Since the start of 2025, DEI initiatives across the board have been deprioritised. This has left many people, most acutely those in already vulnerable groups, feeling marginalised and anxious. This level of anxiety undermines organisational performance and fuels the already spiralling mental health crisis.  

In this episode, Dr. Christopher Owen draws on his decade of experience in LGBTQ+ inclusivity consulting and his research into systemic oppression to share with internal communicators stories can be used to create more inclusive, connective and engaging work environments that boost organisational performance.  

About Dr. Christopher Owen

"If we want to make a difference, then we need to do things differently - I’m here to show you how."

As the founder of Coliberate, Christopher Owen (he/they) offers inclusivity and liberation coaching, consulting, speaking and training to individuals, groups and organisations seeking to improve their impact for positive social change.

A 2024 Northern Gamechanger, Christopher has a PhD in intersectional systemic oppression and Black feminisms, with over a decade of experience in LGBTQ+ inclusivity and consulting. They have presented to thousands internationally and published on intersectionality, identity, social change, queer resistance, and inclusive practice, with his second book now forthcoming from Routledge Education.

For more, please visit: coliberate.co.uk

Find Christopher on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/thecjowen/  

As time hurtles by at lighting pace, there is scarcely a second to take stock and breathe. Across the world, work seems increasingly harried and fraught and it’s taking its toll on engagement and organisational performance.

In this episode, Dom, Jen and Cat talk with Megan Reitz and John Higgins about their most recent research report, Permission to pause: Rediscovering spaciousness at work. They look at what it is, and why it’s a business-critical issue.

Against a rising tide of stress anxiety and burnout, spaciousness is the one permission we should all be granting ourselves, not least if we stand any chance of resolving society’s most pressing challenges.

To find out more go to www.johnhigginsresearch.com, www.radicalod.org, and www.meganreitz.com

About Megan Reitz

Megan is Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, Oxford University and Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Dialogue at Hult International Business School. She focuses on how we create the conditions for transformative dialogue at work and her research is at the intersection of leadership, change, dialogue and mindfulness. She is on the Thinkers50 ranking of global business thinkers and is ranked in HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers listing.

Megan has written a number of books, most recently Speak Out, Listen Up which is the second edition of her bestselling book Speak Up, with Financial Times Publishing. Speak Up was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year 2020.

Megan is a contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. She has presented her research on the BBC and CNBC. Her TED talk on the topic of employee activism has been viewed more than one and a half million times.

She is mother to two wonderful teenage daughters who test her regularly on her powers of mindfulness and dialogue.

Find Megan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganreitz/

Megan’s website: https://www.meganreitz.com/

About John Higgins

John is a widely published researcher and author who for many years has been exploring, with Megan Reitz, what it takes for truth to be spoken to power at work – and how this shapes workplace activism. Their work has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and the European Business Review – and on various public platforms, from Radio 4’s ‘The Bottom Line’ to Brene Brown’s ‘Dare to Lead’ podcast.

For the last year and a half, John and Megan have been looking at the concept of spaciousness, and what it takes for organisations to marry a more spacious mode to enrich an over-focus on tasks and busy doing.

Alongside this John has written two books, alongside Mark Cole, which critique the taken for granted assumptions about what counts as good organisational management and leadership.

John’s website: http://www.johnhigginsresearch.com

The report: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/597729cbcf81e0f87c7f6c61/t/677b9b9a26a22a7351dce717/1736154022120/SpaciousnessREPORT_90pp_FULL.pdf

Articles: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/create-mental-space-to-be-a-wiser-leader/

https://hbr.org/2025/02/how-to-give-yourself-more-space-to-think

Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace research reveals a drop in global engagement for only the second time in twelve years. In particular, it shows a sharp drop in manager engagement. This is particularly concerning at a time when all organisations need unity, cohesion and goodwill to combat increasingly challenging market conditions.

Shetal Joshi has been a lifelong advocate for the soul of business since the start of her career in the late 1990s. As Head of Internal Communication and Employee Engagement, she’s a firm believer in the value of active listening and hearing what’s on people’s minds as they go about their day-to-day business.

In this episode, Jen, Dom and Cat chat with Shetal to discover more about the soul of business and its link to colleague engagement, purpose and high performance.

About Shetal Joshi

Shetal Joshi is a seasoned internal communications and employee engagement expert with over 20 year of experience shaping strategic communication frameworks across global organisations.

Currently serving as the Head of Internal Communications and Employee Engagement at Ørsted UK, Shetal has established internal communications as a strategic enabler, driving employee trust, culture and belonging. She partners closely with executive teams, leading global transformation and change projects, and has been instrumental in enhancing the visibility of senior leaders and strengthening employee connections.

