Frequency

This week Jenni and Chuck are digging into the real return on AI-driven layoffs, why AI-generated writing has stalled instead of taking over the internet, what's really happening as companies go quiet on LGBTQ+ support, and a new report picking a fight with the entire employee engagement industry.

Gartner surveyed 350 executives at billion-dollar-plus companies and found that roughly 80% of those deploying autonomous AI made workforce cuts — but the cuts had almost no relationship to actual return on investment. Jenni and Chuck unpack why this creates a messaging problem for comms teams: when a company frames AI as a growth story but the visible news is a headcount reduction, employees notice the gap between what's said and what's done, and that's where trust erodes. Gartner also predicts autonomous business will become a net positive job creator by 2028–2029, driven by new forms of work AI can't absorb — a reminder that in past waves of technological change, roles have shifted rather than simply vanished.

Next, a Graphite analysis of tens of thousands of English-language URLs from Common Crawl shows that AI-generated articles have flattened at around half for over a year. Jenni and Chuck talk through what that plateau might mean, from the risk of AI models increasingly training on AI-generated content, to how easy it's becoming to spot formulaic, AI-flavoured writing in places like CEO messages and LinkedIn posts. The conversation lands on a practical question for internal comms teams: it's less about whether AI wrote something, and more about whether it still sounds like a real person who works there.

A Harris poll catches the current DEI rollback in action. The majority of LGBTQ+ employees have noticed a meaningful shift in how their workplace talks about LGBTQ+ issues, and a significant share say the conversation has dropped off or never started at all — with only around a third reporting a workplace that combines strong policy with genuinely supportive culture. Jenni's advice for leaders tempted to see silence as the "safe" option is blunt: silence is still a choice, and it should be tested against the company's stated values rather than treated as neutral. The data backs her up — a large majority of LGBTQ+ employees say they're more likely to stay at a company that visibly supports them, and non-LGBTQ+ employees overwhelmingly say the way a company treats its LGBTQ+ colleagues signals how it treats everyone.

Finally, a new Integral report challenges the value of employee engagement as a predictor of workplace behaviour. Around three-quarters of the workforce counts as "engaged" by traditional measures, yet a third of them work in environments where they expect destructive colleague behaviour at triple the rate of their peers. Jenni, who has been writing about why engagement alone is the wrong measure of organisational health, calls it one of the most useful reports she's read on the topic, particularly its focus on behaviour over a single tidy score. Chuck connects the dots back to the LGBTQ+ story earlier in the episode, tying the "freedom to speak up" condition directly to whether employees feel safe bringing themselves to work.

This week's conversation also ties back to a few earlier episodes worth revisiting: Episode 13, where Jenni and Chuck first talked about the risks and dangers employees feel in bringing themselves to work; Episode 55, which covered the Firstup report comparing UK and North American employee engagement and the role benefits play in why people stay; and Episode 63, where Jenni discussed Dorie Clark's The Long Game.

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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/

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Articles mentioned in this episode: 

AI Layoffs Free Up Budget but Don't Deliver Returns
https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-05-gartner-says-autonomous-business-and-artificial-intelligence-layoffs-may-create-budget-room-but-do-not-deliver-returns

AI Writing Hits a Ceiling
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/15/human-vs-ai-written-articles

Companies Are Going Quiet on LGBTQ+ Support — and Employees Notice
https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Inclusive-Insights-Report-Workplace-June-2026.pdf

The Engagement Fallacy: Why Engaged Employees Still Quietly Quit
https://www.teamintegral.com/integral-index/

This week Jenni Field and Chuck Gose are talking about long-term thinking in a short-term world, what the resignation of the UK Prime Minister reveals about leadership communication, new data from Gallup on the state of global employee engagement, and the ongoing confusion between remote and hybrid work.

Jenni opens by reflecting on the resignation of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with coverage noting that critics felt he lacked the communication skills to connect with the public — described as coming across as stiff and wooden in an era where authenticity and emotion dominate. Jenni and Chuck explore what this reveals about the expectations placed on leaders, drawing a parallel to the CEO experience and asking whether the patience to let leaders develop their communication over time has simply disappeared. 

