Only 19% of employees say anyone at work has ever talked to them about the data their employer collects on them. Gallup also found that when organizations do have that conversation, trust goes up and so does concern. Jenni frames that as a dilemma for internal comms. Chuck doesn’t see one. Concern isn’t worry, he says. It’s people paying attention.
That idea, the cost of leaving people to guess, runs through all four stories this week. O.C. Tanner’s 2027 Global Culture Report argues that culture amplifies whatever is already there. Zoom found that the biggest theme in 17,000 employee comments was people not understanding why decisions were made. And The Times reports British workers adding ADHD and neurodiversity notes to their email signatures, which leaves Chuck and Jenni asking whether a note at the bottom of an email can do the work of a relationship.
Gallup’s latest US workforce study, based on 22,573 employees surveyed in May 2026, asked whether people trust their leaders to use workplace data responsibly. It covers two kinds of data: activity data, like hours worked, badge swipes and emails sent, and content data, like emails, meeting content and websites visited. Only 20% trust leaders a great deal, 43% trust them somewhat and 37% trust them not much or not at all. Among engaged employees, 40% trust leaders a great deal. Among the actively disengaged, it’s 4%.
The bigger story for communicators is how little anyone is told. Only 19% say someone at work has ever talked to them about the data collected on them, and managers and leaders are barely ahead at 21% and 23%. Nearly a quarter of managers aren’t sure what data they could even access. Comfort depends on purpose: people are more relaxed when data helps managers support teams or supports their own development, and less relaxed when it feeds into performance reviews. And the people who had a conversation about data were more likely to trust leaders a great deal (26% versus 18%), but also 8 points more likely to be concerned.
Jenni puts the dilemma to Chuck: tell everyone everything, or explain only when asked? Chuck rejects the premise. Concern means awareness, and if telling people raises trust, why wouldn’t you? He doesn’t think most companies are lying to employees about data, but they aren’t being forthright either. The question employees should ask isn’t only what their data is used for now, but whether it could become an asset the company sells. His summary: trust good, concern not bad.
Jenni agrees, and links it to a conversation she has with leaders all the time: it’s fine for people to disagree with decisions or not like them. She also wonders whether anyone inside an organization, IT and leadership included, actually knows the full picture. Chuck doesn’t think so. Facilities, legal, HR and comms all hold different data, and nobody sees all of it. He floats a role that doesn’t exist yet, an enterprise data officer who knows everything being captured, and claims it for Frequency. He also notes that the 20% figure isn’t unique to data. Trust in leaders is low across the board, which makes a simple conversation about data an easy place to start rebuilding it.
Jenni found this one through an article about recognition, but the O.C. Tanner 2027 Global Culture Report behind it is the real story. It draws on 25,832 workers at companies with 500 or more employees across 23 countries, and its central idea is that every culture amplifies something, whether that’s burnout and bureaucracy or trust and performance. The organizations that do well amplify what already works rather than adding more programs.
The report covers four areas. Organizational compassion argues care shouldn’t depend on having a kind manager and should be built into policy, and says the odds of burnout drop 87% when people’s capacity is protected. Growth cultures separates learning from growth, noting that some employees resist upskilling as a way to get more out of stretched teams. Active trust says competence and integrity are no longer enough: employees now judge leaders on transparency, reliability, accountability and safety in uncertain times. Unlocking innovation finds that when people share ideas and hear nothing back, the odds of them sharing again fall 86%. Frontline workers are a thread throughout, and only 10% feel they have the tools and opportunities to advance.
Jenni’s question: should compassion be written into policy for fairness, or left to managers’ judgment? Chuck sides with the employees who say care stops feeling like care once it’s a process. His answer is to hire the right managers, and if you have to make compassion a policy, you’ve hired the wrong ones. What he does take from the report is the amplifier framing, which came up in a recent ICology campfire discussion on the communicator’s role in culture. The question every organization should ask is what its culture is amplifying.
Jenni says that’s her takeaway too, and adds that nobody is a passive participant: if you work there, you are the culture. Some policy can help as guardrails, like defining what flexibility means, without trying to teach people compassion. She suggests reading engagement data through this lens, asking what keeps bubbling up. Chuck pushes further: why does it keep bubbling up, and does anyone care enough to fix it? Jenni’s answer is familiar to anyone in a large organization. When it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s.
Workvivo by Zoom billed this as an Employee Listening Summit. Jenni’s ruling: at an hour and 15 minutes, it was a webinar. It opened with an idea that isn’t new, that employees aren’t tired of giving feedback, they’re tired of nothing changing. David Green of Insight222 called it “survey inaction fatigue.”
