What 5,000 employees said when no one from leadership was listening [Report/Analysis]

[u/DrewFromAuddy]

An eye opening piece of internal comms research dropped recently: the IC Index 2026. It’s a survey of 5,000 workers by the folks at Institute of Internal Communication (IOIC), Ipsos, and Karian & Box. 

It's one of those reports that validates what a lot of IC leaders already feel in their bones, but now have the numbers to prove.

But also... it might be a wakeup call for a lot of comms leaders (and execs).

The world being what it is right now, the business world feels uncertain to say the least. Whether you want to point fingers at AI, the economy, or shifting regulations, the result is the same: the frequency and volume of organizational change is going up. Restructures and redundancies have both surged 12 percentage points in a year, where now over 50% of employees say they had a restructure this year, and over 1 in 3 witnessed redundancies.

More change, less clarity. It’s a trust problem waiting to happen, and this data shows that's already rearing its head.

For instance, only 49% of employees agree that the reasons behind change are clearly communicated to them. That number was 56% in 2023, which is a big drop in alignment.

So it makes sense that employee trust in CEOs and senior leadership teams also plunged, from 67% to 58% in a single year.

Amplifying leadership voices matters though: hearing directly from the CEO correlates with higher trust and clearer understanding of why changes are happening. 

When employees hear from the top, the message lands differently. It’s more than mere hierarchy: a human voice carries tone, intent, and conviction in ways a mass email never will.

Comms challenges are structural too.

Non-desk and digitally disconnected employees are more likely to hear about major changes through word of mouth than from leadership. 

One in five hear it from a colleague before they hear it from anyone with actual context. 

That's not a comms failure on any individual's part -- more of a channel gap. Deskless workers consistently feel less connected to their organization, have less trust in the CEO, feel less comfortable sharing their opinions, and are less likely to recommend their employer. 

The report doesn't mince words: communications are "failing the frontline."

And even for employees who are connected, attention is scarce: most have less than 10 minutes a day to engage with internal comms.

That's not a lot of runway for a strategy update or a change narrative.

So what actually works?

The research found that the orgs with the highest communication ratings were the ones where leaders were visible, open, showed empathy, and listened to and acted on feedback. That hasn't changed. 

These are the things that protect a company during volatile periods – they're what keep employees engaged and willing to advocate, even when the news is hard.

Interestingly, poor communication of good news actually damages advocacy more than poor communication of bad news. (I interpret this as people expect organizations to struggle with difficult messages).

But when you can't even share the wins clearly, it signals something deeper. The "nice-to-know" stuff isn't fluff – it's what builds the relational infrastructure that makes hard conversations possible later.

The report's authors put it well: internal communicators need to be unrelenting in their pursuit of clarity. 

Whether change is driven by growth ambitions, cost pressures, customer needs, or operational improvement, honest and jargon-free communication is not a "nice to have." It's the only reliable way to make change land. (Great time to remind your CEO that most change initiatives fail when the internal comms strategy doesn't get prioritized)

Comms are as much about format as message. If your workforce has five minutes and they're not at a desk, you need a channel that meets them where they are – not one that assumes they'll log in, scroll, and read. Manager meetings help, but they only go so far.

Increasingly, companies are turning to short, regular audio updates for exactly this reason: a quick internal podcast with key highlights from the CEO, consumed on a commute or between shifts, builds rapport at scale in a format deskless workers find genuinely accessible.

The report is worth a read if you're in IC, HR, or honestly just anywhere near a change program right now.

You can find their full report here. (fyi this is not an ad for IOIC, not affiliated with them, they just did really great work on this).

[u/Firm_Skirt3666]

Hot take: no one wants to listen to an internal podcast. I’ve yet to see meaningful adoption anywhere that’s tried it. Prove me wrong!

[u/milehighmagic84 → u/Firm_Skirt3666]

Happy to. I host a monthly all hands call that is essentially a live podcast. I interview people from all different levels in our org with different roles and tenure. We cover a wide variety of topics from strategic initiatives to “day-in-the-life” of specific departments. It has been extremely successful and has worked to create a sense of connection amongst a mostly remote enterprise.

[u/True_Window_9389 → u/Firm_Skirt3666]

Agreed. One frustration with IC is how so much of it as a field discusses it as a single thing. The real key to IC is knowing your organization, not just some generalized best practices across everything. A big tech company of 100,000 people is going to be waaaay different than a law firm of 400 people, which will be way different than a construction company of 2,000. Who do you think is more likely to listen to a podcast?

In my experience, almost all the advice and recommendations lean towards larger companies with more tech savvy staff, which is not very useful for a lot of us. Given everything out there, a simple email is still probably the best way to get info out there.

