in supportive behavior, and support for managers in the form of communications training and coaching was cut year over year. AI job concern has the strongest tie to corrosive behavior in the model, with worried employees predicting corrosive colleague behavior at 39% against 10% for those who are not. Trust multiplies everything: high-trust employees are excited about change at nearly four times the rate of low-trust ones and 52 points more likely to say change communication matches company values, and Integral puts the gap between a disengaged and a fully activated 1,000-person workforce at more than $11 million a year. Jenni, eighty percent through the report and openly delighted by it, values it for tying engagement to behavior rather than a single tidy score, and for separating engagement with the work from engagement with the organization, which are routinely confused. What she wants to read more on is the locked-in-by-benefits quadrant, and the reframing of engagement as the beginning rather than the end. Chuck ties it back to the Firstup report comparing the UK and North America that they covered in episode 55: Americans are less likely to leave for fear of losing medical cover, which is the golden handcuffs he watched at Rolls-Royce, where people stay out of fear of losing rather than hope of gaining. Jenni notes this is a US study and that the benefits relationship is different in the UK, where the NHS changes the calculation, and would like to see it run globally. Chuck’s last move is to link the freedom-to-speak-up condition straight back to the Harris Poll: a culture where people cannot raise something without retribution is a red flag, and it is the same conversation about the risks employees feel in bringing themselves to work that the two of them had back in episode 13.
Do AI-driven layoffs actually improve return on investment? Gartner’s survey of 350 executives at billion-dollar-plus companies says no. Roughly 80% of those piloting or deploying autonomous AI made workforce cuts, and companies reporting strong returns laid people off at nearly the same rate as those reporting weak or negative ones. The cuts created budget room, not return. Gartner’s position is that ROI comes from investing more in the skills, roles and operating models that let people steer AI.
Will AI create or destroy jobs by 2029? Gartner predicts autonomous business will be a net-positive job creator by 2028 to 2029, driven by new forms of work AI cannot absorb. Jenni’s reading is that this matches every previous wave of workplace technology, where roles shifted rather than disappeared, and that the current cuts may be the dip while companies free up budget to invest.
How much of the internet is written by AI now? A Graphite analysis of tens of thousands of English-language URLs from Common Crawl, reported by Axios, found AI-generated articles rose to 36% of new articles within a year of ChatGPT and 48% within two, then flattened at around half and stayed there for over a year. The measurement is blurry, though, because a human who drafts with AI and then edits can be flagged either way.
How do you keep AI-drafted internal communication from sounding generic? The test both hosts land on is not whether AI was involved but whether the content still sounds like a person who works there. Jenni’s warning is that if every organization drafts in the same tool on the same foundational model, CEO messages will converge no matter how much company data sits on top — and audiences have already learned to spot it.
What happens when a company goes quiet on LGBTQ+ support? The Harris Poll found 62% of LGBTQ+ employees noticed a meaningful change in how their workplace talks about these issues and 64% have self-censored because of the climate. The retention cost is direct: 80% are more likely to stay at a company that visibly supports them and 80% are less likely to trust one that goes quiet. Jenni’s advice to leaders is that silence is a position, not a neutral one, and should be tested against the company’s own stated values.
What are captive contributors, and why do they matter? Integral’s term for the 33% of the workforce who are engaged but locked in place by benefits. They show up and they care, and 38% of them predict a corrosive environment — a higher rate than employees who have disengaged completely. It is the finding that undercuts using an engagement score as a proxy for organizational health.
Jenni: Welcome to Frequency. I’m Jenni Field.
Chuck: 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. This week, Jenni, we’re talking about the quote unquote ROI of AI layoffs, and whether we’ve hit the AI ceiling when it comes to writing. About companies going quiet on LGBTQ+ support, and Integral’s quote unquote engagement fallacy.