The useful part was Zoom’s own case study from its Chief People Officer, Todd Reeves. After engagement stalled, Zoom swapped vague questions like “I have a positive relationship with my manager” for specific ones about goals, feedback and career conversations, so managers knew what to work on. It asked every manager to commit to one action with their team, with reminders at 30, 60 and 90 days. And when AI sifted 17,000 comments, the biggest theme was that people didn’t understand why decisions were made, so Zoom’s company-wide response was to explain its reasoning better. Other warnings from the session: surveying faster than you can respond just creates disappointment more efficiently, and closing the loop sometimes means an honest explanation rather than a yes. Alexis Fink, who advises Workvivo, offered a simple test: before asking any question, decide what you’d do if the answer came back bad. If the answer is nothing, don’t ask.
Zoom is also building scorecards that show managers how they compare with peers. Chuck is in favor, as long as they show what successful managers are doing rather than ranking people or tying the top 10% to bonuses. He likes the sharper questions too. You can have a great relationship with a manager who takes you for drinks every Friday and lets every deadline slide. He brings back a line from his friend Julia Markish: only ask what you can act upon. Jenni shares how a former employer stopped asking about working environments it had no control over, because the questions only created negativity. For her, the 30/60/90-day nudges are the piece most listening strategies miss. Chuck adds his case against the glorification of pulse surveys: quick to answer, with nothing done afterward.
A Times feature looks at British workers adding notes about neurodiversity to their email sign-offs to explain why their emails might read as blunt, contain typos or arrive slowly. It ties the trend to rising diagnoses, citing the NHS estimate of 2.5 million people in England with ADHD. Supporters call it a useful heads-up. A viral Mumsnet thread found 95% of more than 1,000 responses called it ridiculous, and one PR professional decided against disclosing after adding pronouns to their signature brought more questioning than support.
Chuck is all for it. He likes a descriptive signature, whether that’s working hours, office days or how someone works best, and calls himself the king of typos. His caution is about the difference between asking questions and questioning someone, which he thinks is a teaching moment on both sides. Jenni agrees it doesn’t need a policy, but pushes on the bluntness piece. As a task-focused person, her instinct is to email “where’s the report?”, and she’s learned to open with a line about someone’s weekend instead. A note at the bottom saying “I might come across as blunt” can’t do that relationship work for you. Chuck shares the time a UK contact ignored two emails because she thought his message was rude, and how a keynote from Vanessa Van Edwards at Unite in Nashville got him working on adding warmth to his messages. Jenni asks listeners whether they’re seeing this at work, and whether it’s crossing the Atlantic.
Chuck ditches jet lag for labels. He’s firmly anti-label, and tells the story of suggesting his wife didn’t need one for her new diet, which turned her into an angry vegetarian. Jenni would have gone with flexitarian. Jenni is freq-ing out about the chief restructuring officer, a title she’d never seen before, and wonders how that became a job a few weeks after the show called restructuring greed. Chuck thinks it might be the safest job in any company.
How many employees trust leaders to use their workplace data responsibly? Only 20% trust them a great deal, according to Gallup’s survey of 22,573 US workers. Another 43% trust them somewhat and 37% not much or not at all.
Does telling employees what data you collect make them trust you more? Yes. Employees who’d had a conversation about their data were more likely to trust leaders a great deal (26% versus 18%), but also 8 points more likely to be concerned. Chuck argues that concern is a sign people are paying attention, not a reason to stay quiet.
What is the difference between activity data and content data? Activity data tracks what people do, like hours worked, badge swipes and number of emails sent. Content data covers what they say and look at, like email content, meetings and websites visited. Employees are less comfortable with content data being used for any purpose.
What does O.C. Tanner mean by “culture is an amplifier”? Its 2027 Global Culture Report argues every culture amplifies something, good or bad, and that organizations do better by amplifying what already works than by adding programs. Chuck and Jenni say the most useful question is what your culture is amplifying today.
What did Zoom change about its employee survey? It replaced vague questions with specific ones about goals, feedback and career conversations, asked every manager to commit to one action with 30/60/90-day reminders, and responded to its biggest comment theme by explaining the reasoning behind decisions.
Should employees add ADHD or neurodiversity notes to their email signatures? Chuck says it’s their choice and a useful heads-up. Jenni agrees it doesn’t need a policy, but argues a disclaimer about bluntness can’t replace the effort of building relationships.
Chuck: Welcome to Frequency. I’m Chuck Gose.
