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Respected But Not Credible: The IC Credibility Crisis
Articles mentioned in this episode:
1️⃣ IoIC's IC Index
2️⃣ Credibility gap in internal comms despite high professional esteem
3️⃣ It’s about capability not happiness at work
4️⃣ What if employee frustration was your most valuable architecture data?
In this episode of Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose look at employee trust and organisational change, a hard interrogation of whether IC is genuinely credible or simply politely tolerated, what actually drives performance inside organisations, and why employee frustration with technology might be one of the most valuable datasets an organisation is currently ignoring.
The pair were given a sneak peek at the IC Index from the Institute of Internal Communication, a survey of around 5,000 UK workers in organisations with 500 or more employees, due to publish on 20 May. The picture is sobering: more change, less clarity; trust declining at every level of leadership, with half of employees not trusting their CEOs or senior leaders; leaders consistently overestimating how clearly they have communicated key topics; and most employees having ten minutes or less a day to engage with internal communication.
Jenni and Chuck debate which of the five top drivers of confidence in an organisation's future IC professionals can genuinely influence and more broadly, question the expectation of internal communicators and the risks loading a profession already navigating societal-scale problems it was never resourced to fix.
The conversation shifts to a report from Oak Engage which surveyed 250 HR and internal comms professionals across the UK. 94% say internal comms is respected in their organisation, yet only 30% can demonstrate business impact, and just 48% describe themselves as a strategic advisor.
Jenni and Chuck draw a sharp distinction between respect and credibility — respect doesn't produce followership, credibility does — and argue that the math here tells a story the profession needs to sit with. If 70% of IC professionals cannot connect their work to business outcomes, the question becomes whether the respect the majority feel is for the content and channels function, not for strategic influence or leadership.
Is employee satisfaction the right measure? A meta-analysis of 113 studies covering around 38,000 employees finds that the correlation between job satisfaction and performance is moderate, inconsistent across sectors and cultures, and significantly inflated by self-reported data. The deeper point: satisfaction is a signal, not a mechanism. Autonomy, feedback, recognition, and meaningful work improve performance not by making people happy, but by changing the conditions under which people operate.
The final story draws on a Zoom and Deloitte study arguing that employee frustration with workplace technology is not noise to be managed but some of the most valuable architectural data an organisation holds. Jenni and Chuck discuss whether organisations genuinely fail to see these signals or simply choose not to act on them.
_____________________________________________
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:
View all episodes
By Chuck Gose & Jenni Field
5
88 ratings
Articles mentioned in this episode:
1️⃣ IoIC's IC Index
2️⃣ Credibility gap in internal comms despite high professional esteem
3️⃣ It’s about capability not happiness at work
4️⃣ What if employee frustration was your most valuable architecture data?
In this episode of Frequency, Jenni Field and Chuck Gose look at employee trust and organisational change, a hard interrogation of whether IC is genuinely credible or simply politely tolerated, what actually drives performance inside organisations, and why employee frustration with technology might be one of the most valuable datasets an organisation is currently ignoring.
The pair were given a sneak peek at the IC Index from the Institute of Internal Communication, a survey of around 5,000 UK workers in organisations with 500 or more employees, due to publish on 20 May. The picture is sobering: more change, less clarity; trust declining at every level of leadership, with half of employees not trusting their CEOs or senior leaders; leaders consistently overestimating how clearly they have communicated key topics; and most employees having ten minutes or less a day to engage with internal communication.
Jenni and Chuck debate which of the five top drivers of confidence in an organisation's future IC professionals can genuinely influence and more broadly, question the expectation of internal communicators and the risks loading a profession already navigating societal-scale problems it was never resourced to fix.
The conversation shifts to a report from Oak Engage which surveyed 250 HR and internal comms professionals across the UK. 94% say internal comms is respected in their organisation, yet only 30% can demonstrate business impact, and just 48% describe themselves as a strategic advisor.
Jenni and Chuck draw a sharp distinction between respect and credibility — respect doesn't produce followership, credibility does — and argue that the math here tells a story the profession needs to sit with. If 70% of IC professionals cannot connect their work to business outcomes, the question becomes whether the respect the majority feel is for the content and channels function, not for strategic influence or leadership.
Is employee satisfaction the right measure? A meta-analysis of 113 studies covering around 38,000 employees finds that the correlation between job satisfaction and performance is moderate, inconsistent across sectors and cultures, and significantly inflated by self-reported data. The deeper point: satisfaction is a signal, not a mechanism. Autonomy, feedback, recognition, and meaningful work improve performance not by making people happy, but by changing the conditions under which people operate.
The final story draws on a Zoom and Deloitte study arguing that employee frustration with workplace technology is not noise to be managed but some of the most valuable architectural data an organisation holds. Jenni and Chuck discuss whether organisations genuinely fail to see these signals or simply choose not to act on them.
_____________________________________________
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:
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