The End of Empathy – Internal comms in the age of “Shape Up or Ship Out”

1 September 2025 Reading Time: 5 minutes

Sharon O’Dea:

Work doesn’t love you back. It never did. But for a while, organisations tried hard to act as though it might.

We built whole narratives around belonging, culture and purpose. Engagement became our profession’s north star, measured through surveys and initiatives to show employees didn’t just turn up, they cared.

Now the mask is slipping. AT&T’s John Stankey told 100,000 employees to return to the office or reconsider their place in the company.

Chevron’s Mike Wirth even encouraged staff to be “less nice” to one another as cost-cutting began. The language is cooler, more clinical, less concerned with feelings.

And maybe that forces us to admit something uncomfortable: it was never our job to make people feel good. It was (and is) our job to make people better. Better informed, better equipped, better able to do the work that delivers for the business.

That shift raises uncomfortable questions about the role of internal comms in a culture that feels noticeably colder. But it also creates space to be clearer about our purpose.

Why this is happening now

Several forces are converging to create this cooler corporate tone.

• Economic reality. Cheap capital once gave leaders room to invest in culture and “the fluffy stuff.” That era is over. Cost-cutting and efficiency now dominate, and empathy looks like a luxury.
• Cultural climate. In the US, political headwinds have brought a backlash against DEI. The performative empathy leaders displayed during the pandemic now looks risky, even indulgent.
• Technology and disruption. AI and automation are eroding the moats companies spent decades building. In uncertain times, leaders fall back on control, predictability and metrics. Tone follows strategy.
• Post-pandemic recalibration. RTO mandates aren’t just about property costs. They symbolise a reassertion of control: organisational needs firmly ahead of employee preference.

These forces explain why CEOs sound sharper and comms is losing its gloss. But the real story is a rebalance: employees are questioning the deal on offer, leaders are rewriting theirs — and communicators are caught in the middle.

It’s not just coming from the top

It would be easy to frame this shift as purely CEO-driven, with leaders rediscovering command-and-control. But there’s a counter-current too.

Younger employees are setting boundaries. On TikTok and elsewhere, Gen Z are clear about what they will and won’t give to work. They’re less willing to perform loyalty or enthusiasm, and more sceptical about unpaid emotional labour.

As Jenni Field noted on her Frequency podcast, the “you matter at work” rhetoric doesn’t land anymore.

Part of that comes down to loyalty itself.

My parents’ generation believed in “jobs for life.” Demonstrating commitment, going above and beyond, was supposed to be rewarded. But that contract is broken. Median job tenure in the US is now just 3.9 years. Loyalty has gone the same way as the final-salary pension: once the cornerstone of work, now largely extinct. Companies aren’t loyal to employees, and employees have realised it doesn’t pay to be loyal back.

That disillusionment shows up in enterprise social too. A decade ago, organisations built communities around belonging and identity. Those spaces are shrinking. What grows are communities of interest and activity — learning, solving problems. This partly reflects backlash against DEI, but also rising caution: speaking up in the wrong place feels risky, while joining a community of practice feels safe and useful.

The shift, then, isn’t just frostier leaders. It’s employees refusing to play along with corporate theatre. On both sides, the relationship is becoming more transactional.

The engagement debate

For years, “employee engagement” was the lodestar of internal comms. We told leaders it drove performance and measured our impact against it. But the shine has worn off.

Gallup’s data shows engagement stuck at stubbornly low levels. As Cat Howland recently argued in Strategic, the term has become vague and inconsistent. Too often, clicks and likes on comms platforms are mistaken for something deeper.

High engagement isn’t always good news either. People can look committed while burning out, fuelled by fear or insecurity. In those cases, the scores mask harm rather than drive progress.

This points to a more uncomfortable truth: it was never our job to make people feel engaged. Our real job is to give people the context, clarity and tools they need to deliver for the business.

Seen that way, today’s cooler tone is less a crisis and more a correction. It reminds us our value lies not in sentiment, but in helping the organisation perform.

What this means for internal comms

If culture is cooling, communicators can’t default to being the warm hug. In many organisations, we’re now asked to carry sharper, more directive messages — and employees are often less willing to perform engagement in return.

That doesn’t mean abandoning empathy. It means applying it differently. Our job is not to soften every blow but to provide clarity: what’s happening, why, and what it means. Sometimes the most human thing we can do is strip out the emotional window dressing and give people the facts.

This requires a shift in mindset:

• Privilege clarity over comfort. Don’t confuse “sounding nice” with “being helpful.”
• Tie our work directly to outcomes. Show how communication enables performance, not just engagement scores.
• Build financial literacy. Understand how the business makes money, and explain our value in the same terms.
• Be brave with tone. Speak plainly when leaders default to euphemism or performance.

In short, it means maturing as a function. From connection for its own sake, to communication as a tool for clarity, alignment and delivery.

Is this shift a bad thing?

On the surface, a cooler, more transactional culture feels like a step backwards. Discretionary effort — the “above and beyond” — is often fuelled by purpose and belonging. If those fade, organisations risk a nine-to-five workforce that does the job, but no more. Leaders may not have considered what that does to productivity, innovation and retention.

There are risks for comms too. When reduced to top-down delivery, trust erodes. Employees stop seeing comms as dialogue, and treat it as compliance theatre. That makes it harder to advise leaders honestly or surface difficult truths.

But there is an upside. If the era of corporate love-bombing is over, perhaps that’s no bad thing.

An honest, transactional relationship is arguably a healthier one. Employees already know work isn’t family; pretending otherwise only breeds cynicism.

For communicators, this is liberating. We’re not here to manufacture warm feelings. We’re here to make work clearer, more navigable, and more effective. Our value doesn’t come from sentiment but from helping the business perform.

The new deal

Internal comms has always been about bridging gaps — between leaders and employees, strategy and action, aspiration and reality. That hasn’t changed. What is changing is the tone, the expectations, and the tolerance for sentiment without substance.

If the past two decades were about engagement and belonging, the next may be about clarity and delivery. That can feel colder, but it may also be closer to the truth. Because it was never our job to make people feel good about work. It was — and is — our job to make them better: better informed, better equipped, better able to deliver for the business.

That doesn’t mean abandoning empathy. It means applying it differently. Less about creating warmth, more about creating understanding. Less about boosting sentiment, more about enabling performance.

If the rules of the game have changed, our role isn’t to comfort people into thinking otherwise. It’s to help them play better.

Written by: Editor