Jenni: 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 have a global research report, some new data from Gallup about employee data and trust, some advice about how to listen to employees, and ADHD disclaimers on email signatures.
Chuck: I’m really looking forward to that final conversation too. I’ve now spent quite a bit of time in the UK on this trip, Jenni. And what’s been so surprising about this, or maybe I shouldn’t find it surprising, maybe it’s also disappointing, is how much people want to talk to me about American politics. And not so much the politics themselves, but the characters that are involved, the decisions. And these are really tricky conversations to have when you don’t know where they are coming from on this, what their view of what’s happening in the US is. I mean, clearly there are some people who agree with what’s going on. Clearly there are some people, present company included, who do not like what is going on. But it’s interesting, in professional contexts, how many people want to engage in some pretty intense political conversations, and in some otherwise social atmospheres.
Jenni: How do you deal with that? Because I think we do have a bit of a fascination with American politics. And I think there’s a lot of people that are interested in how it feels on the ground, in the reality, because we obviously only hear the political sort of perspective. We don’t hear how it impacts, you know, everyday people. So I kind of get that. But when someone’s coming up to you over a glass of wine and wanting to get into a political debate, do you just go, “I’m just not going to have this conversation right now”?
Chuck: I haven’t said that, but probably my body language says that, where it’s, can you turn around? Can we just get through this quickly so I can actually enjoy myself? Because it’s not an enjoyable conversation. I get that it comes from a place of curiosity, I would think. I remember, man, this might have been 10, 15 years ago, traveling over here and turning on the BBC and seeing them cover a midterm election in the US, showing the Senate and how many seats in the House and how many seats. And I’m like, I had no idea that other countries covered that, because we don’t do that for other countries. Maybe that’s our own arrogance, and we get wrapped up in our own worlds. But it was interesting to see the investment they have in what we’re doing, where probably the comparison would have been the royal family over here. There are some Americans who have an odd obsession with the royal family, which I know over here doesn’t exist for everyone.
Jenni: Fair, fair. Right, let’s kick off today with the first story, which is about employee data use. One in five trust leaders a great deal, apparently. This is from Gallup. So this is about trust in how organisations use employee data. Gallup’s latest US workforce study looks at whether employees trust their leaders to use workplace data responsibly. It covers two kinds of data: activity data, such as hours worked, badge swipes, the number of emails sent, and content data, such as emails, meeting content and websites visited. Only 20% trust leaders a great deal on this, 43% trust them somewhat, and 37% trust them not much or not at all. Trust is strongly linked to engagement. 40% of engaged employees trust leaders a great deal, compared to just 4% of actively disengaged employees. The bigger story here for communication is how little anyone seems to be told.
Employees are just unsure what’s collected. 59% think that their employer gathers activity data, 46% think it gathers content data, and about 15 to 20% are saying they just don’t know. Only 19% say anyone at work has ever talked to them about it. Managers and leaders are barely more informed than anyone else, at around 21 to 23%, and about a quarter of managers aren’t sure what data they could access as well.
It seems that comfort depends on purpose. People feel more relaxed when the data is used to support teams or their own development. They’re less relaxed when it feeds into performance reviews. Content data makes people uneasier than activity data across every use. But the interesting finding for internal comms is that conversations about data use go both ways. People who had one were more likely to trust leaders a great deal. That was 26% versus 18%. But they were also eight points more likely to be concerned. So knowing more made people more trusting, but also more worried at the same time. So tricky. It’s a US-only sample, just to be clear on that.
My question is around the fact that Gallup found when organisations talk to employees about it, trust goes up, but so does concern. So for internal comms, this is really hard, because people are also not mentioning it at all. So would you advise them to tell everyone everything, spelling it all out, here’s everything, even though you know it’s going to have an impact on that concern? Or would you just leave it as, we’ll deal with this when someone asks, we’re just not going to proactively talk about it?
Chuck: Do I see concern here as a negative? No. I think that’s awareness. Because concern doesn’t mean worry. It just means you’re paying attention to it and you’re aware of it. So I think anytime you can then increase trust, why not? Why would you not want to share this with employees? I know this was a big push behind GDPR, which didn’t really quite make it to the US. I mean, US employees do know about it, especially if you’re part of a global organization. But I don’t know if they really do have a full grasp of the impact, because there’s no direct legal ramification for GDPR in the US like there is abroad, though companies probably follow it for all employees. So I think it’s letting people know. I can’t remember the exact episode where we talked about it, where those companies that went out of business were selling employee data. The content data, the activity data, they were selling it and making money off of it. That’s where concern should be coming in.