Prior to her role at Ørsted, Shetal led internal and external communications at RAPT Dev London, where she developed strategic communication initiatives to engage frontline employees and external stakeholders. She also spent over 18 years at BT Group, where she held senior roles in internal communications, change management, and brand alignment, supporting major campaigns and diversity initiatives.

Shetal is an Accredited Life Coach with the Association of Coaching and a Mental Health First Aider, demonstrating her commitment to personal growth, resilience, and wellbeing. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Internal Communications (IoIC) and has contributed to the development of the IoIC Charter for AI. Shetal’s expertise in influencing executive narratives, stakeholder engagement, and employee voice makes her a trusted advisor in navigating change and fostering organisational alignment.

In addition to her professional achievements, Shetal is a former Board of Trustee Member for Sands, The Baby Loss Charity, where she supported diversity and inclusion in maternal health. She was honoured with the Sheila McKechnie Amplifying Voices Award for her advocacy work in highlighting disparities in Asian baby loss.

Shetal brings a wealth of knowledge in leadership communications, change management, and employee engagement, making her an insightful and inspiring speaker.

Find Shetal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shetal-joshi-fiic-62318b1/

As economic conditions deteriorate, fears of redundancy and anxiety regarding the cost of living once again grip the UK. Financial wellbeing is a key pillar of wider health and wellbeing. Sadly, it’s often overlooked by employers striving to tick the box of colleague wellbeing in the most efficient way possible.

Having struggled with debt through his twenties and thirties, Peter Komolafe is today a qualified financial advisor. He has harnessed his personal experience to help ordinary people create financial security through positive financial habits. In 2020, he founded Conversation of Money (a YouTube Channel and weekly Podcast) to have conversations he wished someone had had with him when he was younger.

Following his delivery of a compelling session at the IoIC festival in 2023, in this conversation, Jen, Dom and Cat chat with Peter about the link between financial wellbeing and engagement and explore how internal communicators can help alleviate monetary worries.

About Peter Komolafe

Peter Komolafe is a best-selling author, award-winning content creator, financial expert, and TV presenter with 18 years’ experience in the financial services industry. He’s worked across retail banking, corporate banking, and wealth management with some of the UK’s top institutions, including NatWest, MetLife, St. James’s Place, and Investec.

In 2020, Peter launched Conversation of Money, a platform that’s helped tens of thousands of people make smarter financial decisions through engaging videos and podcasts. His YouTube channel has over 60,000 subscribers, more than 4 million views, and he’s become a trusted voice in the media, regularly appearing on shows like Lorraine, Steph’s Packed Lunch, and Channel 4’s Secret Spender, as well as Sky News and major national papers.

Find Peter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterkomolafe/

Peter’s website: https://peterkomolafe.com/

Peter’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/conversationofmoney

Peter’s podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4cry36NzOhlsg7R2uuhDAp  

Workplaces across the board are increasingly challenged by complex problems that demand an overhaul of the way work itself is undertaken. AI, geopolitical tensions, shifting attitudes to work, intergenerational differences, the climate crisis and more can easily create internal rifts and tensions that are hard to overcome. Unless, of course, the organisation makes a full-blooded commitment to connection and community.

In this episode, Jen, Dom and Cat chat with Adele McIntosh, VP of Internal Communication and Community at Arm. She shares why Arm chose to prioritise community, the benefits this has yielded and some of her top tips for creating community at work.

As work becomes increasingly fast-paced and fragmented, creating and sustaining a sense of togetherness and belonging is vital. Internal communicators are ideally positioned to deliver this strategic value to their employers.

Find Adele on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelekmcintosh/

Cancer is a word that instils dread into all of us. Long regarded as a disease with no cure, today, one in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lifetime. This means we will all know someone who has to deal with the implications of this illness, whether for themselves or for a close family member or friend.

Yet despite the escalating prevalence of the disease and improved survival rates, we are still incredibly ill-equipped to speak about it. And when we don’t speak about it, we can’t support those navigating its ramifications. We can’t help colleagues who must adapt their work patterns to either fit around treatment plans or care for loved ones.

In this episode Cat, Jen and Dom chat with Alyssa Burkus – a three-time cancer survivor and volunteer cancer recovery coach. They talk about the incumbent systems that make cancer so hard to navigate and explore what organisations can do to demonstrate care, compassion and support at this most vulnerable of times.

About Alyssa Burkus

Alyssa Burkus is the founder of Shift Wisdom, a thought leadership agency that helps founders and business leaders increase their influence and authority through writing. Her work includes thought leadership strategy, ghostwriting and writing coaching, focused on leadership, change and future of work themes.

Before starting Shift Wisdom, she was an enterprise change consultant for 20 years, working with companies ranging from tech startups to Fortune 500s, and spent much of her time ghostwriting for senior executives. Alyssa is also a three-time cancer survivor and volunteer cancer recovery coach, based near Toronto, Canada. 

