Ninety-four percent of internal comms professionals say their function is respected. Thirty percent can demonstrate business impact. Jenni’s reading of that gap is the argument of the episode: what is being respected is the content and the channels, not the strategic advice. She warns up front that it might get ranty, and it does — through an advance look at the IoIC’s IC Index, an Oak Engage survey the hosts think measures the wrong people, a meta-analysis arguing satisfaction is a signal rather than a mechanism, and a Zoom and Deloitte study that treats employee frustration with workplace technology as architecture data nobody reads.
Jenni has had a sneak preview of the IC Index from the Institute of Internal Communication, an online survey of a representative sample of around 5,000 UK workers in organizations of 500 or more, run in the last weeks of January and due to publish on May 20 — and the point she keeps making is that it asks employees, not communicators. Its six insights all lean the same way: change is increasing while fewer than half of employees say the reasons behind it are clearly communicated, trust has fallen at every level of leadership with half not trusting their CEO or senior leaders, leaders overestimate how well they have explained strategy and AI, confidence in the organization’s future turns on honest communication and clarity, frontline employees still learn about big change by word of mouth, and most people have ten minutes or less a day to engage with communication. Her rant is that nothing in it points the right way, that the report is really asking internal communicators to do organizational communication without anyone equipping them for it, and that restructures being normal now means the job is doing good comms when the message is bad. She also notes the report’s useful manager persona framework, a stat that managers spend 30 minutes or less a day communicating, and the exhortation that communicators be connected to the reality of working life for all their audiences, which she points out has been the ask for decades. The debate she picks is the top five drivers of confidence in the organization’s future, after being told at the IoIC Festival that internal comms can influence three. Chuck picks connection beyond your immediate team, open and honest communication, and clarity on strategy and priorities. Jenni stops at two — the one she rejects is the claim that internal comms owns whether the organization is using AI to solve the right problems, which she thinks is an unfair thing to tell a room of practitioners. Chuck defends his third pick as the most critical of the lot, because a communicator already has the privilege of access to every department, and reads the whole report as a mirror held up to life outside work rather than a verdict on the profession. Where they land together is the trust finding: Chuck cannot imagine a leader shrugging off employees saying they do not trust them, and Jenni’s counter is that an anonymous majority is exactly what a leader can bat away, because an invisible army has no face to have the conversation with. His fix is to scrap engagement surveys and run an internal trust barometer instead — not just where trust is failing, but where it is working.
The second report reached Jenni through Anne-Marie Blake in the CIPR Inside committee chat, and its headline is a credibility gap despite high professional esteem: Oak Engage surveyed 250 HR and internal comms professionals across the UK in late February and found 94% saying internal comms is respected, only 30% able to demonstrate business impact, 48% describing themselves as a strategic advisor, 60% without visibility into whether communication reaches or influences anyone, and 66% leaning heavily on manager-led cascades, with more than half saying poor communication wastes one to two hours per employee per week. Chuck’s opening move is to make Jenni define the difference between respect and credibility, and her answer is the spine of the episode: credibility produces followership, respect does not, so someone can rate your expertise highly and still go their own way. His reading of the numbers is that the math is not mapping — a profession that talks constantly about feeling disrespected reports itself as respected, which suggests the original complaint was about credibility all along, and if only 30% can show impact then people will question that credibility whether or not it is deserved. He also wants to know what poor communication is being compared with, since no communication surely wastes more than one to two hours a week, which would make poor the better of the two and improving it the actual job. Jenni goes further and questions the exercise itself, since a profession surveying itself produces answers like a leader asked whether they are trusted. Her conclusion is the line the episode is named for: if 94% feel respected while 70% cannot connect their work to a business outcome, what is being respected is posting content on an intranet and sending emails, not strategic advice, organizational performance or counsel to leaders. Chuck’s arithmetic makes it concrete — 250 respondents means roughly 15 people said no — and raises the question of whether respect here attaches to the work or to the people doing it, which are not the same thing. Both point at the report’s shift from outputs to outcomes, and Jenni notes it includes a workable table of comms activity, business metric and outcome for anyone starting from scratch.
The pace changes with a LinkedIn post arguing it is about capability, not happiness at work, drawing on a meta-analysis of 113 studies covering roughly 38,000 employees that finds only a moderate correlation between job satisfaction and performance — real, but nothing like the decisive link most leadership narratives assume. The relationship is stronger in service roles where behavior is visible and weaker in manufacturing where tasks are constrained, stronger in individualistic cultures than collectivist ones, and materially inflated wherever performance is self-reported. The argument Jenni likes is that satisfaction is a signal rather than a mechanism: autonomy, feedback, recognition and meaningful work do not raise performance by making people content, they raise it by changing the conditions people operate in, which is why measuring engagement and launching initiatives without asking whether the system lets anyone do good work solves the wrong problem. Chuck’s way in is the word itself, because satisfaction carries a whiff of contentment nobody sets as a goal, and a video of a school janitor who took obvious pride in the fact that what he did put no money in anyone else’s pocket but did produce a safe, clean environment for teachers and children. His follow-up is the detail that makes the point: the janitor’s good day is a day he does not see his manager, because a manager showing up is an interruption to the work — capability with the friction removed. Chuck also flags the measurement trap, that a satisfied person quietly doing the job well can register as disengaged on instruments built to detect discretionary effort, and Jenni wonders aloud whether satisfaction is the cleaner thing to measure now that engagement has become so messy.