Jenni: Excited about that last one. But before we get into that, I want to ask you a question. So I’ve been spending some time over the last couple of weeks looking at my Jenni Field brand, which is part of my freq-out later. And involved in that is looking at my wardrobe, and I’ve been chatting with my stylist and going through all of that. And it’s raised the question from some of my friends about whether or not men have this feeling about their wardrobe and their styling and their personal brand, in terms of their clothing and how they show up. So I wanted to ask you that question. Is it just a me thing, rather than lumping all women into my world? But is it something you consider in terms of, how do I want to come across, what should I wear, whether you’re on stage at a conference or on a call, that sort of stuff?
Chuck: Yeah, I would say, like you, I do not want to speak for all men. However, I do think about those things. I am vain enough to think about, okay, how is this going to look either on stage, or how’s this going to look in pictures or video? And what’s the style like, and what’s the image you want to send across that makes you stand out a bit — in a good way — but also have some consistency between all the different things that you’re doing. So if people have noticed or not, on 99% of our recordings I am wearing black, because it’s nice and simple, and it just kind of looks the same every time. It’s different black shirts, but it is all black. And I think that’s something I’ve tried to focus on, especially with traveling and speaking — how can you keep it simple so that you’re not packing, and I’m not checking bags, because I do not check bags when I travel.
Jenni: You do not, you do not. I think it’s interesting. It just made me think, where I’m starting to look at slightly different fabrics and a more structured look, and shifting away from maybe some of the more bold patterns to more bold colours. It just sparked a conversation. So for anyone listening, if you have a view on that, let me know, because I still think we can’t represent all men and all women in this one.
Chuck: I think it’s actually oddly a bit more — I feel a bit more limited as a man when it comes to these things, because it’s largely expected you wear pants, that’s locked in. A jacket, which then means a t-shirt or a collar. So the structure is already there. I don’t feel like you’ve got a lot of wiggle room to do much else with it.
Jenni: Yes. I was saying that men kind of have a uniform with the suit, which has been linked so much to the workplace. That’s kind of the men’s uniform. Whereas women don’t have that. There’s never really been a this-is-the-standard-uniform for women, and I think that does give us more freedom, but with that comes sometimes some paralysis in terms of where do you go from there. So anyway, that was good. Let’s crack on with today’s episode. What’s your first article?
Chuck: Yes. Gartner surveyed 350 executives at billion-dollar-plus companies and found that roughly 80% of those piloting or deploying autonomous AI made workforce cuts. But guess what, Jenni? The cuts had basically no relationship to return on investment. Companies reporting strong returns laid people off at nearly the same rate as companies reporting weak or negative ones. Layoffs just created room in the budget. They did not create a return. Per Gartner, leaders using layoffs to manufacture a quick AI win have it backwards. The organizations actually getting returns are the ones spending more on people, not fewer, investing in the skills, roles and operating models that let humans steer the AI rather than just get replaced by it. For the comms clarity champions out there, this can make things a bit awkward, because the cost-cutting story and the AI investment story are being told in the same breath, often to the same workforce, and employees can hear this contradiction. If your company is framing AI as a growth play but the actual news looks like a headcount reduction, the gap between the message and the math is where trust is dying. Jenni, Gartner is saying that ROI comes from amplifying people, not cutting them. If that is true, why are companies getting this so wrong?
Jenni: So this was such a good article, and I loved the point about layoffs creating room in the budget, because I think that’s the essence of this story, isn’t it? The messaging is muddled. If workforce reductions create budget room, then that’s the story. But we’re kind of being told it’s about generating more return. And I think that is the messiness of AI. There was another thing in here saying that Gartner predicts autonomous business will be a net-positive job creator by 2028 to 2029, driven by new forms of work that AI can’t absorb. And I think that’s also really important, which is true for most things throughout the evolution of work — where technology has come in to replace things, nothing’s completely gone. New jobs have come up to replace them, and things that we don’t have now that we can’t even imagine have come up, and therefore the economy keeps going. But for me this really brings home: you’re going to go with AI, and you’re going to say you’re going to cut headcount to do that because it gives you the budget to invest in the technology, but actually it’s not about creating a return. And I do think the messaging has got muddled, because people have tried to simplify it — and not in a good way. I think that’s where it’s got tricky.