You should find out from your employer not just what are you using it for now, but are there possible uses in the future? Is this an asset for the company? Is there value in this data? Again, we can talk about authenticity and transparency all the time. I don’t know that companies are lying to employees necessarily, but they’re not being forthright. They’re not openly and actively sharing, hey, this is what we’re using your data for, this is what we’re not using it for. Now, there again, is where trust comes in. If you don’t trust your leaders, whatever they say, you’re not going to believe it. But if you’ve built the trust up, then they will buy into it, or at least have that understanding. Again, trust good, concern not bad.
Jenni: Yeah. And I almost felt like it was a mic drop moment for you then about the concern. Because to the point we often chat about, in terms of that worry from internal comms or from leaders, I talk to leaders a lot where I spend a lot of time saying, it’s OK that people disagree. It’s OK that they don’t like the decisions you’re making. That’s OK. You’re never going to make decisions that everyone’s going to like. And I think the framing of so much of the stuff we read about is, be worried about this, this is not good. Whereas, to your point, concern is fine. They’re interested, but you also do need to then be open, honest, transparent about it. And why would you not? So for me, it’s definitely not a, we’re just going to hold onto this. I actually wonder how much anyone knows about how much data is being collected. Even in the IT teams, the leadership teams, I don’t think people have a real sense of it.
Chuck: Guarantee. What’s happening? There’s facilities data over here. There’s legal data over here. There’s HR data here. There’s comms data over here. There’s probably not one person. Maybe that would be a future role, the person who is this true enterprise data officer, being able to figure out what is all the data that is being captured. I mean, think of health data sometimes even being brought into corporate environments.
I think the other part that we highlighted, we shouldn’t ignore, but we shouldn’t factor in too much, is when it says only 20% trust leaders a great deal on this data conversation. We don’t trust leaders on anything.
Jenni: Well, yeah.
Chuck: So data is not unique to this conversation. It’s not special.
Jenni: No, it is not special.
Chuck: When you add up the other numbers, 80% trust them not much, not at all, or very little. So this just carries on with that trust conversation. So why would you not use this very simple thing to then work to increase trust? I think it would be a really interesting conversation. I would love to hear from listeners if your company has had conversations with employees around the data that’s being captured, not captured, how it’s used, how it’s not used, and is it an asset?
Jenni: Yeah. I also would love to talk about that role you just said, this sort of chief data knowledge…
Chuck: We’re taking credit for that. That hasn’t come out yet. That’s on us. That’s Frequency right there.
Jenni: When you see that role advertised now, you’ll be like, “I made that happen.” But I think that’s the role that’s missing for so much of what organisations need now, like with AI. Internal comms have needed that role for such a long time, to be able to knit everything together for the employee experience. So I hope it becomes a thing. I hope it does.
Right, next up is a report, which you always enjoy, because it means I get to talk at you for a long time. There is a report from O.C. Tanner, their culture report. I actually found this in an article about recognition that was saying employees who are recognised throughout the process of developing new ideas are 21 times more likely to be innovative, and this was according to this research looking at workplace culture. The article linked through to the report, which is actually, I think, more of the story to talk about here rather than that specific headline.
So this is a global culture report. It’s got 2027 on the front of it, even though it’s out now, so do with that what you will.
Chuck: Future.
Jenni: Well, we will predict now. So it’s built around the idea that culture is an amplifier. Every culture amplifies something, whether it’s burnout and bureaucracy or trust and performance, and the organisations that do well focus on amplifying what already works rather than adding more programmes. The research draws on a survey of, specifically, 25,832 workers at companies with 500-plus employees across 23 countries, and also 24 focus groups. It’s a massive piece of research. The report is huge. But it talks about four areas in terms of that culture piece looking forward to next year.
Organisational compassion, arguing that care shouldn’t depend on whether you happen to have a kind manager. It needs to be built into policies through three pillars: a foundation of care, protecting people’s capacity, and clear guidelines and boundaries, so that compassion is applied fairly and leaders don’t burn out providing it. When capacity is protected, the odds of burnout drop by 87%, so that’s quite a big one. The second one is growth cultures, so separating learning from growth. Employees see training as one-way and quick, and growth as ongoing and collaborative. Some are resisting upskilling because they see it as a way to extract more from already stretched teams.