The closing story asks what if employee frustration was your most valuable architecture data, making the case that people quietly bypassing approved tools, complaining in chat threads and building workarounds are running an unfiltered audit of where the infrastructure is broken — and that IT leaders who read that as an architectural signal rather than an HR or compliance problem stop being gatekeepers. The Zoom and Deloitte research behind it found 94% of employees hit friction somewhere in the meeting lifecycle, the average employee loses about 1.6 hours a week just preparing for meetings, and people switch between nine or more applications in a single workday, producing what the article calls integration debt: a drag on decision speed that never shows up on a balance sheet and that everyone feels. Chuck’s first objection is to the framing, because 94% encountering friction treats friction as inherently negative when some of it is productive, and his answer to Jenni’s question is blunt — organizations are not missing the signal, they see it and do not care enough to act, or they expect employees to solve it themselves. His illustration is the desire path photograph that circulates as a design parable, the worn track cutting the corner off a sidewalk: nobody sharing it knows whether the path came first, or whether the sidewalk was closed for a while, so it is an interpretation dressed up as evidence. Jenni agrees on friction, citing The Friction Project and Atomic Habits on adding it and removing it deliberately, and her own read is that people have been frustrated for years without anyone turning it into anything: the honest organizational answer is usually yes, we hear you, and the strategy is still this. Her caution on acting is to follow trends and analysis rather than whoever shouts loudest — though a chorus saying a tool is impossible to use is a signal worth taking. Chuck’s last word is that workarounds are people solving the problem, and Jenni’s is that inventing them is more or less the definition of being human.
What is the difference between respect and credibility in internal comms? Jenni’s definition is that credibility produces followership and respect does not. Someone can respect your point of view and your expertise and still go and do something else entirely. Credibility is what makes people follow and believe you, and it is built out of trust, empathy and likability rather than job title — which is why a function can be widely respected and still have very little influence.
What does the IoIC IC Index say about trust in leaders? Trust has fallen at every level of leadership over the past year, with senior leadership teams taking the worst of it and around half of employees not trusting their CEO or senior leaders. Older employees are less likely to trust. The report also finds leaders overestimating how clearly they have communicated key topics, believing the strategy and the approach to AI have been made clear when the employee data does not agree.
How much time do employees actually have for internal communication? Very little. The IC Index found most employees have ten minutes or less a day to engage with internal communication, and one in five say they have no time or hardly any. A related finding is that poor communication of good news damages advocacy more than poor communication of bad news, so the nice-to-know material still matters.
Why do 94% of IC professionals say they are respected but only 30% can prove impact? Jenni’s answer is that the respect is for the wrong thing. If 70% cannot connect their work to a business outcome and fewer than half describe themselves as a strategic advisor, what is being respected is the content and channels work — the intranet posts and the emails — rather than strategic influence with leaders. Chuck adds that the survey asked 250 HR and internal comms professionals about their own profession, which is a bit like asking leaders whether they are trusted.
Does job satisfaction actually improve performance? Less than most leadership narratives assume. A meta-analysis of 113 studies covering around 38,000 employees found only a moderate correlation, stronger in service roles and individualistic cultures, weaker in manufacturing and collectivist ones, and significantly inflated by self-reported performance data. The argument is that satisfaction is a signal rather than a mechanism: autonomy, feedback, recognition and meaningful work improve performance by changing the conditions people work under, not by making them happy.
What is integration debt? It is the term the Zoom article uses for the hidden cost of a fragmented technology stack. The Zoom and Deloitte research found 94% of employees encounter friction somewhere in the meeting lifecycle, the average employee spends about 1.6 hours a week just preparing for meetings, and people switch between nine or more applications in a single workday. The resulting drag on decision speed and productivity never appears on a balance sheet, but everyone feels it.
Should organizations act on every complaint about workplace technology? Not according to Chuck. He argues friction is not automatically bad, that some of it is just change people need to get through, and that organizations mostly do see the frustration signal and choose not to act on it rather than missing it. Jenni’s position is to look at trends and analysis rather than the loudest voices — but a consistent chorus saying a tool is impossible to use is worth listening to.
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.
So this week we’re talking about the credibility gap for IC pros. I’m also going to be sharing a little sneak peek from the Institute of Internal Comms IC Index, which is going to be out on the 20th of May. We’re going to talk about the importance of capability rather than happiness, and how to use employee frustration as a business case for change. And full disclosure, this might get a bit ranty.