Chuck: Yeah, I’ll explain how this is truly hitting home. So I have one child in college now, another one that will be in college in a year. And we were talking about some of his college choices, and he mentioned he’s really interested in marketing — very creative mind, all of those things, perfect fit for the marketing world. But he’s like, yeah, but it’s going to be going away because of AI. I’m like, no. It’s not. It’s going to change a bit because of AI. And we walked through some different examples. He’s like, well, that’s not going to happen this way because of AI. I’m like, no, it’s going to happen this way because of AI. It’s going to change. You’re going to be able to do more than you could before. And also the world changes in that amount of time. So it’s interesting that already this AI doom is hitting kids who are thinking about professions before they even get into it. They’re thinking, no, it’s going to go away — because this is the narrative they’re hearing because of these layoffs, instead of thinking, what is this now going to allow me to do that I could not do before, or could now do so much more quickly?
Jenni: Yeah, and I think that’s why that net-positive job creator piece is important, because that’s the bit that people need to start talking about more. And I think we also need to stop talking about AI being the reason for job cuts. We were going backwards and forwards with stories as we do each week anyway, and there was another one — I think it was British American Tobacco cutting five thousand jobs, and it’s all linked to AI. And it’s like, is it though? Or is it actually just about creating some budget room to do some investment, and then you’re going to create more jobs? So are we just in that dip where companies are trying to find budget to invest in the technology? They’ve got to do this now, but in two to three years, which would bring us to 2028, 2029, it’s going to come back up the other way, and there’s going to be this, right, now we’ve spent some budget, we’ve figured stuff out, now we know what the roles are we need, and now we’re going to come back up, potentially.
Chuck: Well, and I think there was an article from maybe a month or so ago basically saying that AI is now more expensive than people. But companies are cutting people to create room in budget for AI, which is now making it more expensive than if it had just stayed the same. And I think this just shows a bit of this monkey-see-monkey-do mentality of leaders, because you’re not going to be questioned. The marketplace has said, they’re cutting because of AI. Okay, that makes sense. Well, now we’re finding out it actually really doesn’t.
Jenni: And I think there are still questions. I still remember being in a workshop with a bunch of internal comms folks from across an organisation, and this organisation has a very strong sustainability message. And there was a bit of chat about AI. And I remember one individual really felt quite passionately about the fact that they were like, how can we be promoting this with the impact on climate and sustainability when we talk so passionately about sustainability? It was so incongruent for him in terms of that organisation’s values. And I think that as well is going to be an issue that starts to come forward more, in terms of that impact on the climate and sustainability and all of those things that are part of it, because that’s massive. And that conversation seems to have disappeared a little bit, because it’s become more about people. I wonder if that’s going to resurface over the next six months as well.
Chuck: Well, and even that, the environmental story — there are some holes being poked in that as well, where the data centers, which is where a lot of this environmental impact comes from, actually don’t need water for cooling. Water is just the easiest. It is just the cheapest. And so that’s what they’re going to use, causing this problem. They don’t actually need water to cool, but that’s the most available resource, which is causing these challenges out there. So some of these truths are coming out, where people are like, oh my gosh, every prompt costs five gallons. Those things aren’t true.
Jenni: Yeah. Maybe that’s why it’s gone quiet, because they’ve actually gone, hang on a minute, we need to go away and figure this out, and then we’ll come back with some actual truth.
Chuck: I think so. Well, and even saying things like they don’t need clean water to cool these things. There are lots of other alternatives here, which I think we’re now finding out.
Chuck: Next up, the feared AI takeover of online writing has stalled. Per a Graphite analysis of tens of thousands of English-language URLs from Common Crawl, AI-generated articles climbed fast after ChatGPT was launched — 36% of new articles within a year, 48% within two — but have since flattened at around half for over a year. But here’s the interesting bit. Researchers worry that once models start training mostly on machine-generated text, the internet becomes a feedback loop feeding on its own output. As one UC Berkeley professor put it, these models are smart because of everything humans created independently of them. There’s also a big measurement asterisk worth questioning here: the human-slash-AI line is genuinely a bit blurry now. A human outlining, drafting with AI, then editing produces something the detectors might flag either way. For comms teams, the practical question isn’t, is AI writing everything? It’s whether your internal content sounds like a person who works there, or like content that could have come from anywhere. My question for you, Jenni, is about this model feedback loop worry, about originality drying up. Is there an internal comms version of this, where everyone’s CEO message starts sounding identical because it’s drafted by the same handful of tools?