The third is active trust, which says competence and integrity are no longer enough. They’d be a great starting point, though, let’s be honest. Employees now judge leaders on transparency, reliability, accountability and safety during uncertainty. Only 31% trust AI, but 62% say that when they don’t trust systems, they rely on colleagues instead. And the fourth piece is around unlocking innovation, framing innovation as a think, share, act process that controls and approvals often shut down. So when people share ideas and get no feedback, the odds of them sharing again fall by about 86%. They talk about frontline workers throughout. They’re almost 25% less likely than corporate staff to trust their leader, and only 10% feel they have the tools and opportunities to advance. It is a really big report, there’s loads in it about other areas, but I wanted to pick out these four bits in terms of this future of culture that I think are important.
So my question is around the compassion piece, because it’s saying that it only works at scale if it’s written into policy, with standard rules for leave, flexibility, and when managers can re-scope someone’s work, because leaving it to individual managers leads to favouritism and burnout. Plenty of employees would say that the moment care becomes a policy, it stops feeling like care and it just starts feeling like a process. So if you’re advising a leadership team or an HR team, would you push them to write compassion down, accepting it may feel less personal in exchange for the fairness and consistency? Or to keep it human, would you just trust the managers’ judgement to make sure that they will do what they can, and we will just accept that some teams get better experiences than others?
Chuck: I think I’m with that employee sentiment, where they say the moment care becomes a policy, it starts feeling like a process. My recommendation here would be: hire the right managers. If you have to make compassion a policy, if you have to make compassion something where, hey, by the way, you now need to be compassionate, I just don’t know that that’s going to have the impact that you want it to have. We’ve talked about healthy organizations in the past. All of these things point to healthy organizations. Going back to the list: organizational compassion, growth cultures, active trust, unlocking innovation. Those scream health. So hire the people that have these elements built into what they do. That’s how you accomplish this. You hire right. And the people that don’t have this, you get rid of.
Jenni: Yeah, and there we go.
Chuck: It’s that. But that’s really how simple it is. I like this point. We had a campfire discussion inside ICology last month around what’s the role of comms in culture, and what’s the role of the communicator in culture. And this point about it being like an amplifier, I hadn’t thought about it in that way, of how you operate as an organization amplifies the culture. I more thought of it as it just embeds itself in it. But I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. What is your culture amplifying? That’s a great question to think about back at your organization. What is the culture amplifying? If it’s positive, amazing. If it’s compassion, if it’s growth, if it’s these things, amazing. If it’s other things, yeah, that’s a problem.
Jenni: Yeah, I think that was the bit for me that I’ve taken away, that question of what is being amplified. Because I don’t think it’s a question people are talking about. I don’t think it’s a discussion. And I always say to people that you are the culture. If you think your culture isn’t very good, you are part of that culture. You’re not a passive participant in this. You are in that organisation. And I think that’s important for us to recognise. But if you’re in HR, leadership, communications, listening to this, what are those things that are bubbling up, and what is that telling you? And then what do you need to do to create that? And there might be some element of policy, not necessarily around compassion, but there might be some policies around what do we mean by flexibility, or what are those parameters in there? That’s not teaching people compassion. It’s just giving people the guardrails and the governance of the organisation. But if you feel that actually everyone here is working really long hours, they’re burning out, then there is a culture problem there because of what it’s amplifying. And listening to that, tuning into that, and maybe looking at your employee engagement data in a slightly different way, around, actually, if we look at this, we can see these are the things that are amplifying. I just don’t think we’ve used that language or thought about it that way. And I think that could be really powerful if you’re looking at transformation, culture change, all those things.
Chuck: And you talked about the things that keep bubbling up. Why? Why do they keep bubbling up? Is it because of an individual? Is it because of the company? Is it something the company is doing? And does anyone care to fix it, or not? Because if it just keeps happening and no one fixes it, guess what? It’s going to keep happening.
Jenni: Yeah, well, I think that’s the biggest problem actually in all of it. Yes, we recognise this, but if somebody else could fix it, that would be great. We’re always talking about someone else.
Chuck: What’s it called? I forget what the law or whatever it’s called is, where everyone assumes someone else is going to call 911, or 999, wherever you live. You don’t call because you assume someone else already has or will. That happens in companies every single day.
Jenni: All the time. Well, I always say that when it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility. There has to be something.
Zoom’s Chief People Officer, Todd Reeves, was talking about what they changed after engagement stalled, and really this is what I wanted to bring to this conversation. They replaced vague questions like “I have a positive relationship with my manager” with specific ones about goals, feedback and career conversations, so that managers knew what to work on. They also asked each manager to do just one thing: commit to an action with their team and then follow through, with reminders at 30, 60 and 90 days. When AI sifted the 17,000 comments, the biggest theme was that people didn’t understand why decisions were made. So they did some company-wide responses to explain that reasoning better. That’s the bit I thought was interesting, actually hearing somebody share a bit of a case study of, this is what we learned by listening, and we changed how we listened and it had more of an impact.