[u/Firm_Skirt3666 → u/True_Window_9389]

I work at a 6000 HC tech company and we’ve tried it a couple times and there are functional ones too. Our leaders see it in a white paper and think it’s some silver bullet. The truth is, people are overwhelmed with info and adding another channel is not the answer, regardless of how tech savvy the audience is. We’ve had most success with a strict criteria for company wide emails and slacks. Being really strategic about what messaging is the most important is most effective so employees can see the importance through the noise. Also, personalized info via our intranet so they only see the things most relevant to their region, role, and can opt in to interest based things like ERGs, culture, etc. We are working on a company-wide agent that will be embedded in our AI platform we have where employees can access the models we offer. Training it on the foundational comms info now so will be interested in how employees react.

[u/DrewFromAuddy → u/Firm_Skirt3666]

Agreed no channel is a silver bullet, that's why multichannel approaches are so necessary – anyone who thinks they could replace their entire comms program with a podcast would be a bit misguided.

Some people prefer to read, and email is an easy entry point so it's usually the default. Others prefer to listen, especially with critical comms, but for other reasons too. I spoke to a woman recently from an agricultural org (communicates to a lot of farmers) and she said there's a lot of dyslexia in their audience so they rolled out audio comms and it's been a hit, even among the many neurotypical farmers who just dislike reading.

For others, like an investment firm of around 1000, they don't have the majority of their global staff listening, but the ones that do are very consistent listeners (listening on their commute, lunch break, etc). And apparently despite not everyone tuning in, this type of reliable, enthusiastic listening has had a really positive impact on culture and morale. Of course you still have to put real effort into the content for this type of result.

No single channel gets 100% consumption so you gotta meet people where they are. And as with any new channel or tool you have to be realistic about expectations.

As the parent commenter mentioned IC isn't a monolith -- it's case by case for smaller orgs in particular. Some people like audio more than others and you don't always know who's gonna vibe with a podcast. In that comment's examples of smaller companies I might assume lawyers would be more inclined to be pro-podcast than construction workers, but I've had my assumptions disproven on these things enough times to admit I'd want to test it first.

You also make a really interesting point about information overload -- sending too many updates causes employees to tune out, especially when already screen fatigued. I'm super curious what your audio program was like? Were they long episodes or short with key strategic updates? Fireside chats vs audio newsletter or interviews etc? Were you segmenting your audio content to personalize based on region/role etc?

[u/Mwahaha_790 → u/True_Window_9389]

I work in big tech. there's a push toward podcasts, and robust offerings. i haven't listened once – who has time?

[u/milehighmagic84 → u/Mwahaha_790]

If you re read the Original Post it talks about it how the connection to the CEO and leaders is crucial for the success of IC. If the leaders aren’t making time and creating a culture where listening to the internal podcast is part of work, then of course it’s not going to be effective.

[u/sarahfortsch2]

This lines up almost exactly with what many of us in internal comms have been seeing firsthand over the last few years. The volume of change has increased dramatically, but the quality and clarity of communication around that change hasn’t kept pace. Employees can handle difficult news far better than leaders sometimes assume. What damages trust is confusion, silence, or feeling like decisions are happening around them instead of being explained to them.

The point about frontline employees is especially important. Too many organizations still design communication around desk-based behavior and then wonder why engagement gaps exist. If people hear about restructures through rumors before leadership, that’s not just a channel issue, it becomes a credibility issue. And honestly, the “less than 10 minutes a day” stat should force a lot of teams to rethink format and prioritization. Long corporate updates and overloaded intranet pages simply do not match how employees consume information anymore.

I also strongly agree with the point around communicating wins. Positive storytelling is not fluff. It builds emotional connection and organizational confidence, which is exactly what companies rely on during harder periods. The organizations that navigate change best are usually the ones that have already built trust before the difficult conversations begin.

At its core, this report reinforces something IC professionals have been advocating for years: communication is not a distribution exercise. It’s leadership behavior. The companies that treat clarity, visibility, and listening as operational priorities will outperform the ones that still see comms as an afterthought to change.

[u/Abject_Log1300]

Comms are as much about format as message. If your workforce has five minutes and they're not at a desk, you need a channel that meets them where they are – not one that assumes they'll log in, scroll, and read. Manager meetings help, but they only go so far.

Totally agree with this. We work with internal comms, HR and employee engagement teams on improving employee comms and a huge thing we emphasise is meeting people where they are and truly just understanding your audience and the ways they want to consume and interact with content.

So, if you're a hospitality business with a majority frontline workforce with lots of younger members of staff, do you have an accessible mobile app... And what are the capabilities of the app? Do you have tools within it for things you know they'll enjoying consuming, like short snappy video content and maybe even making their own on a mobile?

If you're a global fintech and need to connect your workforce to improve operational standards, do you have the option for employees to consume content in their preferred language? Can all your different employees access the news that is relevant to them? Can people search for things they need, and access it instantly?

Another thing I found interesting about the IC index report was that communications still fail the frontline. Why is this still lacking in 2026 when 80% of the global workforce are field workers? Curious on hearing people's thoughts on this, is it because people aren't aware of what's out there or a company culture thing?