Jenni: Yeah, and I’m pleased it’s started to plateau now. Like anything, you have that big spike and then it just sort of calms down. So I think that’s a good thing. When you asked that question about the CEO message, everything sounding identical, it made me think of the Donald Trump speech and the Legally Blonde speech that everyone was doing that comparison of, and then you sort of feel like maybe everything is starting to be drawn from something else. And I think there were other examples. I remember a few years before we started Frequency, there was a story that was a CEO message that was identical to another CEO’s message during a crisis. I think it was an airline that had done something very similar. It was a long time ago now. So I think that can happen. I do actually think it’s probably going to start happening more.
Jenni: And it’s so obvious now when something is AI. I think I sent you a screenshot the other day of a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts, and I was like, do people really think that we don’t know that this is AI? And I think that’s the risk for CEOs. And the point in this about it having to sound like someone that works there — that’s the bit that I think sometimes happens. I was reviewing something that a friend of mine sent me the other day who’s another business owner, and she was like, what do you think about this? And I was like, yeah, that sounds great, but just make sure it sounds like you. And she was like, does it not sound like me? And I was like, well, it sounds like it could have been written by AI. I’m not saying you did, but I think you could make it more personal. And she was like, okay, I’ll go away and look at it. But I think it’s very easy to go, that sounds like me, and send it out. But to the receiver, who’s now a bit attuned to it, you’ve got to watch that. And I think CEO messages could all start to become very formulaic if people are all using Copilot, which they are. And I don’t know Copilot that well, but you’ve kind of got to work on the basis that it’s got the same foundational training, right? So even though it’s got the data in the company, it’s still got a base level that’s going to make things start to sound a bit the same.
Chuck: Well, and it’s as if it learned from us, and then we are learning from it, and then it’s learning from us slash it. I would love to talk to a language expert about the evolution of languages, to hear about all the different influences that change language over time. I think back as a kid — how did my language change by literally watching dozens of hours of MTV every week? That’s what I was absorbing. So as people are writing more and using AI to assist them, we’re going to start talking and writing like what we are reading. And so this is where it’s important to read, watch, whatever, a lot of different styles of content, so that you don’t fall into this trap of everything starting to sound the same, because there’s probably a natural version of that that would happen anyway in language.
Jenni: Yeah. And as you were saying that, I was thinking about how we stay in our bubble of life a little bit. Social media does expand that out, but if we look back at X, formerly Twitter, back to the good old days, you could curate your feed in there, but you could easily become an echo chamber within that environment very quickly. And I think that’s what’s happened in social media over time, and it’s that same challenge. You just end up with this agreement and feedback loop that feels very much in sync with your own stuff. And that’s never going to be a good place to be. So the more we can proactively go and listen and learn to other places, other people, other cultures, other things, to help keep that alive in us as human beings, it’s probably even more important than it was before.
Chuck: Well, just think about this podcast and the different phrases or words each of us have dropped that the other didn’t know. Before we hit record on this, I dropped the word boondoggle. I know what a boondoggle is. That meant nothing to you. But even that — there are unique aspects to it that are going to come out if you’re truly expressing yourself. And I think this is where the challenge is: is it AI written or not? This is the point of this article, that you don’t really know, because there are elements of AI that we’re all using to improve it or correct it or whatever. So the line is probably as blurry as it will ever get.