Find Alyssa on LinkedIn:                               https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssaburkus/

Alyssa’s website:                                           https://www.shiftwisdom.com/

Alyssa’s newsletter:                                       https://newsletter.shiftwisdom.com/

Cancer Support Resources UK:                     https://cancersupportuk.org/

Cancer Support Resources Canada:              https://wellspring.ca/

Cancer Support Resources US:                     https://www.cancercare.org/

Since the public launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, scarcely a day goes by without a news headline forewarning of mass redundancies caused by technological efficiency.

But aren’t there some jobs or vocations where, no matter how sophisticated technology becomes, it simply won’t be able to replicate human empathy, reason and oversight?

In this episode Cat, Jen and Dom chat with sociology Professor Allison Pugh of John Hopkins University, drawing on her book The Last Human Job.  They examine the role of connective labour and empathic communication in building goodwill, trust, mutuality and human connection, never more urgently needed in workplaces across the board.

About Allison Pugh

Allison Pugh is Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of four books, most recently The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton 2024).   The 2024-5 Vice President of the American Sociological Association, Pugh has given more than 100 invited talks and has had visiting appointments in Australia, France and Germany.  She is a former journalist, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other outlets.  Pugh has served as a US diplomat in Honduras, cofounded an elementary school in California, waited on tables at the US Tennis Open and was an intern at Ms. Magazine.  She and her husband have three children and live in Washington DC.

Find Allison on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-pugh-b6169467/

Allison’s website: https://www.allisonpugh.com/

Since the MacLeod report was first published in 2009, Engage for Success (EFS) has become a flourishing all-volunteer collective for those passionate about colleague engagement.

A senior lecturer at Nottingham Business School, Dr. Sarah Pass is a practice-oriented academic who concentrates on employee experience and engagement. As a member of the Engage for Success (EFS) Advisory Board, she co-leads the EFS annual survey, which benchmarks the engagement levels of the UK working population.

In this episode, Sarah and Jen discuss the findings of the latest EFS survey, explore the four enablers of engagement and dig into why colleague voice is so important when seeking to build motivation and goodwill at work.

About Dr Sarah Pass

Dr Sarah Pass is a practice-oriented academic who concentrates on employee experience and engagement. She is a member of the Engage for Success (EFS) Advisory Board and co-leads the EFS annual survey, which benchmarks the engagement levels of the UK working population. Sarah leads EFS projects focusing on different aspects and influences of engagement in practice and is also Chair of the EFS East Midlands Area Network.

Sarah is a Fellow of the RSA, an Academic Associate of the CIPD, and a member of the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA) Working Insights Group. In 2023, Sarah was ranked by HR Magazine as an Influential Thinker in HR. Sarah currently works as a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Business School (NTU).

Find Sarah on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahpass/

Sarah at Nottingham Business School: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/business/sarah-pass

Engage for Success: https://engageforsuccess.org/

In 2025, workplace inclusion remains a key issue for the UK labour market. In summer 2024, the ONS reported the highest number of economically inactive people since 2012. While this label includes students and the retired, it more worryingly includes those who are unable to access the labour market due to either ill health or accessibility issues.

As the working population across the Global North declines, access to employment opportunity is a social and economic issue. But too many modern workplaces are too slow redesign their hiring and employment processes to maximise inclusivity.

In this episode, Dom, Jen and Cat chat with Ryan Curtis-Johnson from the Valuable500. He explains why inclusion is such a critical issue, not least when neurodivergence is on the rise. This conversation explores the opportunity for internal communication to create work cultures that boost diversity for enhanced organisational resilience.

Takeaways

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Find Ryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-curtis-johnson-b2233330/

The Valuable 500: https://www.thevaluable500.com/

With so many pressing environmental and social challenges to address, workplace activism is on the rise. Concerned citizens are increasingly using whatever means they have – whether as consumers, shareholders, or increasingly now, workers – to raise awareness and effect change for the issues that matter to them.

This has dynamic consequences for business. Organisations must work out how best to respond to colleagues who bring social and environmental justice issues to work. Those that refuse to listen to the concerns of their staff face disengagement, or worse, mutiny.

How can – and should - leaders shift from traditionally hierarchical ways of thinking about the views and opinions of their workers towards leveraging and integrating those views for the benefit of all?

In this episode, Jen, Dom and Cat speak to Megan Reitz and John Higgins, co-authors of Speak Up: Say What Needs to be Said and Hear What Needs to be Heard. They explore the role of colleague voice in engagement and look at the role of internal communication in helping organisations become better equipped to hear – and leverage – the views that matter.

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Find Megan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganreitz/

Megan’s website: https://www.meganreitz.com/

John’s website: http://www.johnhigginsresearch.com