There were some warnings around surveying faster than you can respond, because it just creates disappointment more efficiently, which I quite liked as a phrase. That organisations are dumping too much on managers, including things that they can’t change, and that closing the loop sometimes means just an honest explanation rather than just a yes. There was also some talk about making sure that before you ask any question, you ask yourself what you’d do if the answer came back bad. If the answer is nothing, then don’t ask, because every question creates an expectation. And they also talked about tracking actions during the year rather than waiting for the next survey. I really like that 30, 60, 90 day reminders piece in there as well.
So this was from Workvivo by Zoom, obviously lots of examples from Zoom in there. So my question is around what Zoom are doing. They’re building some scorecards that show managers how they compare with their peers. Some people say that managers are already handed enough dashboards with too little support. So my question is, would you show managers how they’re doing? Or does it lead to defensiveness, and is it better to just give them support? What’s your view on that sort of peer-to-peer competitiveness that might be coming in if we’ve got dashboards and scoreboards and things? Because you like a competition.
Chuck: I think it’s great. But I think it’s all about how it’s presented. It’s not, hey, the top 10% on this, you get a bigger bonus than the other 90%. You’re right now in the top 15, so you’d better start talking to your teams more. It’s not about that. It’s more about where you sit. Not saying who is doing better than you, but showing the points of success. What are the other people doing? I’m not going to say scoring better or dashboarding better, but what are some of the things I can do as a manager to support my team in ways that other people are being successful at?
I love how they changed the question from the vague one, do I have a positive relationship? Because you could have a positive relationship with your manager because you’re going out for drinks after work every Friday and they’re not holding you accountable for anything. They’re letting you slide on deadlines. You could have a great, positive relationship there.
Jenni: But you’re having a great time.
Chuck: But also someone could say, I have a negative relationship, and that manager is still very compassionate, but holding them to their job and holding them to deadlines or holding them to commitments. So I like that they’re going into the specifics of, I think you said, career and goals and all that. Because I think a lot of times those conversations aren’t happening in organizations. Simply asking employees, where do you want to be in six months or a year? Or what other parts of this business are you interested in? I know it was the BBC, I was at an event with them one time, and they talked about having squiggly careers in the BBC, where the goal is to work across so many different departments in the career that you have, so you have a full idea of what the BBC is like. I don’t think a lot of organizations think that way. That probably promotes a healthier environment, because you then have better networks and better understanding of why groups operate certain ways. So though it may not have been a summit, whatever we’re going to call this event, it seems like there are some good insights there.
You did point out that we’ve heard of survey inaction fatigue. I don’t know that I’ve heard that as much as survey fatigue, more from the employee side. There’s always been inaction. And I point to a quote that I heard a decade or more ago from my friend Julia Markish, which I credit her for and echo every time: only ask what you can act upon. So this part where it’s, if you get bad feedback and you’re not going to change anything, or if you can’t change anything, don’t ask people about it. Because if you can’t make changes, are you just confirming what you already know? Or why are we wasting people’s time?
Jenni: Yeah. I remember where I used to work, we didn’t do any employee surveys, because, I’m going to have to phrase this in a way that doesn’t… we were working with other partner organisations where our employees would be based, and we could not change the environment they were in. So there was no point in asking about your environment and things, because some of those environments weren’t the best, but we had zero control over that. So then we just had to stop asking, because we couldn’t do anything about it, and it was just creating such negativity from that inaction.
The bit I think is really nice in here, and we shall call it a webinar rather than a summit, is the actual strategicness of the 30, 60, 90 day nudging on the actions that need to follow. Even when I talk to people about listening strategies, I think that nudging and follow-up just isn’t always there. It’s like, we’ve listened, we’ve done some action, and then we’re going to listen again. But that nudging of the behaviour, and that accountability and ownership, and passing that through the organisation, I think is definitely worth picking up and having a discussion about.
Chuck: I also think the point around the speed of feedback. I was in Omaha a few weeks back, and I talked about the glorification of pulse surveys. Why? What are we doing here? Just because they’re pulse, they’re quick. Click, everybody’s cool. But the action isn’t there to follow up on it. So what are we doing with those?
Jenni: Yeah, fair. Now to what you said was going to be your favourite topic today: is your email sign-off up to date with an ADHD disclaimer? This was a piece in The Times that’s looking at a growing trend in British workplaces, with people adding notes about their neurodiversity to their email sign-off. The notes explain why their emails might read as blunt, contain typos or arrive slowly. The article ties the trend to rising diagnosis, noting the NHS estimate of 2.5 million in England with ADHD, and a tenfold rise in demand for diagnosis over a decade.