Chuck: That better not just be a might, Jenni, because few people love rants more than this guy here. But getting into my own rant right now, it is peak allergy season here in the Midwest. I feel if you look out, you can just see the allergy fairies floating in the sky, ready to invade. And so to keep myself from clawing at my eyes and sneezing my brains out, let’s talk about some events that we have coming up, Jenni.
We have been invited back to Unilever’s Unite event. Last year we were in Nashville and did a live episode of Frequency there. We’re going to be in London, September 29th and 30th, for their event this year. And you can use the code FREQUENCY20 off any of their tickets. That saves you 20%. And they’ve got some different, even a VIP level ticket. So FREQUENCY20 saves 20% off those tickets. We will be there for the entire event, including doing our live show.
Let’s also spend some time talking about some other events that we have coming up. June 17th, Jenni, you’ve got your comms reboot in Toronto. I then have my Flyover Festival in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on August 27th. And then back in London, Jenni, you are with comms reboot on October 9th. And there’s other things obviously that we’re a part of, but we’ll include links to all these for people that want to join us at any of those events.
Jenni: Yes, I’m excited you’re going to be in London for like a whole week and a bit, I think, two maybe, doing all sorts of stuff. I’m excited, I’m excited.
Well, let’s kick off with the IC Index. So on the 20th of May, this will be published. As I said, we’ve had a sneak preview of the full report, so thank you very much to the folks at the IoIC, so we can share some of the key themes. Now, I heard some of this at the festival that the IoIC hosted, but I’ve had a good dig into it. So if you’re not familiar with the IC Index, it’s an online survey with a representative sample of around 5,000 UK workers in organisations with 500 or more employees, aged between 18 to 75, and it was carried out the last few weeks of January. What’s important here is that this survey talks to employees inside organisations. It’s not talking to comms people or HR people.
So we’ve got six key insights from the report, and then a few other bits and pieces that I want to bring in. Six insights. The first is more change, less clarity. The report shines a light on the volume of organisational change increasing, but less than half of employees agree the reasons behind the change are clearly communicated, and even fewer agree their organisation is good at helping them adapt to change. They also feel like the organisation isn’t honest about the impact of that change, or that their organisation listens to their views.
The second is that trust in leaders has fallen. So trust in all levels of leadership has declined in the last year, with senior leadership teams really taking the brunt of that. Half of employees don’t trust their CEOs or senior leaders, and older employees are less likely to trust. I’m not sure if I’m part of that bracket, but I’m going to leave that there.
Leaders are out of touch. The research says that leaders are overestimating how well important topics have been communicated. The majority of them feel the strategy has been made very clear, they’ve explained how AI will be used, but the data shows that that’s not quite the case. This reminded me of a conversation we had in episode 41, where we talked about some survey data from Lars Hank, who was talking about the widening satisfaction gap between senior leaders and employees. And that had gone from 13% in 2022 all the way to 30% in 2026. So that’s not new, we know that already, but just being reinforced.
The next one is confidence in the future of the organisation. So confidence is driven by honest communication and clarity, current work process, the approach to AI — all of that having an impact on how employees feel about the confidence in the future of their organisation.
We’re still talking about comms and the frontline. So the report shines a light on the fact that people who aren’t at a computer are more likely to hear about big changes through word of mouth, and they are less positive across all sorts of different topics, including levels of trust. That’s nothing really new there.
And the final point, the sixth point, is that people are even shorter on time. So most people have 10 minutes or less a day to engage with communication, and one in five said they have no or hardly any time. But the nice to know still matters: poor communication of good news damages advocacy more than poor communication of bad news.
Now, I’ve had a look at the report, I heard some headlines last week. These were some other things that I wanted to bring into this, and this is where I might get a little bit ranty. So, communication is just getting worse inside organisations, not better, in every way. There is nothing in this report that really shows anything is going in the right direction. I’m not sure internal communicators are equipped to shift into what is organisational communication, which is what this report is really asking them to do, and this is a gap I’ve started to talk about more. I think we’re not equipping people to do that.
The report also says that restructures are normal now, if they weren’t before. And this means we have to know how to do good comms when the message sucks. And I’m not sure we all know how to do that. There’s a stat in there about managers spending 30 minutes or less a day communicating. I don’t know how we’re defining communicating in this context, but there is a point in the report that says internal comms professionals need to be connected into the reality of working life for all their audiences. Yes, yes, but that has been the case for decades. So if we could, that would be lovely.
The report also includes a really nice framework actually for understanding different personas of managers. That’s really worth checking out when the report is live. Relevance is still a massive issue for comms having the impact it really needs.
