Chuck Gose and Jenni Field settle the “pod” debate once and for all before turning to a productive stretch of Jenni’s reading: Harvard Business Review pieces on achieving DEI goals without formal DEI programs and how the busiest people find joy, new research on “digital silence” and always-on culture, and a sneak preview of the UK’s 2025 IC Index from Ipsos Karian and Box.
Chuck and Jenni open with a shared distaste for people shortening “podcast” to “pod,” comparing it to how “weblog” became “blog” — except, in their view, this particular shortening hasn’t earned its place. They also plug their upcoming live episode at Unite in Nashville and share Spotify’s “songs of the summer” list, which leaves both hosts feeling distinctly out of touch.
Discussing a Harvard Business Review piece on advancing diversity outcomes without formal DEI programs, Chuck and Jenni walk through four practical levers with real measured results: formal referral programs (which give employees explicit permission to refer family and friends), skills academies with built-in career-path modules (Walmart’s example, which lifted people of color in management from 31% to 43% over eight years), mentoring programs (shown to be the single most effective diversity booster in highly skilled industries), and flexible, predictable scheduling (Gap’s shift-swapping app and guaranteed hours, which nearly doubled the share of store managers of color from 25% to 49% over twelve years).
Turning to a second HBR piece, Jenni shares research suggesting a satisfying life requires three regular ingredients: achievement, meaningfulness, and joy — with joy consistently the hardest of the three for busy people to build in. The article’s guidance is that joy-building activities work best when they’re active rather than passive, done with others, and varied rather than repeated. Chuck and Jenni discuss what role, if any, organizations should play in helping employees build more joy into their working lives.
Referencing new UK research on “always-on” culture, Jenni shares findings that workers increasingly want the ability to declare periods of “digital silence” to focus without notifications, arguing organizations need to respect personal communication boundaries rather than treating constant availability as the default expectation.
The hosts close with an early look at the 2025 IC Index from Ipsos Karian and Box, which finds both excessive and insufficient communication can damage employee perceptions of an organization, and that email remains a dominant channel for internal communication even as its actual effectiveness is increasingly in question.
Can organizations achieve real DEI outcomes without formal DEI programs? Yes, according to a Harvard Business Review piece Chuck and Jenni discuss, which points to four practical levers with measured results: formal referral programs, skills academies with career-path modules (Walmart lifted people of color in management from 31% to 43% over eight years this way), mentoring programs, and flexible, predictable scheduling (Gap nearly doubled its share of store managers of color using shift-swapping and guaranteed hours).
What are the three ingredients of a satisfying life, and why is joy the hardest to build in? Achievement, meaningfulness, and joy, according to research Jenni shares from a second HBR piece — joy is consistently the hardest for busy people to build in, and works best when it’s active rather than passive, done with others, and varied rather than repeated.
What is “digital silence,” and why are workers demanding it? “Digital silence” is a period workers declare to focus without notifications, according to new UK research on “always-on” culture — Jenni argues organizations need to respect personal communication boundaries rather than treating constant availability as the default expectation.
What does the UK’s 2025 IC Index reveal about how much (or how little) organizations should communicate? Both excessive and insufficient communication can damage employee perceptions of an organization, according to an early look at the 2025 IC Index from Ipsos Karian and Box — getting the volume right matters as much as the content itself.
Is email still an effective internal communication channel? Its effectiveness is increasingly in question, per the IC Index findings — even though email remains a dominant channel for internal communication, the report suggests organizations shouldn’t assume it’s still working as well as its continued heavy use implies.
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. To kick things off, Jenni, I don’t know how you feel about this, but someone recently asked me “how’s the pod going?” and I genuinely didn’t know what they meant at first. Is this like how “weblog” became “blog”? I don’t like that word.
Jenni: I’ve used it in a text where I couldn’t be bothered to type “podcast,” but it’s not something I’d say out loud. “It’s a great pod this week” gives me the ick. Not doing it.
Chuck: I nearly threw up in my mouth a little when someone said it to me. On a related note — reminder that at Unite next month, the Unilever event, we’re doing a live episode of Frequency for attendees. Would love to see people there in Nashville, which I believe is your first trip.
Jenni: It is, I’m very excited — I’m still working my way through the TV series everyone else finished years ago, but I’m ready for the city itself.
Chuck: It’s a great one, we’ll have fun. Speaking of feeling old — I’m literally reading this out of a physical newspaper — Spotify crowned its songs of the summer for 2025, and I only recognize one artist on the list: “Ordinary” by Alex Warren, the remix of “Shake It To The Max” by Moliy featuring Silent Addy and Skillibeng, “Love Me Not” by Ravyn Lenae, “Back to Friends” by sombr, and “Manchild” by Sabrina Carpenter — the only one I actually know.