It features three people who use these sorts of notes on their emails. One person who is autistic and has ADHD added hers after her assistant kept asking whether she hated the people that she was emailing. Someone else is a former comms director. She was getting ahead of her typos because of her dyslexia. She says that’s simply being honest, and if it puts someone off working with her, then better to know early. And someone else just prefers a general “I’m neurodivergent” note, rather than naming anything specific, along with a request for written communication.
The other side is getting some space on this too. A viral Mumsnet thread found 95% of over a thousand responses called the practice ridiculous, and critics see it as an excuse for slow replies or as a new form of virtue signalling. The article says scepticism is sharpest for ADHD, because its effects on email are less visible than dyslexia’s typos or autistic bluntness. There was a PR professional quoted who decided against disclosing after adding pronouns to their signature brought more questioning than support. Their view is that labels create assumptions before people get to know you.
So my question is that internal comms teams often own email signature guidelines, so this one could land with them. Some employees want to add a short note explaining how they communicate, some people don’t. If an employee asked to add one, would you say let people say it, treating it as their choice and a useful heads-up about how they work? Or would you keep it out of the signature, steering people towards other ways to share working preferences?
Chuck: Yeah, I’m here for it. Do whatever you want in your email signature. I like a really good descriptive email signature. I like when people talk about what their working hours are. I’ve seen, I’m in office these days, I’m out of office these days, or whatever that is. I think anything that you feel helps people work with you better, whether that’s because of where you work, how you work, who you are, great.
The interesting part to me was comparing it to pronouns, which some people might view as support, and others can easily view as virtue signaling. That’s just perspective. The same thing applies here. I am the king of typos. Why do I have so many typos? I have no idea. Is it because of some underlying challenge that I have, or am I just in a hurry every time and I’m not focused on detail? I actually don’t know the answer to that. But if it helps someone else feel like this is going to teach people how to work better with me, great. And if others are going to judge that, they’re going to judge it regardless.
I think the interesting part to think about, though, is: is there a downside to this? That’s what I’m trying to think about. The part where it talked about using pronouns bringing more questioning than support. Is that more of a cultural thing? Is it questioning, or is it asking questions? Because I think there’s a big difference between the two. And I’ve had to be very clear with people when I’ve asked questions, to say, I’m asking questions, I am not questioning. I can see how it’d be very easy for someone to get on the defensive. So I think it’s a bit of a teaching moment for both sides in that situation.
Jenni: Yeah, and I think you’re right. I don’t think it needs to be a policy. I think it’s just down to your choice. On your typos, I have mine set up so it does an automatic spell check before I send, because I’m often doing that in a hurry. And my team have working hours on theirs. But the bluntness thing is the one I find the most interesting in this. I kind of get the typos and all of those. But I’m a very task-focused person, so my instinct is to email you to say, “Hi Chuck, where is the report?” And I’ve learned over the years that I need to ask you how your weekend was and stuff like that. Now, I know you quite well, so it’s fine, but if I didn’t know you, I wouldn’t email saying, “Hi Chuck, where’s the report?” Even though that’s my instinctive thing to do, now I would write that and then I’d put a line at the top saying, how was the weekend, or something like that. Because it’s about building relationships, rather than just having a thing at the bottom that says, “I’m a very task-focused person, so this might come across as blunt, but hey, that’s just me.” And I think that’s where you’ve got to be a little bit careful. That’s different to being autistic, but it’s being a bit mindful of how you want to build those relationships, and what doing it does to those relationships. How do you learn and adapt to make sure that your relationships are being built in the right way? I think that’s the bit for me, to your point really, in terms of what does it signal, and is it then going to bring more questions?
Chuck: Well, I go back to our saying in our house: every day is a school day. There’s always a chance to learn. And I reflected back, because just as you were talking, I remembered that three or four years ago I sent an email to someone in a similar role based here in the UK. I did not hear back from them. I emailed them again, didn’t hear back from them, messaged them on LinkedIn, and got a response that said, “I didn’t respond because I thought your email was quite rude.” So I went back and read the email, and I’m like, I don’t see it. I didn’t see it, but to her, it did feel very blunt and direct. So I reflect back. I forget the woman’s name we saw at Unite in Nashville…
Jenni: Vanessa Van Edwards.
