In this episode of Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose dig into four stories that, taken together, make a pretty uncomfortable case: that modern work is increasingly built on theatre and ambiguity.

From a personal essay that went viral, to engagement data from two continents, to the real story behind return-to-office mandates, this episode asks what happens when the structures organisations rely on stop working - and nobody says anything.

The first story is a personal essay from someone who confessed to spending an entire year at a software company doing no work - and never being found out. Her piece draws on David Graeber's concept of bullshit jobs - roles so pointless that even the person doing them cannot justify their existence - with Graeber estimating that 20 to 50% of all jobs fit that description.

Firstup have published some reports into employee engagement, surveying over 3,000 employees across corporate, manager, and hourly worker roles in both North America and the UK. The headline finding is that employee engagement scores look healthy on paper, but they are masking a significant and growing retention crisis. Nearly half of employees say they are engaged, and nearly half are also planning to leave within 12 months. The real question Chuck and Jenni discuss is what are the drivers behind why people stay if they aren’t engaged?

The third story, from Startups Magazine, is titled The Clarity Crisis: Why Your Culture Problem is Actually a Communication Problem. Its central argument is that what leaders diagnose as a culture problem is most often a communication problem, specifically a failure around clarity. It’s not new, but how does this knowledge start to have an impact with managers and leaders in the workplace?

The final story examines some return-to-office stats and trends for the USA. Only 27% of companies have returned to a fully in-person model, while 67% continue to offer some form of hybrid flexibility. Perhaps the most revealing statistic in the report: 25% of executives and 18% of HR professionals admit they hoped some employees would voluntarily leave because of an RTO policy - something Chuck calls out as weak.

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:

• The US and UK special relationship
• I did no work for a year and no one noticed
• Firstup report on employee engagement
• The clarity crisis: why your ‘culture’ problem is actually a communication problem
• Essential Return-to-Office Statistics and Trends (2026) USA insights

This week on Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose look at the data behind why employees lose motivation, the question of whether internal comms has become too comfortable to be useful, and two perspectives on where the real friction in AI transformation actually lives.

1️⃣ The first story comes from the Predictive Index, which surveyed more than 1,000 US employees in 2026 and found that 78% began their current role feeling motivated — but only 16% say their work always feels meaningful. For Jenni, the data points to something organisations keep getting wrong: the assumption that meaning, once communicated, sticks. Chuck zeroes in on the clarity finding and makes the case that it's also one of the more fixable problems: leaders just need to tell people what to focus on, and then actually hold that line from week to week.

2️⃣ The second conversation is sparked by a provocative LinkedIn post from Simon Cavendish, chair of the IABC EMENA and a senior IC consultant, who argues that internal comms has become addicted to alignment with too many IC teams producing beautifully crafted messages for fundamentally bad decisions. Access to leadership, he says, has become more important than actually using that access to push back. The quote Jenni and Chuck both land on: being in the room isn't the win — what we do in the room is the win.

3️⃣ The third story takes on one of the biggest assumptions shaping how organisations measure AI right now: that adoption is the goal. Charter's Brian Elliott brought together practitioners from Atlassian, Zapier, Udemy, and others for a closed-door forum on AI measurement, and the conclusion from those furthest along in their AI journeys is that adoption as a metric is quietly being abandoned. Microsoft's summary of the shift: we used to pay attention to adoption, now we just pay attention to performance. Jenni draws a direct line back to lessons from digital transformation programmes, where teams chased adoption numbers without ever anchoring to business outcomes. Chuck pushes back a little: 97% adoption of anything is a significant signal.

4️⃣ The final story comes from Rebecca Hinds, writing in Inc., who makes the case that the real blocker to AI transformation isn't the tools — it's the narrative leaders encode into their culture before the rollout even starts. Drawing on research from Bob Sutton's AI Transformation 100 report, she surfaces a hard finding: when leaders deploy AI in ways that strip craft and human touch from work, what's left is a hollow shell with little meaning. Chuck pushes back on Jenni's earlier framing that AI change is like any other change campaign — he thinks the scale of what's shifting makes it categorically different. Jenni also flags that ethical dimensions are increasingly in focus, pointing to new AI ethics guidance being developed through CIPR Inside, and the importance of maintaining the human check in any AI-assisted process.

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:

• Running on Empty: How Modern Work Created a Motivation Crisis
• Lead, Follow or Choice: The Choice Facing Internal Comms
• Why Four Tech Companies Say Adoption Is the Wrong AI Metric
• The Biggest Threat to Your AI Strategy Isn't the Technology

This week on Frequency, Chuck and Jenni explore why the $50 billion global corporate wellness market has become its only stagnant sector, break down the BANI framework and what it demands from communicators and leaders, debate whether "toxic culture" is a useful label at all, and tackle the career-defining question of whether you should ever push back on your CEO.

The first story comes from research across Southeast Asian workplaces, where companies are investing heavily in wellness perks and platforms while seeing little return. William Fleming, a research fellow at Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre, argues that off-the-shelf interventions like generic apps and training modules fail because they treat well-being in isolation — changing the worker rather than the workplace. Chuck points to the work of wellness expert Mark Mohammadpour - link below to find out more.

The second story digs into the BANI framework — Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible — originally coined by futurist Jamais Cascio and recently resurfaced in a McKinsey article. Chuck and Jenni agree the question isn't whether the world is BANI — it clearly is — but what does that means for how organisations communicate and lead.

The third story takes on the increasingly overused phrase "toxic culture," prompted by a LinkedIn article that lists eight signs of a toxic workplace: poor communication, high employee turnover, lack of recognition, micro-management, cliques and favouritism, unethical behaviour, burnout and chronic stress, and resistance to change. Chuck and Jenni both push back — not because the list is wrong, but because it describes most workplaces, and labelling everything toxic risks making the diagnosis meaningless.

The final story comes from a panel at Incomm's Strategic Internal Comms Conference, where communications experts debated whether you should ever disagree with your CEO. Chuck's answer is yes — but verbalising that disagreement is a different conversation entirely, shaped heavily by psychological safety, access, and relationship. Jenni reflects on her own practice of using questions rather than direct challenge — asking leaders to help her understand the reasoning behind a decision rather than stating disagreement outright — as a form of productive, adult-to-adult coaching.

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:

• Southeast Asia’s business leaders want wellness at work—as long as the programs get real results A BANI world
• What Does a Toxic Organisational Culture Actually Look Like? Should you ever disagree with your CEO?
• Learn more about Mark Mohammadpour