Chuck: Next up, a new Harris Poll survey of 650 LGBTQ+ and 2,400 non-LGBTQ+ employees catches the DEI rollback in action. 62% of LGBTQ+ employees noticed at least one meaningful change in how their workplace talks about LGBTQ+ issues. 40% say the conversation has dropped off or never started entirely. Only 35% report a workplace with both strong policies and a supportive culture. The support didn’t necessarily disappear, it just went quiet, cautious and compliance-flavored. Here’s the sad part though: 64% of LGBTQ+ employees have self-censored at work because of the climate — things like avoiding personal conversations, staying silent when issues come up, and editing how they show up. And the business risk is concrete. 80% say they’re more likely to stay at a company that visibly supports LGBTQ+ employees. 80% are less likely to trust one that goes quiet. Quote unquote communicated support isn’t a soft metric here, it is a retention lever. This is the part I’m guessing leaders underestimate though: 62% of non-LGBTQ+ employees say how a company treats its LGBTQ+ colleagues signals how it treats everyone. So this quiet retreat doesn’t just cost you with the affected group, it’s a values tell to the entire workforce. Jenni, companies are framing this quiet retreat as kind of neutral, or risk management. Employees are reading it as a company position. So how do you advise a leader who genuinely believes silence is the safe choice?
Jenni: Silence is a position. I don’t know why that wouldn’t be the conversation. That is a choice. It’s a choice to not say anything. And I think we have to recognise that that is a choice, right? So as much as we may feel like there is a right and wrong here, and the data shows where this needs to go, there are still choices to be made. And if a leadership team chooses that we’re not going to do this, then that is their choice, and there are consequences that they have to deal with. My advice would be, go back to your values. What do your values say? Because if you talk about things like inclusion and collaboration and kindness and all these other things that we talk about as values, then that should determine how you decide your messaging, how you do talk about things. I do understand where this is coming from in terms of that quiet retreat. I think we’ve talked about this before in terms of the fact that it’s not okay, but companies have gone quiet. But I think you have to make a decision based on your values, and if that’s hard to do, then your values aren’t right. And I think that provides a much bigger question and conversation for the leadership team.
Jenni: The data speaks volumes. What I couldn’t tell in this report is whether or not this had been done before, to actually show the change. And correct me if I’ve got this wrong, but the report reads like this is how people feel — so this is their perception of things going quiet — versus, actually, we’ve compared this to last year and there is less. I’m not saying that the feeling diminishes it, I’m just saying I’m not sure there is comparative data to say this is how it is. And then I wonder sometimes, if that isn’t there, if it just feels like that. Is that because of all of the other things that are going on, about the fact that we shouldn’t be talking about it, that’s making us not see them? A bit like that confirmation bias that we have in us, that, well, we’ve been told to be quiet about it, so we’re not going to see it. So that was my only little thing on it, which I’m not trying to diminish anyone’s feelings in it, but I think it’s important to just think about the data and what it’s really showing us. So there’s a lot in there for me, but it all comes back to values at the end of the day.
Chuck: Yeah. And I think for me it comes around to what you said — silence is a choice. And every choice has a consequence. And I think that’s where leadership isn’t recognizing what the consequence of silence is. They think it’s just status quo. No, not saying something is actually saying something. When you’ve got most of your non-LGBTQ+ employees saying how you’re treating these people signals how you treat everyone — okay, well now it’s not an LGBTQ+ issue, it’s truly an all-employee issue, when you’re staying silent on lots of issues out there. So for a leadership team, there’s a consequence to silence. Playing it safe, there’s a consequence to that.
Jenni: Yeah. And I spend a lot of time saying to leadership teams, there are unintended consequences to this. Because I do think that no one is doing this to create that consequence. You know what I mean? I don’t think anyone’s actively saying, let’s not say anything and let’s make people feel crap. I don’t think anyone is doing that. I think these are unintended consequences, but they do need to be made aware of them. But I think also there’s a fundamental piece here about the fact that we are human social animals. And I know that social media can make it feel like everyone’s against each other, and some of the media make us all feel like that. But actually, we feel social pain as human beings. If I feel that someone else isn’t being treated fairly, then that impacts me quite significantly. And I think that does for any other human being, because we have this group mentality. So this isn’t a surprise to me, that 62% of non-LGBTQ+ people are saying actually this has an impact on everybody, because that goes to us as human beings.
