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