Episodes

Chuck Gose and Jenni Field dig into “quiet cracking,” a new buzzword for burnout nobody notices until it’s too late, then take on a piece arguing that authentic corporate communication is a myth — and that credibility, not authenticity, is what leaders should actually chase. They close with encouraging data on the internal comms job market and a sobering Gallup statistic: only 20% of employees strongly trust their organization’s leadership.

Chuck Gose and Jenni Field mark Frequency’s first anniversary this week — and Jenni’s birthday — with a look at who’s actually cleaning up after AI, a Microsoft executive’s controversial advice to laid-off staff, Fast Company’s attempt to redefine “hybrid work,” and a LinkedIn debate over how far internal communications’ remit really extends. Jenni also flags this year’s Flyover Festival, coming to Sioux Falls on August 26.

Chuck lines up four stories that all circle the same question: what are we hiding, and at what cost? A HiBob report finds 97% of employees hide parts of who they are at work, new research links employee sentiment to stock performance (a claim Jenni takes real issue with), a Section report finds most companies are barely scratching the surface of real AI proficiency, and Amazon’s Andy Jassy declares AI fluency non-negotiable for 1.5 million employees. It closes on business-casual dress codes and, memorably, methane-powered sea spiders.

Fresh off IABC World Conference in Vancouver and Atomicon in Newcastle, Chuck and Jenni compare notes on what conferences are actually for these days before diving into what Chuck calls “such a positive episode”: a Jim Collins TikTok on why good is the enemy of great, a Slate piece asking whether anyone actually wants team drinks, new HBR research on why people work through illness, and a second HBR study on why women’s complaints of workplace abuse are believed less often than men’s. It closes, unexpectedly, on the Salem witch trials.

Jenni comes back from two days at the Gallagher Summit in London with a notebook full of stats, plus new research on how employee experience shapes behavior, a viral podcast clip questioning whether venting actually helps, and a Forbes piece asking whether AI is about to break the century-old Monday-to-Friday work week. Chuck, for his part, wants help naming a LinkedIn behavior he can’t stand: pointing out everything that’s wrong with no interest in fixing it.

Jenni brings four stories built around one question: whose job is it to fix the things that are broken about how we work? A Times piece on return-to-office tracking gets Chuck talking trust, not compliance. New HBR research says generative AI makes people more productive but less motivated — and Chuck isn’t buying that the AI is the problem. A viral Diary of a CEO clip about “owning your own” work-life balance gets pushed back on hard. And Amazon’s Andy Jassy explains away a flattened management structure in a way Chuck finds a little too convenient. Along the way: time zones, hustle culture, and why Jenni’s new drum lessons are exactly the kind of play that has no ambition attached to it.

Chuck lines up four stories that keep circling the same theme: the people and structures that get left out of the transformation conversation. A new report puts a dollar figure on how badly frontline workers are being served by internal communication, Moderna merges HR and IT into a single “Chief Brand and Innovation Officer” role, a blog post argues comms pros should borrow more from journalism, and a Gallup study finds remote workers are somehow both more engaged and more distressed at the same time. Jenni pushes back hardest on that last one — and by the end, has a working theory for why it isn’t actually a contradiction.

Jenni warns Chuck upfront that this is a soapbox episode, and she means it. She works through whether “satisfaction” is a more honest measure than “employee engagement,” argues the return-to-office debate is really about control dressed up as productivity, questions why internal comms is still stuck relitigating its own value after decades, and makes the case that storytelling — not another framework — is the actual skill worth rebuilding. Chuck matches her energy, quoting Taylor Swift on band-aids and bullet holes, and closes with a genuinely startling stat about how much of the world runs on Meta products every day.

Chuck calls this week’s lineup a “cornucopia,” and it earns the word: a report that frames HR’s challenges as a mountaineering expedition, an essay naming the quiet anxiety everyone’s carrying about work right now, a brand-new leadership buzzword (AQ, adaptability quotient — Chuck immediately invents his own, GQ, “gut quotient”), Nick Bloom’s data showing hybrid work never actually declined, and a LinkedIn post arguing Marketo killed marketing. The through-line is one Jenni keeps circling back to all episode: is any of this actually new, or are we just relabeling challenges that have always been there?