But the bit I took issue with when I heard this at the festival last week, and the bit I want to kick off our debate with, is the top five drivers of confidence in the future of the organisation, and it was suggested that IC has a significant role and can impact three of the five. These are the five. I am connected to the people at work beyond my immediate team. The work processes in my organisation allow employees to work differently. I believe communication from my employer is open and honest. My employer has been clear on the organisational strategy and the priorities. I believe we’re using AI to solve the right problems in my organisation. Now, Chuck, what are the three that you think internal comms should be leading or playing a vital role in? Because for me, it’s only two. And I got so enraged, I swallowed my words there, I couldn’t quite get my question out.
Chuck: One, thanks for inviting me to the conversation, Jenni. It’s great to be a part of the episode. Thanks for having me on. I feel like now this is some kind of test, like I’ve got to figure out which two are yours, because I came up with three. Yep — I believe I’m connected to the people at work beyond my immediate team, absolutely have an impact on that. Work processes allow employees to work differently — you don’t really have an impact on that. I believe communication from my employer is open and honest — yes, I believe you play a vital role and impact that. My employer has been clear on the org strategy and priorities — yes, I believe you have an impact on that. I believe we’re using AI to solve the right problems in the organization — I don’t think you have an impact on that. So I see three of them.
Jenni: Okay. Okay. So I like your three, and two of them are the same as mine, but one of them is different. So this is what we were told last week. The three are: I believe communication from my employer is open and honest — we both agree, tick. My employer has been clear on the organisational strategy and priorities — tick. That’s where I finish for internal comms.
However, the suggestion on the stage was the third one is, I believe we’re using AI to solve the right problems in my organisation. And that’s where I went, yeah. I was like, no. I am in a room with a variety of different levels of internal communication professionals, and I do not believe that you should be telling them that this is their job. To solve the right problems in my organisation? What? Like, yeah, no, no.
Chuck: But I think the first one, about being connected to the people at work beyond my immediate team, that might be the most critical aspect of success for a communicator, in my point of view.
Jenni: But I don’t know that we — I think that is hard to do from an internal comms perspective. I think that’s down to your line manager, it’s down to your team structure.
Chuck: I disagree. I think that is easy to do. That is right there for the taking, because you have the privilege of getting to work with so many different departments and so many different teams. If you don’t build those connections, then it’s going to be harder to do all of those other things, in my opinion.
Jenni: Okay, fair. I mean, I will agree to disagree on that, because I don’t want to just get down a rabbit hole of which one, but yes.
Chuck: You can just agree that you’re incorrect on it. That’s what we can do.
The other part that I want to talk about — let’s get past those five. When you were talking about the more change, less clarity, trust in leaders has fallen, leaders are out of touch, confidence is complex, communications fail the frontline, people are shorter on time — what I was thinking of was, basically this is turning a mirror to life outside of work. This is now a pure reflection of what people are experiencing inside of work being the same as outside of work. Outside of work there is way more change and so much less clarity in things that are going on around us. We see that trust in leaders at all levels of our lives has fallen. We feel they’re out of touch with things, especially here in the US. Confidence — no one’s confident in anything anymore. So I think what we’re just seeing is that what people are experiencing outside of work is now being reflected back inside, and we’ve just shined a mirror to each other on it.
Jenni: Yeah, I don’t disagree at all. We talked about the BANI world, I think, in a few other episodes. And this is where I think I have this challenge around internal communication versus organisational communication. Because internal comms is the traditional internal comms of channels and content and audience and kind of aligning all of those things. Organisational comms is looking at leadership and culture and those bigger things that we are getting more involved in. But with that comes an understanding of the complexities outside of the organisation and the messiness of work and life and how that all comes together. And I don’t necessarily feel like we’ve joined those dots and brought that together, whereas this report is talking to employees in organisations about everything in their organisation, and it’s being reported as, internal comms can fix all of this or should have a role to play in this.
And honestly, I was reading it and it is a fantastic report. It’s in its fourth year and I’ve always enjoyed reading it, but every time I do I feel a bit like, a, this is quite overwhelming, there’s quite a lot in here, and b, what do I really need to do to make a difference? What’s really in my control and influence as an internal comms person in the role that I exist in in this organisation? And I think you could read it, feel very overwhelmed, feel like you’re doing a rubbish job, and then just sit, you know, walking in a corner. There is a lot in there, and I think it’s bigger than internal comms. I feel like there’s a pressure being put on internal comms people to fix a lot of stuff that is bigger, more societal, reflective of what’s going on everywhere.
Chuck: I think the other part here, which is such an indictment — and whether we’ve explicitly talked about it or it’s kind of hidden in the words that we talked about — is this trust component. And I was trying to think of this: maybe it doesn’t impact others the way it would be if somebody came to me and said, hey, I don’t trust you. Ooh, that is harsh. That is deep. But it’s also very meaningful, that comes from somewhere. So imagine — I can’t imagine being the leader of an organization with my employees saying, we don’t trust you. What have you done, to where they don’t trust your leadership? Whether it’s the words you say, the actions you take, that’s just a very heavy thing to deal with.