Chuck: And I want to correct something that I said before, when I said that they think they’re playing it safe. I don’t think there’s anything safe about not supporting your employees. They might think the silence is playing it safe, but you’re actually not — you’re actually being quite risky in that silence, because you’re not supporting the people that are doing the work at your company. So I wanted to get that clear.
Chuck: And finally, the part, Jenni, you’re most excited about. Integral’s report is picking a fight with the entire engagement survey industry. They’re saying engagement is a lousy predictor of how employees truly behave. Per the report, three-quarters of the workforce is quote unquote engaged, yet a third of them describe workplaces where they expect destructive colleague behavior at triple the rate of their peers. The culprit is a group they call captive contributors — 33% of the workforce, who are engaged but locked in place by benefits. They show up, they care, and about 38% of them predict a corrosive environment, higher than the people who’ve checked out entirely. The framework names five conditions that actually move behavior. There are three that help: manager activation, freedom to speak up, and trust. The two that hurt are job lock and AI job concern. Manager activation is the single biggest lever, a 55-point swing in supportive behavior — yet support for managers, things like communications training and coaching, was cut year over year. And AI job concern has the strongest tie to corrosive behavior in the whole model: employees worried AI will take their job predict corrosive colleague behavior at 39%, versus just 10% for those who aren’t. Trust is the multiplier running through all of it. High-trust employees feel excited about change at nearly four times the rate of low-trust ones, and are 52 points more likely to say change communication matches the company’s values. Integral pegs the gap between a disengaged and a fully activated 1,000-person workforce at more than $11 million a year. Jenni, what stands out to you from this report?
Jenni: I loved this report. I’m probably about eighty percent of my way through it, and I messaged you back and I was like, this report is brilliant. I’m in my own little echo chamber here, but it sort of feels like it’s doing everything that I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time about why employee engagement isn’t the right measure for organizational health, which I’ve just been writing a bit more about on the side. But what I love about this report is the link to behaviours. And I think that’s what seems to be missing from all the other things. You talk about employee engagement, you talk about this score that wraps up engagement into one big nice number that makes us all feel better or worse, but somewhat meaningless. Whereas this report digs into behaviours. It also does the separation of work engagement and job engagement, in terms of, I can be engaged in the work that I do day to day, but I can be disengaged with my organisation. It starts to dig into some of that, which is important, because that happens a lot, either way round. So I think this is great. I’m going to do a separate LinkedIn post on it, because I’m so excited about it. But I want to read more about this link to locked in by benefits, because this seems to be the crux of it, in terms of those four quadrants in the report of how you can be engaged and locked in, not engaged, not locked in, and what that means in terms of the environment. And it’s also framing engagement as kind of the beginning, not the end. It’s just flipping the whole conversation on its head. I think it’s a brilliant piece of work, and I’m excited to really dig into it even more, if I’m honest.
Chuck: Yeah, I’m glad they got into the benefits. Because I know you remember, it was within the last couple of months, we talked about a Firstup report that was comparing the US and UK. And one of the things I brought up, I think, is a difference — the role that benefits plays in the relationship of employee and employer, where probably Americans are less likely to leave for fear of loss of medical benefits. Or if that wasn’t the fear, what would then change? So I think this is showing what I used to call, with some former Rolls-Royce colleagues, having the golden handcuffs, where you feel like, yeah, you’re being paid well and all that, but you’re kind of stuck. You don’t feel secure enough to leave. And that’s not an indictment of Rolls-Royce — this happens at companies everywhere, where people just feel like they’re kind of stuck here, because they’re worried about leaving for fear of losing things instead of leaving for gaining things.