Gallup's State of the Global Workforce 2026 report lands with a striking headline: global employee engagement has dropped to 20%, its lowest level since 2020, with an estimated $10 trillion cost to the global economy in lost productivity. But the finding Jenni and Chuck dig into most is the shift in manager engagement — once consistently higher than that of the people they lead, it has now fallen to near parity. 

A New York Times Instagram post claiming remote work explains a third of the deterioration in American mental health over the past 15 years prompted a pointed response from organisational psychologist Adam Grant, who argued that hybrid work is in fact healthier than full office attendance. Jenni and Chuck agree with both — and that's the problem. Remote and hybrid are not the same thing, and treating them as interchangeable muddies conversations happening inside organisations right now. 

Jenni brings a book to the table this week: The Long Game by Dorie Clark, which she finished after hearing them speak at a Chris Ducker leadership event. The book centres on long-term thinking in a short-term world — and Jenni draws a direct line between its ideas and the pressures she sees on communications, HR, and leadership teams who are reacting to the next three to six months rather than building toward a clear destination. Three quotes from the book shape the conversation, including the idea that enduring discomfort and humiliation may be necessary for the most powerful long-term rewards — which Chuck reflects on through the lens of building Frequency from zero.

 

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro + good news: Meta stops tracking employees
05:05 UK PM resigns — can leadership communication be taught?
09:05 Gallup 2026: engagement at a 5-year low (and the manager problem)
16:14 Remote vs hybrid: why we keep confusing them
22:33 The Long Game: long-term thinking, by Dorie Clark

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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/

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Articles mentioned in this episode: 

UK prime minister has resigned

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygj95xrp9o

Global employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level since 2020

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx

We ran the numbers and remote work is bad for us

https://www.instagram.com/p/DZzbfz0Egtw/?igsh=MW95ZWhqbXV1ZXA3MA%3D%3D

The Long Game by Dorie Clark

https://dorieclark.com/longgame/

Jenni and Chuck are in the same room for the first time in 60+ episodes, and they spend it arguing about whether your headphones are quietly making coworkers think less of you. Before that, four reports worth a comms team's attention: email benchmarks, CCO pay, and a leadership sentiment gap.

Recorded in person in Toronto after IABC World Conference and Comms Reboot, this week's episode digs into the data that cuts against communicators' instincts.

Workshop's 2026 report (186 million emails, 580 companies) sets the median internal open rate at 73%. The headline isn't the number, it's what argues with your habits: small targeted sends beat mass blasts, plain text beats image-heavy email even though 97% of emails still include an image, and SMS clicks run nearly three times higher. Who are we really designing these emails for?

A Wall Street Journal piece tracks the Chief Communications Officer's rise, now reporting straight to the CEO at nearly half of organizations, with base pay past $450K. The catch: workload satisfaction is falling and the role keeps absorbing reputational risk that used to belong to the whole leadership team.

Culture Amp analyzed 1.7 million employees and found a 40-point sentiment gap between the C-suite and individual contributors, plus a reminder of how far one leader's quality travels through performance, attrition, and trust.

Then the headphones debate. Research says coworkers judge each other not for what's playing, but for the story they invent about why you've got them on. Jenni and Chuck do not agree, and it becomes the liveliest stretch of the episode.

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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/

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Articles mentioned in this episode: 

The Internal Email Benchmark Is Now 73% 

Workshop — 2026 Internal Communication Benchmarks & Best Practices

Comms Chiefs Stormed the C-Suite. Now They're Overwhelmed.

The Wall Street Journal — The Revenge of the Publicists: How Comms Execs Stormed the C-Suite

Leaders Think Work Is Great. Their Employees Disagree by 40 Points.

Culture Amp — The Leadership Advantage: How Great Leaders Elevate Organizational Performance

Your Headphones Are Sending a Message You Didn't Write

Harvard Business Review — Research: What Message Are Your Headphones Sending Your Coworkers?