Chuck: Yeah, where she talked about the importance of compassion, especially in digital communication. Well, it wasn’t necessarily compassion, it was warmth. How do you add warmth to your messages? So after reflecting on that and then her keynote, that’s something I have focused on. Kind of like you, it doesn’t come out naturally in emails or Slack messages or whatever the format is. Personally, we’re like that, but sometimes we just get to the point. Because of that talk, that’s something I’ve really tried to work on, even if it feels wildly unnecessary to me to go into some kind of warm-up mode to get to the ask. I’m doing it because that’s a better way to communicate.
Jenni: Yes, and I think that’s the piece for me. I was reading something on Instagram the other day about how labels have become a destination, and that’s not the destination. I think that’s the bit for me. It can’t just be, this is just how it is, if that’s going to have a negative impact on you and everyone else. Like you said, I’ve made a conscious effort to learn how to do that. And if you just stop there and go, well, there we go, that’s not improving, helping, growing. I think that’s the mindset that’s important. But I think it’ll be interesting to see. I haven’t seen this very much in the UK. It says this is happening across British workplaces. I’d be interested to hear from listeners if people are seeing it. And interesting to see if it comes across to the US. Maybe it’s already there.
So that brings us to the end of our articles this week. What are you freq-ing out about?
Chuck: Initially I had jet lag written down, but I’m going to switch it up, because of something you just shared, which is labels. I am very anti-label. Just personally, think about this. I have asthma. I do not describe myself as an asthmatic. I had a stroke. I do not call myself a stroke survivor. I just don’t like labels on things. But I’ll share a little personal story about this. My wife was recently sharing, this is maybe going back a month ago, that she was going to stop eating meat. She’d already stopped eating pork for ethical reasons, and was going to stop eating beef, poultry, other meat, but was still going to eat seafood, and occasionally might do other things. And she’s like, “Well, I don’t really know what to call it.” And I’m like, “Well, you don’t have to call it anything. You can just eat what you want to eat.” And she’s like, “No,” because she’s like, “I’m not vegetarian because I do this, but I don’t like the term pescatarian because it sounds a bit much.” She’s not vegan, that’s for sure. And I was like, “Well, you can just tell people what you don’t eat.” And it turned into this whole thing, where now she’s an angry vegetarian, because she needs the descriptor.
Jenni: Yeah, she’s got the label. I know what the label is.
Chuck: But the fact that I was like, “You don’t need a label,” now she’s going to own the label. And she’s angry about it.
Jenni: She is. Will she eat some meat occasionally, or is she totally off it? As soon as you said what she was doing, I was like, she’s a flexitarian.
Chuck: There we go. There’s another label. It’s turned into a whole thing where we go out to eat and…
Jenni: Anyway, I love your thing of just eat. It’s OK.
Chuck: I think she was more pointing to, if someone asks you, what are your dietary restrictions or whatever. And I was like, you can also just be very specific, versus just a label.
Jenni: Basically what she needs is a rider. Here’s my list of all my requirements.
Chuck: But I don’t eat brisket anymore. I’m not going to put that on a form, because I just won’t eat it. I don’t like mushrooms. At the event we were at, they had mushrooms on something. I didn’t eat it. I didn’t have to tell them that. But now I’ve probably just made her more angry.
Jenni: Yes. Anyway, just eat. Well, now she’s got a label, so she’s fine.
So my freq-out this week is less fun. It’s one of the articles we haven’t talked about on the show, but obviously we’re sharing stuff all the time, and I sent you one the other day. The quote in the article was from the chief restructuring officer, and that was the first time I’ve ever seen that role. I don’t know how that role has become a thing, because we talked the other week about restructuring just being greed. How do you become a chief restructuring officer?
Chuck: Is that the safest job inside a company? Because you’re not going to take yourself out.
Jenni: Yeah, no, no. “I’m just here to restructure all of you. I’m the king.”
Chuck: That might be the safest job inside a company.
Jenni: I don’t know what your qualifications are to do that. Maybe this is where management consultants are going, and they can now be chief restructuring officers. There’s a lot of McKinsey in there.
Chuck: There is, isn’t there?
Jenni: So yeah, I’m freq-ing out about that, because I feel like it’s coming.
Chuck: Yeah, that might be the safest job inside a company now.
Jenni: There we go. Well, thank you for joining us this week. We hope that the articles and insights will help you think about how to improve communications, leadership and culture in your organisation. If you don’t yet subscribe or follow, please do, as it helps make sure you won’t miss an episode. And you can grab the links to all the stories we’ve talked about on our website, thefrequencypodcast.com, where you can find details about every episode we have done. We will be back with you on Monday with more news, insights and opinions about everything comms and leadership in workplaces today. Thank you for spending part of your week with us.
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.