Jenni: Yeah, but I don’t feel that it’s personal enough in connection for people to care. It’s a bit like the invisible army, right? If you came to me and said, I’ve heard these people say you can’t be trusted, I’m like, that’s an invisible army of people. Do we care about them? Because I don’t know them, and I’m not sure that’s true, and where’s that coming from?
Chuck: But these are your employees. These are the people that work at your company.
Jenni: But I think if it doesn’t feel like they are real people — whereas if you came in and said, look, I was having a chat with Janet, she explained the situation to me, it’s had an impact, she said, you know, leading her to not trust you. That’s a very different conversation to all of these people, which I think makes it harder to care about. And I’m not saying that’s right. I just wonder if there is an element of facelessness to an organisation, with the remote, with the hybrid, with the size, that makes it feel less meaningful than if you have a name and a person and someone sitting there and saying to you, I don’t trust you. That’s very different to 80% of the organisation feel that you can’t. Do you know what I mean? It feels slightly colder.
Chuck: I see what you’re saying, but I actually think if it’s — let’s pick on Janet, sorry Janet, if you’re listening, whoever Janet is — if Janet doesn’t trust me, then I feel like if I wanted to, I could have a conversation with Janet and come up with a way to rebuild that trust. This invisible army you talked about, which also happens to be your employees at this company, you can’t have that conversation with every single person. So you’ve done something. The organization has done something, to say that the people that are often the face of your organization, the ones making the magic happen, do not trust you. That is such an indictment that I can’t believe a leader would not care. And if they do not care, what does that then say about them?
Jenni: But again, I think you can bat it away. I think you can tell yourself the story of, this isn’t really about me, because no one’s going deeper into that. We’re just, you know, 80% of the organisation doesn’t trust you. To your point, what has happened to get there? You have to go and find that out to then be able to have the conversation and go, look, this is what the numbers are saying, this is why these numbers are here, we’ve diagnosed what’s behind them, and this is how we’re going to fix it. If that step is missing, to get people to really care, to make a difference and be comfortable that they are part of that, it doesn’t work.
Whereas if you came to me as a CEO and said, 80% of people don’t trust you, I’d be like, is it me or is it the whole team? Because I feel like it’s everyone else. I think it’s just more a line manager thing. I think you can bat it away unless you’ve got the real evidence to back up what’s happened. I think it’s easy to tell yourself a story as a leader that it’s not you, it’s everyone else.
Chuck: That’s where I would love to see organizations scrap engagement surveys and do their own version of a trust barometer. Do their own version to see where is trust failing in organizations, but also where is it successful? Where is it succeeding? Where is that making a difference? If you are that leader that just feels you’re infallible and, oh, it can’t be me, it’s got to be this team — why aren’t you helping fix that team? Because clearly that’s a problem in your company.
Jenni: Yeah, yeah. You’ve had enough now. Let’s move on.
So on to another report that came across my desk, thanks to Anne-Marie Blake, who shared it in my CIPR Inside committee chat group. And it’s a report from Oak Engage, and the headline is, the credibility gap in internal comms despite high professional esteem. So Oak Engage ran a survey of 250 HR and internal comms professionals across the UK in the last week of February. The report was published this early May whilst we’re recording. And she quotes from the Incoms article that featured the report, where it says, a significant number, 60%, lack the insight to determine whether their messages are reaching or influencing employees. More than half stated that poor communication wastes one to two hours per employee each week.
Anne-Marie goes on to say, we are in 2026 having the same conversation about internal comms measurement. There is so much out there to help IC demonstrate the value of your work beyond hits and clicks. I felt her frustration in that post and thought I’d just bring the conversation in here.
So a little bit more from the report — less than I shared from the IC Index. But what does the report say? It says internal comms is valued but not fully embedded, measurable or optimised in the way it needs to be. 94% say internal comms is respected. Only 30% can demonstrate business impact. 48% say that they act as a strategic advisor. 60% lack visibility into whether comms are reaching or influencing employees. 66% rely heavily on manager-led comms cascades.
They call out the need to shift from outputs to outcomes, and in the report there’s a nice table for comms activity, business metric and outcome if you need to get started. And there’s a quote in there which says, closing the credibility gap is a continuous journey that depends on building trust, embedding meaningful relationships and consistently demonstrating value through insight and action. Now, if you would like to know more about credibility and how to close that gap, then do let me know, because I have a whole framework on it for leaders and comms people, and it is the biggest gap. So my question for you, Chuck, is what is getting in the way of this change happening? Because as Anne-Marie has said, here we are again in 2026 having the same conversation. What’s getting in the way of change?
Chuck: Well, it’s funny, because I was going to give you a little kudos here as a credibility expert, but you just did it yourself. You gave your own kudos. I’m going to come back to a question to you, Jenni. Define, or give me the context of, the difference between respect and credibility. How are the two related? How are the two not related?
