In this episode of Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose work through a week of stories that all land on the same problem: organizations collect, decide and change things without explaining any of it.

They start with Gallup's latest US workforce study on employee data. Only 20% of employees trust leaders "a great deal" to use workplace data responsibly, and just 19% say anyone at work has ever talked to them about it. Managers aren't much better informed. Gallup found that talking about data use raises trust and concern at the same time, which Jenni frames as a dilemma for communicators. Chuck doesn't buy it. Concern means people are paying attention, and that's fine. Trust good, concern not bad. They also float a role nobody has yet: someone who knows every piece of employee data a company captures across HR, facilities, legal and comms.

Next is O.C. Tanner's 2027 Global Culture Report, built on 25,832 workers across 23 countries. Its big idea is that culture is an amplifier, and its four themes are organizational compassion, growth cultures, active trust and unlocking innovation. Protecting capacity cuts burnout odds by 87%, and people whose ideas get no feedback are 86% less likely to share again. Jenni asks whether compassion should be written into policy. Chuck's answer: if you have to make compassion a policy, you've hired the wrong managers. They agree the better question for any organization is what its culture is amplifying right now.

Then Workvivo by Zoom's Employee Listening Summit (Jenni's ruling: it was a webinar). The useful part was Zoom's own case study from Chief People Officer Todd Reeves. Zoom swapped vague questions for specific ones about goals, feedback and career conversations, asked every manager to commit to one action with 30/60/90-day nudges, and found through AI analysis of 17,000 comments that the top theme was people not understanding why decisions were made. Chuck is fine with manager scorecards if they show what's working rather than ranking people, and brings back a line from his friend Julia Markish: only ask what you can act upon.

Finally, a piece in The Times on British workers adding ADHD and neurodiversity notes to their email signatures to explain bluntness, typos or slow replies. A Mumsnet thread called it ridiculous; the people using them call it a useful heads-up. Chuck is all for it (and claims the title of king of typos). Jenni pushes on the bluntness piece, arguing that a disclaimer can't replace the work of building relationships, and Chuck shares the time a UK contact ignored him for weeks because his email read as rude.

In the Freq-outs, Chuck explains why he's anti-label and how telling his wife she didn't need a label for her new diet turned her into an angry vegetarian. Jenni is freaking out about the rise of the chief restructuring officer, which might be the safest job in any company.

Honest, a little prickly and very practical about the cost of leaving people to guess.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome and American politics, as seen from the UK

02:57 Gallup: only 20% trust leaders with employee data

09:20 O.C. Tanner 2027 Global Culture Report: culture as an amplifier

16:50 Workvivo by Zoom's Employee Listening "Summit"

23:22 The Times: ADHD disclaimers in email signatures

31:10 Freq-outs: labels and the chief restructuring officer

Find every episode at thefrequencypodcast.com

In this episode of Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose record in person, fresh off Unily's Unite 26 conference in London. They work through five stories that keep circling back to one idea: technology and structure only go as far as people trust them.

They start with Microsoft moving communications out of marketing and into Brad Smith's corporate, external and legal affairs group, while Satya Nadella says "the people closest to the work" should help tell the company's story. Chuck worries that once legal is involved, employees will hear "no" a few times and stop trying, or get handed a script instead of a voice. Jenni thinks clear rules could get more employees posting. Whether they'll say anything candid is another question.

Next is ResumeBuilder's survey, where 18% of workers say their job has changed significantly or is completely different from what they were hired for. Chuck points out that the report's 74% headline stat is padded, and that "bait and switch" implies intent when most roles just drift. Jenni has spent her career in brand-new roles, so she sees shaping the job as normal. The real problem is the career conversations that get delayed or avoided. Chuck suggests job descriptions built around outcomes instead of outputs.

PayrollOrg found 46% of more than 9,000 respondents are uncomfortable with AI in payroll, up from 39% in 2024. Jenni quotes Hattie Roach from Unite 26: AI moves at the pace of trust, not the pace of tech. Getting paid correctly is a basic need, and people want a human to call when it goes wrong. Chuck's verdict: don't mess with someone's paycheck.

LinkedIn's AI Confidence Index shows only 38% of Gen Z plan to build AI skills, compared with 63% of Gen X, and 52% are nervous about AI's impact on their jobs. Chuck notes the "warming up" headline rests on a 2-point move, and that the hiring and pay benefits LinkedIn cites are correlation. Jenni pushes back on the idea that Gen Z is refusing to learn. She thinks they haven't figured out which parts are worth learning yet, and that nobody else really knows what they're doing with AI either.

