A pharmaceutical company's patient service team looked fine on paper, but 63% of the group was actively job hunting and the engagement survey never caught it. Structured interviews did. Constance Noonan Hadley of the Institute for Life at Work and BCG's Deborah Lovich argue frontline staff already know what's broken, and propose a six-step process of structured interviews, targeted surveys, collaborative problem-solving and rapid experimentation in its place. Jenni digs into the Gallup data linking low engagement to job hunting, and makes the case that this is the model internal comms should be following: survey, then talk to people, then act. Insight without action, she argues, is the recurring failure.
Next, Gary Grates argues internal comms isn't evolving the way it should, and lays out seven critical success factors that read more like a manifesto than a framework. Jenni and Chuck pick apart where they agree, where his own privilege shows (he's never taken a job without reporting to the CEO or C-suite), and a real contradiction in his logic: he says communication has to flow from the top while also insisting it isn't propaganda but dialogue. Both can't fully be true. They do agree with him on one point: internal comms metrics should be business metrics, not a separate scorecard.
Nick Bloom is back, this time pushing back on a New York Times piece crediting AI for the post-2020 surge in US business creation. Bloom's case is about timing and geography: the surge started before generative AI existed, concentrated in suburbs where remote work took hold, and tracks far more closely with the time and flexibility that working from home handed people. Jenni and Chuck talk through what that means for companies mandating a full return to the office, and where the line sits between a hobby, a side hustle and an accidental business.
The productivity numbers get more complicated from here. 75% of workers say AI has made them more productive, but only 13% say it's meaningfully improved their organization's performance. Rebecca Hinds, writing on Glean's AI index survey, coins the term "bot sitting" for the supervising and error-cleanup work that eats back roughly six of the eleven hours AI saves per week, leaving a net gain of under five. A 2025 METR trial backs up how unreliable our own sense of productivity is: experienced developers using AI took 19% longer to finish tasks while believing they'd been 20% faster. Jenni and Chuck agree this is a trap for internal comms to avoid: coordination is a real cost, but it isn't a comms problem to own or fix.
Closing the episode, a study of 7,700 employees at a large healthcare organization found fully remote workers reported the highest wellbeing, hybrid came second, and fully on-site came last — the opposite of what lead researcher Stephanie Johnson expected going in. Remote workers were also more likely to describe their organization's culture using words like teamwork and inclusion, undercutting the isolation argument so often used to justify return-to-office mandates.
Want to find out more about Chuck’s work and ICology - check out the website and how to become a member here: https://www.joinicology.com/
Jenni’s a regular speaker and consultant on leadership credibility and internal communication, you can find out more about how to learn from her and work with her here: https://thejennifield.com/
Articles mentioned in this episode:
Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2026/08/12/remote-workers-report-highest-well-being-study-7700-employees
AI Is Making Workers More Productive. So Why Aren't Companies Performing Better?
https://www.inc.com/rebecca-hinds/ai-is-making-workers-more-productive-so-why-arent-companies-performing-better/91390033
Nick Bloom on the startup boom: it might be WFH, not AI
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nick-bloom-stanford_there-has-been-a-start-up-boom-since-2020-share-7488229790882086912-Zt5U/
Can We Eliminate the "Pomp and Circumstance" of Internal Communications?
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/can-we-eliminate-pomp-circumstance-internal-gary-f-grates-q5c9c
Frontline Workers Know How to Solve Your Organization's Biggest Problems
https://hbr.org/2026/07/frontline-workers-know-how-to-solve-your-organizations-biggest-problems