Jenni: So if I find you credible, I’m going to follow you and believe you. That’s the outcome we want from credibility. Now, I can respect you, but I cannot follow you. So that’s a different outcome. So I can be like, I completely respect your point of view, your expertise, all of those things, but I’m still going to go over here. And I think that’s the difference — it doesn’t encourage that followership, and that’s why credibility is complex. So when people say, just be more credible, or credibility is what someone says when you’re not in the room, there’s a lot of layers to credibility around trust, empathy, likability, all that stuff. So yeah, that’s the distinction. It’s the outcome of the followership that you’re looking for.
Chuck: Can you be credible and not respected?
Jenni: So, do you know what? We had this debate on the Calm Edged Rebels podcast that I used to do with Trudy Lewis and Advita Patel when I did my research. And I think it was Advita was saying, I would respect you first and then I would find you credible. And I was like, I think I’d find you credible and then I might learn to respect you. So we had quite the debate in terms of what comes first. And I think that comes down to your own values, lived experience and stuff.
Chuck: Yeah, because to me, part of this — there’s something about this, I guess, the math isn’t mapping in some way. And that’s what I was trying to figure out. The sentiment seems to say one thing, but then this data is saying something else, where the sentiment is that, I would say collective we, read here that internal comms feel so disrespected in industries, but yet in a survey of ourselves — I guess it’s internal comms and HR — we’re saying it is respected. So which is it? When we said we don’t feel respected, were we really saying we don’t feel credible? That’s why I was trying to understand the difference on that. Because then, if only 30% can demonstrate impact, then you’re not going to be credible. People are going to question — maybe that’s the wrong word, let me take that back. It’s not that you’re not credible. People are going to question your credibility if you can’t demonstrate impact. It doesn’t mean you’re not credible, it means they’re probably going to question the credibility. And if only half are saying they act as a strategic advisor, that might bring that number down a little bit more.
So things just feel very fluid. I don’t know if this is because it’s a survey of ourselves that we’re saying this thing, versus the past survey which was of employees. I would love to know from the employee side what it is. And there was another data point — more than half stated poor communication wastes one to two hours per employee each week. I would love to know what poor means here versus no communication. How much does no communication waste? Is it less than one to two? Is it more than one to two? I have a feeling it’d be more than one to two hours wasted. So poor is better than none. So how do we elevate that? How do we grow that? That’s our job. That’s our role.
Jenni: Mm-hmm. So a bit like you, when I was reading this I was confused by the stats and the data, because the math is not mathing, to use your point. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, maybe it’s because this is a survey of ourselves. So it’s a survey of internal comms and HR people talking about their profession. And I think we need to probably stop doing this, because I’m not sure how helpful that data and insight is around this.
Because 94% say internal comms is respected. And my question is, what does that look like? I mean, what was the question? Do you feel respected? I don’t know, but that’s really high. I feel respected, yet only 30% can demonstrate a business impact. Well, that doesn’t make sense, because for you to be truly respected as a function you would be having an impact, but 70% of people can’t demonstrate any kind of business impact, yet 94% feel respected. Only 48% are a strategic advisor. So this is making me think, are we feeling respected in our ability to post content on an intranet and send out emails? Because we’re definitely not being respected as a strategic advisor and something that is linked to organisational performance and advising leaders and culture. And that says everything about the state of internal comms as a profession at the moment. And this is my issue with, is it internal comms, is it organisational comms? And actually this survey to me is almost saying it’s all about the content and the channels. It’s not about the strategic advice.
Chuck: And I wonder too, because I did the quick math in my head — of this 250 people, that means roughly 235, give or take, are saying internal comms is respected. It’s the other 15, give or take, that are saying it is not. And I wonder, is that the effort of comms, or is it the people, or are the two connected, or are the two separate? If you say my internal comms team is respected, but we hate what they do. Or we love what they do, but we don’t like the team. What does internal comms mean here? I think it’s a great discussion. But I guess — and this goes to where I was going to give you credit, which you gave yourself, around credibility — is this really what communicators and HR leaders should be focused on?
Jenni: Yeah, it’s exactly that. Respect is like credibility, it’s a perception, it’s a feeling. So if you said, do you feel respected? Well, yes. I’m not sure what would be happening if I don’t. Or is my function respected? Do you know what I mean? We’re going to say yes.
Chuck: Well, that goes to where I was — if we asked leaders, are you trusted? They’d be like, well, obviously. Of course we’re trusted. Of course we are.
Jenni: Yeah. Yeah, I’m bloody great, absolutely.
Okay, that’s enough of reports now. I’ll move on to some LinkedIn posts so we can just calm down. So the next one is about capability, not happiness at work. This was a post that was talking about a meta-analysis of 113 studies covering around 38,000 employees, which found a moderate correlation between job satisfaction and performance. It’s a real statistic, but it’s not the decisive link that most leadership narratives would really get. So basically the relationship isn’t consistent. They’re saying it’s stronger in service roles where behaviour is visible, weaker in manufacturing where tasks are constrained, stronger in individualistic cultures and weaker in collectivist ones. Self-reported performance data also inflates these numbers considerably.