Last, a Journal of Accounting Research study on who gets scarce training budget. Chuck asks the $5,000 question: split it or pick a favorite? He'd give each person $2,500 and let them build the business case, and accuses Jenni of dodging. Jenni says the money matters less than the conversation about what each person wants and needs to learn.

In the freq-outs, Jenni is counting down to Comms Reboot in London with 130 people coming, and Chuck is disappointed by a viral LinkedIn post cheering communicators for saying no to another newsletter instead of asking why someone wants one.

Honest, a little argumentative, and reliably human.

Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Unite 26 recap 01:29 Microsoft moves communications under legal and policy 05:20 Hiring bait and switch: when the job isn't the one you took 10:25 Nearly half don't want AI in their payroll 14:20 Gen Z and AI skepticism 21:04 Who gets the training budget? 24:57 Freq-outs

Links

• Internal memos: Microsoft shakes up communications as Nadella makes a push to build in public (GeekWire): https://www.geekwire.com/2026/internal-memos-microsoft-shakes-up-communications-as-nadella-makes-a-push-to-build-in-public/
• Bait and Switch Hiring: Nearly 1 in 5 Workers Say Their Current Job Was Misrepresented (ResumeBuilder): https://www.resumebuilder.com/hiring-bait-and-switch/
• Survey Finds Employee Caution Around AI in Payroll Persists (PayrollOrg): https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/survey-finds-employee-caution-around-ai-in-payroll-persists-302884225.html
• Workers are warming up to AI, but Gen Z remains skeptical (LinkedIn News): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/workers-warming-up-ai-gen-z-remains-skeptical-linkedin-news-jukbc
• Developing lower-performing employees may annoy the go-getters (Cornell Chronicle): https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2026/09/developing-lower-performing-employees-may-annoy-go-getters

Jenni is back from a week in Boston, where she spoke to students at the College of Communication and discovered that Boston cream pie is not, in fact, a pie. Chuck is heading to London for Unite. In between, the pair tackle four stories about who holds influence at work: a study linking male managers' daughters to the gender pay gap, an employment tribunal at the maker of Grand Theft Auto, the limits of CEO visibility, and whether AI is really to blame for bland internal comms.

The episode opens with research published in the Review of Economic Studies by Aarhus University and Northwestern. It tracked every worker and company in Denmark from 1992 to 2017. When a male manager had his first daughter, women's earnings relative to men's rose 4.1% at his firm, and the share of women employed rose 4.5%. Chuck finds the data convincing, if depressing, and questions why men only seem to wake up to how women are treated once they have a daughter. Jenni isn't persuaded that managers' behaviour explains a change in pay, given that pay is usually set by HR policy and grading structures.

Next, a former Rockstar North worker has told an employment tribunal in Glasgow that the company kept a watch list of union members after a 2023 petition about working from home. He is one of 23 dismissed workers taking the case. Rockstar denies the claims and says the firings were for gross misconduct after confidential information was shared on a Discord server that around 300 staff used to talk about the company. Chuck asks whether employees building their own channel is a failure of the official ones.

The third story, from an Inc. article, challenges the habit of making the CEO the face of everything. Just 24% of people say frequent CEO media appearances make them trust a company more, the weakest trust builder tested. Meanwhile, 38% of knowledge workers would rather hear a technical explanation from a specialist. The proposed fix is a portfolio of voices. Jenni explains why she has never built a comms plan around the CEO alone.

Finally, a TikTok from Heart to Heart Leadership claims that if your team can tell AI wrote your internal comms, you've already lost them. Chuck points out that generic corporate mush existed long before AI, and asks whether the profession is under-reacting, reacting, or overreacting. Jenni says overreacting. Drawing on her recent webinar with Shel Holtz, she makes the case for AI as a genuinely useful tool, and suggests the anxiety says as much about an identity crisis in comms as it does about the technology.

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: What having a daughter does to a boss https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/09/18/what-having-a-daughter-does-to-a-boss Sacked Grand Theft Auto worker claims Rockstar staff placed on 'watch list' https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjrx5xlz83jo Companies keep turning CEOs into thought leaders. Research says they're not always the best spokespeople https://www.inc.com/michael-kaye/ceos-thought-leaders-research-spokespeople/91400474 If your team can tell AI wrote your internal comms, you've already lost them https://www.tiktok.com/@h2.leaders/video/7683944901196696846