Jenni: You’ve never sounded so old in your life.
Chuck: I wonder how much TikTok now shapes which songs even make lists like this. We’ve said goodbye to “Brat” by Charli XCX and Chappell Roan from last summer — they’re old news now too, apparently.
Jenni: Send me the photo of that list — I’m the type who’d recognize a song instantly but couldn’t name the artist to save my life. Let’s make that our test after this episode.
Chuck: Fair. What have you got tuned up for us this week?
Jenni: I had a lot of reading time recently, thanks to the shoulder treatment we’ve talked about before, so I got through the July/August Harvard Business Review — a couple of my picks come straight from there, one on DEI, one on joy. I’ve also been reading around productivity and digital noise based on some new UK research, and we’ll close with a sneak preview of the latest IC Index from Ipsos Karian and Box. Let’s start with a genuinely practical piece: “Achieve DEI Goals Without DEI Programs.” In the current political climate around DEI, things still need to improve even if they can’t carry that specific label. The article argues high-performance management is simple — create an environment where employees feel valued, supported, and motivated to do their best, and diversity becomes a natural byproduct rather than the stated goal. It walks through four levers: formal referral programs, since people of color in frontline roles rarely feel empowered to refer friends and family unless explicitly asked; skills academies, like Walmart’s career-path module that lifted people of color in management from 31% to 43% over eight years; mentoring programs, shown to be the single most effective diversity booster in highly skilled industries; and flexible, predictable scheduling, like Gap’s shift-swapping app and guaranteed hours, which nearly doubled the share of store managers of color over twelve years. For HR and operations leaders starting from scratch, which lever would you focus on first?
Chuck: I’d start with mentoring, because it requires the least new infrastructure to stand up and the research shows it’s the single most effective lever in skilled industries specifically. But honestly, I love that this article gives people concrete things to do instead of another abstract mission statement. If you already have some of these in place, hopefully this data pushes you to actually measure whether they’re working the way Walmart’s and Gap’s did.
Jenni: I loved this piece for exactly that reason — it’s rare to get something this practical on a topic that’s become so politically fraught that a lot of leaders would rather avoid it altogether.
Jenni: Next, another HBR piece — “How the Busiest People Find Joy.” Research suggests a satisfying life needs three regular ingredients: achievement, meaningfulness, and joy — and joy is consistently the one people struggle with most. The advice for building more of it: make it active rather than passive, do it with others rather than alone, and vary it rather than repeating the same thing. What role, if any, should organizations play here?
Chuck: I think organizations can create the conditions — protecting time, encouraging genuine social connection at work — but they can’t manufacture joy for someone who isn’t finding it themselves. What resonates with me is the “active, not passive” point; so much of what we call “relaxing” after work is actually just passive scrolling, which doesn’t do what we think it does for us.
Jenni: And doing it with others rather than alone is the piece I think workplaces are best positioned to support — genuine social connection, not another mandatory wellness webinar nobody wants to attend.
Jenni: Shifting gears — there’s been a wave of new research on “always-on” culture harming productivity, with workers increasingly demanding “digital silence” to actually get focused work done. How should organizations respond to this?
Chuck: I think this connects to everything we’ve said about respecting individual working styles — not everyone needs the same blocks of quiet time, but everyone deserves the ability to say “I’m not reachable right now” without it being held against them.
Jenni: Exactly, and I think organizations need to build real permission structures around this rather than just hoping employees will self-advocate for boundaries nobody’s actually granted them. It’s the same trust issue we keep coming back to — permission has to be explicit, not assumed.
Jenni: Let’s close with a sneak preview of the 2025 IC Index from Ipsos Karian and Box, which we got early access to ahead of today’s recording. The headline finding: both too much and too little communication can damage how employees perceive their organization — there’s a real sweet spot, not a “more is always better” default. Email remains the dominant channel, even as people increasingly question how effective it actually is.
Chuck: That “too much or too little” framing matches everything we’ve talked about with content agendas versus effect agendas — it’s not a volume problem, it’s a relevance and design problem. I’ll be curious to dig into the full report once it’s out.
Jenni: Same — we’ll do a fuller breakdown once the complete data set is public. That wraps this week’s stories. What’s your freak-out?
Chuck: Mine’s actually a small joy, in the spirit of the HBR piece — a listener stopped me at an event this week just to say the show had genuinely changed how she talks to her own team. Moments like that remind me why we keep doing this.
Jenni: That’s a lovely one to end on. Thank you all for joining us this week. All the articles that inspired this conversation are in the show notes — rate and review after you’ve listened, subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, and pass this along to someone who’d enjoy it; find us on YouTube too. Thank you to Poet Ali for contributing the music to the show, and we’ll be back next week with more news, insights and opinions about comms and leadership in workplaces today. Keep tuning in and turning up.
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.