The deeper point on this is that satisfaction is a signal, not a mechanism. Things like autonomy, feedback, recognition and meaningful work don’t improve performance by themselves. They improve it by changing the conditions under which people operate. The problem is that most organisations are still treating satisfaction as this destination. So they measure engagement, they run surveys, launch initiatives, but rarely stop to ask whether the system itself actually allows for people to perform at their best. The article says, you don’t get performance by making people happy, you get performance when the system allows capability to show up.
And I love everything about this. But Chuck, if satisfaction is a signal rather than a driver, and the real question is whether the system allows that capability to show up, what does that mean for how organisations are currently spending their time and money on engagement? And are they solving the wrong problem entirely?
Chuck: Satisfaction is such an interesting word to me, because there’s an element of contentment to it. If you’re satisfied — I think very few people like satisfaction as the goal of something that you’re involved in, but maybe in some cases it should be. And as you were talking about this, I was thinking through this video that I saw, probably on TikTok, from a school janitor talking about the pride they had in their role, in what they did for the school. And most people probably wouldn’t think about that from a janitor at, let’s say, an elementary school, the way this guy was talking about it. But his satisfaction came from saying he loved the fact that everything he did for his job did not put money in someone else’s pocket. What he did for his job was actually building a safe and clean environment for teachers and kids.
I thought, what a healthy way to view a role that I think a lot of other people probably look down on. And here this person not only takes a lot of pride in their role, but the satisfaction isn’t coming from a place that we think of with other people, where it’s like driving revenue, blah, blah, whatever those numbers are. His was simply creating a safe and clean environment for these kids and teachers. And I thought that was such a healthy way. And I don’t know that workplaces think about satisfaction in that way. They probably think about it from the metrics and the KPIs and all the other things they look at. That individual person — where do they drive satisfaction from?
Jenni: And you’ve reminded me, actually — I’m going to have to go and dig it out after this conversation. There was some sort of equation I was looking at to do with satisfaction, and it was either linked to stress or burnout or rest or happiness, it’s in one of those buckets of things, of where satisfaction fits in terms of our ability to feel happiness or something like that. And we might have talked about it in previous episodes, but I’ll try and dig it out, because there is definitely something about what makes us satisfied and kind of what’s behind that.
But I think, you know, he’s talking about satisfaction, but he’s also, to the point of this, got the system allowing capability. He’s doing the work, he’s capable, there’s no friction in there, he’s doing the stuff he wants to do, he’s got autonomy, he’s got meaningful work, and that is having an impact because the conditions that he’s operating in are right.
Chuck: And you know what’s funny about that? I want to jump in. What’s funny about that in the video — I’m glad you mentioned that — he talks about how a really good day for him is when he doesn’t see his manager. Because he’s just able to work. And a manager showing up is like an interruption for him. So from a capability standpoint, the manager interrupts the capability, because he just wants to do the job. And I think sometimes satisfaction could actually show up in data as disengagement, because engagement so often looks at this discretionary effort. Well, if you’re satisfied, you’re probably not giving that, you’re just doing the job.
Jenni: Yeah, and this is what comes back to what we were talking about off air before this, in terms of what’s in my brain about employee engagement. Is that really what we’re measuring? Should it just be satisfaction — that people are satisfied with things here and they do feel that they can show up and do this — rather than something like engagement, which is just now messy and all sorts of things. It throws up a big question for me, and I think it’s a good analysis of different studies that are quite broad, to really bring this forward in terms of, don’t focus on satisfaction, focus on the system allowing capability to show up. Which I think is good.
Now, the final article today is about employee frustration. So, what if employee frustration was your most valuable architecture data? This was a recent article from Zoom, which makes the case that employee frustration with workplace technology isn’t noise to be managed, but is some of the most valuable data an organisation has. When employees quietly bypass approved tools, complain in chat threads or work around systems that keep failing them, they’re providing an unfiltered audit of where the infrastructure is broken. The article argues that IT leaders who learn to read that frustration as an architectural signal, rather than an HR or compliance problem, can reposition themselves from gatekeepers to genuine strategic architects.
Now, the research from a Zoom and Deloitte study found that 94% of employees encounter friction somewhere in the meeting lifecycle. The average employee loses around 1.6 hours every week just preparing for meetings. I mean, what are you doing? Across enterprises, employees are switching between nine or more applications in a single workday, creating what the article calls integration debt — a hidden drag on decision speed and productivity that never appears on a balance sheet but everyone feels.
So the core argument really is that if you’re sitting on this ready-made sort of mandate, where people are saying this isn’t working, this is a problem, this is frustrating, we have to listen to that and actually use it in some meaningful way. But this also doesn’t feel necessarily new, you know, it feels very familiar for the comms world. So do you think organisations genuinely just don’t see the signal, or do you think they’re just not acting on it, and it doesn’t really make any difference because we’re just going to crack on with the direction that we’re going in?