Jenni: Yeah. And I think we should say this is a US study. It was like two thousand people in the US. And I don’t think the benefits thing is as prevalent in the UK. But then I also think that’s interesting when you look at the Gallup study, which says something like ten percent of people in the UK are engaged. So what’s going on there? So I think there’s such insight here into the correlation between why we go to work and engagement. And I think that’s what I find quite exciting, because I think that’s the missing piece, which is, why do you go to work? And then how does that link to your behaviours, and how does that link to your engagement, and how does that link to the environment? I think this is starting to paint that picture. I would love them to bring this study across the globe, because I think it would be interesting, to your point about the benefits relationship in the US versus the benefits relationship in the UK, because it’s not quite the same. We have the NHS, which is fantastic that we have that here. So there’s a very different benefit relationship there. And therefore what is it that’s having that impact in other parts of the world? I think it would be fascinating to look into that.
Chuck: Well, we’ll talk to Ethan McCarty about doing that then.
Jenni: Well, I have sent him a connection request on LinkedIn today and said, I’m very excited about your report and I’m talking about it on our podcast, which is out on Monday. So I’ve already started that.
Chuck: Yeah. Well, and I want to bring up this one about the frameworks, the five conditions, and there are three that help — manager activation, trust, and then freedom to speak up. And I want to link that back to the article we just talked about, with the LGBTQ+ report, where people don’t feel like they can speak up. This is one of the best things about doing this podcast, is we end up talking about so much and it’s kind of recall back — but very early on, we talked about the risks and dangers employees feel of bringing themselves to work. And this expectation of, bring your whole self, but not that self. We don’t want to see that side of it, bring the other side of it. And then people not feeling like they can truly be themselves. I think this goes to that freedom to speak up, freedom to share things, that hey, something’s not right, without there being retribution on them. If you’ve got a culture that doesn’t allow people to speak up — massive problem, massive red flag for the company.
Jenni: Yeah, a hundred percent. We should put the links to some of those previous episodes in the show notes for this one as well, because I think it’s worth going back for people if they want to have a look. So we’ll dig those out and make sure they’re in the show notes as well.
Chuck: Absolutely. Well, that wraps up the articles for this week, Jenni. I have a couple of freq-outs, but I’m going to let you go first.
Jenni: Of course you do, of course you do. So my freq-out is linked to my piece at the beginning about branding and styling and stuff. So I’m quite excited — over the last, I would say, kind of two months-ish, I have been looking at the Jenni Field brand. So separate to my consultancy, which is Redefining Communications, what is the brand of Jenni Field? And I’ve had a couple of runs at this and it has not quite felt right. And now I’m in a position, hopefully, where next week the new website will be going live and the new branding will start to come out. So I’m just freq-ing out a bit, because it feels like it’s all coming together and I’m just very excited. So I’m hoping to have something to launch and talk about in a couple of weeks, which is exciting.
Chuck: Good, good. Well, here’s my two. I’m stealing some time, I’m going to do two. One is around AI. And we’ve talked in the past about AI lying to people, like wanting to be helpful. I’m going to talk about lying from a different perspective. So I’ve gone on my own personal journey with AI of using it largely administratively, and then kind of to the thought partner side. And now I’m like, nope, I’m just back to pure admin. Just help me do this stuff that I either don’t have time to do or won’t do. And so here’s a great example of it. All of my ICology stuff is through Google. So in Gemini, I said, hey, going forward, with every Frequency recording time that we have, just go add a 30-minute slot before it, just to block it. And then I wanted to see, okay, can it do it automatically? But just right now, go block 30 minutes before, so that I can get the right headspace and all that. And it comes back and is like, I can’t do that, I don’t have access, blah blah blah, this needs to be turned on, here are some options. You can go in and do it manually — like, I didn’t know I could do that. Or here’s this script to put into some script.google.com. Like, I’m not going to do that. But I went back to it and said, I have that toggle turned on. And it’s like, you’re right. Okay. Let me go do the work. What? It’s now the lazy employee.
Jenni: Yeah, I was just going to say, it’s now lazy.
Chuck: And here’s what’s really interesting. It goes and does it, and it comes back and is like, I missed dates in August, September and November. Do you want me to go do those? Of course I do. What are we doing? So it kind of blew me away that it’s not as smart as we think. It might lie to you, but not in the way we’ve talked about in the past, about what it can and cannot do. So make it do the things. It could do it. Okay, that’s the AI freq-out.