This week Jenni and Chuck dig into four stories that all circle the same theme: more isn't working. 

They start with Nick Bloom's latest research on whether working from home helps or hinders mental health, unpicking the tricky question of causality versus correlation, and landing on the idea that autonomy and choice, not location, are what actually drive wellbeing. 

From there they turn to a Harvard Business Review piece on why effective leaders so often get branded as "the problem," using the example of a decisive executive whose pace exposed a culture of over-consensus rather than created one, and reflecting on how organisations are too quick to blame the leader rather than the system they've stepped into. 

Next up is Scarlett Abbott's World Changers Report, where they pull out striking gaps between what HR and internal comms believe employees understand about vision and strategy, and questions why performance management remains the top investment priority in employee experience despite engagement continuing to fall. 

Finally, they cover a new report from Fresh Intranet on the "intent gap," revealing that only 12% of employees read internal communications in full, that the vast majority have turned to AI to summarise messages, and that volume of competing communications, not quality or relevance, is the single biggest factor in whether anything gets read at all. 

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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/

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Articles mentioned in this episode: 

Does WFH help or hinder mental health?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nick-bloom-stanford_how-to-tell-correlation-from-causation-does-share-7468658679458971648-2pJh/

Why Effective Leaders Get Branded as Problems
https://hbr.org/2026/05/why-effective-leaders-get-branded-as-problems

World Changers report from Scarlett Abbott
https://publications.scarlettabbott.co.uk/world-changers-2026/home

The employee attention recession
https://freshintranet.com/ebook/the-employee-attention-recession-report-2026/

Frequency is back with an episode that connects the dots between inauthenticity, artificial intelligence, a shifting workforce, and what bad management really costs. Jenni opens with a few standout takeaways from the Gallagher Summit in London — including a line worth writing on a sticky note: trust travels socially, not structurally. It's a reminder that no matter how sophisticated our digital infrastructure gets, trust still moves through people, not org charts.

The first story pulls back the curtain on something many have suspected: those polished LinkedIn leadership posts - full of wisdom about kindness and titles - are often written by virtual assistants in the Philippines, working from four-page memos and WhatsApp tip-off groups, running everything through ChatGPT. Jenni and Chuck dig into what this means when the same outsourcing logic slides from external social media into internal communications, and whether the hunger for likes has quietly corroded what authenticity even means for leaders.

From there, the conversation turns to a University of Maryland study analysing 61,000 stories — human and AI. The researchers found they can identify AI writing with 93% accuracy, and the tell isn't M-dashes or overused adjectives. It's structure. AI over-explains, resolves conflict cleanly, ties everything in a bow. Humans leave gaps and trust the audience to connect the dots. 

The third story shifts to the workforce itself. One in four US workers is now over 55, up more than 17% in a decade, with some sectors - farming, school bus driving, transit -  running significantly higher than that. Chuck and Jenni dig into the distinction that changes everything for communicators and managers: is this workforce staying because they want to work, or because they can't afford to stop? That question has profound implications for how organisations design employee experience, what they put in engagement surveys, and whether comms strategies built around the next generation are missing a much bigger part of the picture.

The final story is Beth Littlewood - canoe polo champion, personal trainer, and someone who drove 800 miles through the night from the European Championships in Germany after her manager revoked her leave mid-competition and demanded she return for a meeting. The manager didn't show up. He was away on training. Beth represented herself at tribunal, relying on meticulous employment records, and won approximately £149,000. The judge described the manager's no-show as contemptuous and blamed poor communication for the entire situation. But as Jenni and Chuck make clear, this isn't a communication story — it's a management story, a culture story, and a reminder that documentation is sometimes the only protection an employee has.

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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/

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Articles mentioned in this episode: 

The COMPASS framework details

"The Filipino virtual assistants behind LinkedIn's 'thought leadership' content mill"

"New research: AI vs narrative structure"

"America's aging workforce: one in four workers is now older than 55"

"Athlete forced to travel 800 miles for meeting that boss didn't show up for wins £149,000"