Chuck: Is integration debt coming into our new buzzword library here? I think that’s a good one. I challenge you to use that this weekend with your friends. Somehow bring integration debt into that to see how that fits.
The part around here — and if anybody is coming to IABC World Conference this June, Pinaki Kathiar and I are talking a little bit about this in our session — is about friction. So it talks about 94% of employees encountering friction somewhere in the meeting lifecycle. This equates friction as a negative. Friction isn’t necessarily a negative. It could be. It doesn’t have to be. Friction could be very positive. So I think with this, frustration is natural. There’s always going to be a gap between what companies want and what employees experience and all of those things. That’s just the natural state of it.
I don’t know that companies don’t see the signal and don’t act on it. I just don’t think they care about it. I think, to use your words, they just crack on with it. It’s not a critical thing, or they just expect employees to solve it for themselves. It is data, it is worth looking at, but I don’t think it’s a situation where they need to solve every single problem where there’s some kind of friction, where the friction could actually be a good thing for the company.
Jenni: Yeah, I totally agree on the friction. I’m still reading The Friction Project, which is a great read about that, and Atomic Habits also talks about friction, putting it in, taking it away and stuff. So that’ll be a great session at World Conference for anyone going. But I suppose for me, I just thought, people have been frustrated for years, and I’m not sure anyone’s thought, let’s take this frustration and do something positive with it. I think they’ve thought, yes, we understand you’re frustrated, however our strategy is to go and do this. And I don’t think anyone’s ever really going to change that.
And to your point, some friction is good. I think if you’ve got a load of people saying this tool is really impossible to use and we can’t do it, then you have to listen to that. But you also have to look at trends and data and that analysis, and just not the people that shout the loudest.
Chuck: And sometimes that friction could just be change. It could just be that you’ve got to get through that part. Last week, I think it was last week, you mentioned one of my least favorite business quotes that people mention, the Henry Ford faster horse thing. One of my least favorite images that I see people share around work is the one that shows the sidewalk cross-section, and then it’s like a path people have made around the sidewalk, and they’re like, this is the design, the user experience, and the real experience is them cutting the corner. Maybe. But what we don’t know is, was that path there first and then they built the sidewalk? Was the sidewalk closed for a little while, so people had to make the path, and now they love having the sidewalk? We’re making interpretations on it. So this is where — yes, people will always have workarounds if something is failing them. That’s them solving the problem. And not every system works for every single person in the exact same way.
Jenni: Yeah. And also that’s what it is to be human. That’s why we’ve evolved in this way, is because we find solutions and workarounds to problems, and that’s our ability to do that, in whatever way. So, good. Not a problem we need to solve then.
So that concludes our articles for this week. In terms of our freq-outs, my freq-out this week you’ve already mentioned — it’s comms reboot coming to Toronto on the 17th of June. I’d love to see you there. If you’re attending World Conference, it’s the day after.
Chuck: Well, I will be there, Jenni. You will see me there. I will be there.
Jenni: You will be there. I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the person listening to us. I would love to see you there, and I will. But it will be the Communications Unconference. If you’ve not been before, it’s all about you setting the agenda, having good conversations, solving some problems. I’m really excited to be partnering with you at ICology, Chuck, and also Pinaki at Local Wisdom, Andrea at Vision to Voice, and Priya at Inner Strength. So I’m super excited about all that. But if you want to come along, the link to grab your ticket is in the show notes. We still have some left, and I’m freq-ing out because it’s not far away now. That’s why it’s in my freq-out, because I keep going, oh my God, it’s like four weeks away, five weeks away, oh my God. So yeah, what’s yours this week?
Chuck: Mine is — we’re getting a little personal here with this freq-out. A few episodes back I mentioned about having my first, I guess I would describe it, old man doctor appointment, where once you turn 50 a whole batch of new opportunities open up for you from the medical world. And so I will be having my first colonoscopy, which I’ve never had before, and I know a lot of our listeners have had. I’ve actually heard some pretty amazing things about having a colonoscopy, so I’m oddly looking forward to it, to just see what this experience is like. I’ve heard the drugs are amazing during the process. So we’ll see what it’s like. We’ll see what it’s like coming out of that. I guess it’s a real world thing that people should do once they hit a certain age. Apparently it’s 50. Apparently now they’re moving that age down to like 45 and up, they’re going to start recommending them if you’re in high risk areas or whatever it is. This is not medical advice on this podcast. But yeah, take care of yourself. I’m having a colonoscopy. That’s my freq-out.
Jenni: I hope it is as good as you think it’s going to be, and I know you’ll message me afterwards and you’ll be like, that was amazing, or, I don’t know what the hype was all about. So we’ll see.
But that’s what we’re freq-ing out about this week. 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 goes a really long way. Subscribe wherever you’re listening, and share this with one person who is interested in what we talked about. Thanks to Poet Ali for the music. We’re back every Monday. See you next week, and appreciate you being here 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.