Chuck: My other freq-out is a little bit around there’s this cultural thing or mantra of people saying, we’ve got to say no to things, blah blah blah. I’m kind of the opposite. You’ve learned that, Jenni. So I’m going to share an example. This past weekend I was driving to Cincinnati, which is about a two-hour drive from where I live, because for Bengals season ticket holders you can tour the stadium and see the locker room and see all these cool things. So I invited my sister and her husband, and I was like, after I’m done with the tour I’ll go pick up my mom and then bring her back to Indianapolis, because my wife Kristen was having a fundraiser and my mom doesn’t usually get to go to those. And she’s getting to the age where she’s not going to drive that far by herself. So that’s the plan. And then I wake up in the morning and I’m like, why am I not taking my mom to this stadium? She’s not going to go to the Bengals stadium ever on her own. So I drive an extra, basically an extra hour and a half of driving, to go pick her up and then go to downtown Cincinnati, to a stadium she’s never been to. I don’t think that was the biggest deal in her life, but I think it’s cool for her to have the experience. But here’s what I’m getting to. Traffic was a bit gnarly in Cincinnati that day, because there was a Pride parade going on in Cincinnati. Thrilled to see that going on in the city. When we’re leaving the stadium to then go to a restaurant, we have to kind of cut through the Pride parade to get to the restaurant. So then we did that, and I joked with my mom, like, mom, you marched in the Pride parade. Kind of joking with her a little. But it was really then the car ride that we had back to Indianapolis. Apologies for the length of the story — now I’m really getting to the point. She talked about how, by her saying yes to doing that, she then got exposed to things that she would not normally see and be a part of, and how good that was for her to see those things. So I guess the lesson here is, by me saying yes to doing that and her saying yes to it, what a great experience that was for her, to be exposed to an environment that she normally would have said no to. So I guess my freq-out is, yes, there are times we need to say no to things, but don’t do it because you think it’s a cool thing to do. Think about what you can get by saying yes, and what will that experience then mean to all the other people out there.
Jenni: Yeah. And I love that. I mean, I’m a big believer in saying yes. If somebody says, do you want to go and do this? I’m like, yes, if I can, and it’s a different experience, I’m all in. And when I was reading the Dorie Clark book, which we talked about last week, The Long Game, in there she talks about, if it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no, in terms of your time. And I’m trying to channel that a bit, because I do think sometimes I say yes to too many things, and my assistant Alia says to me, we have to say no to this, because you’ll say yes and then you’ll get there and then you’ll be annoyed that you’re doing it. So I’m trying to get better at that. But I think you’re right. I think there is sometimes this belief of, just say no to stuff, when actually saying yes can be the most eye-opening and wonderful experience of something that you never knew you needed in your life. And I think that’s important.
Chuck: To me, saying no is easy. You’re opted out, which you have the right to do. But saying yes, you’re then investing time and resources and energy. But also, what does you saying yes then mean to other people in that same experience? That was just sort of my freq-out — thinking through, if I had done things differently, she would not have had that experience, and how good it was for her, even her saying it, to have that experience. Because she lives in rural Ohio. She’s lived in the same county of Ohio her entire life. That’s not demeaning anyone who does that. But everything else she just sees from one vantage point, from one TV screen. And with me being there for her to be immersed into that environment, it was such a positive experience for her.
Chuck: Well, we are both freq-ing out — obviously mine was quite a bit more. Thank you all for joining us. The show notes have all the articles and links from today’s conversation. If Frequency is a regular part of your week, a quick review for us goes a very long way. Subscribe wherever you’re listening and share this with just one person who you think would be 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.
Chuck is a US-based internal communications strategist and the founder of ICology – a community and resource hub for IC professionals. He brings a practitioner lens to every conversation. Chuck is a recognised voice in the industry, a regular speaker and event host, and one of the most connected people in the North American IC world.
Jenni is a UK-based leadership and internal communications consultant, author of two best-selling books, and international speaker. She runs Redefining Communications, a consultancy working with organisations around the world to help them communicate better and close the gap between what leaders say and what employees experience.
