Employees don’t just want better communication from leadership — they’re saying unclear communication is preventing them from doing their best work. And new data shows that this clarity gap is shaping employee experience.
DHR Global’s Workforce Trends Report 2026 revealed that employees feel that communication can have a direct impact on maintaining and improving employee experience. In the study of over 1,500 professionals from North America, Europe and Asia, 29% of employees said that their top improvement for their company’s culture would be more transparent and consistent communication from leadership, the third-highest ranked employee desire to improve culture in the study. Additionally, the report outlined a few other communications-related needs that employees said would give their experience a boost:
- 37% of the study’s respondents reported that clearer communication from the company about the organization’s direction can make for a better employee experience.
- 32% of employees felt that more transparency from leadership about decision-making would improve the workplace.
- 24% wanted clearer direction on what AI’s impacts on their jobs would be.
The data makes it clear that employees want to know more than just the fact that decisions are being made at their company — they want to know why. For internal comms pros, that means working to close the communication gap between the intent of leadership and employee understanding.
Establishing a more frequent cadence of updates from leadership can help break down trust barriers and close gaps in understanding between employees and leaders. These might include check-in videos from the CEO or other high-ranking execs, written recaps from leadership after major changes happen, and periodic intranet or newsletter updates on the state of the company.
Internal communicators should also function as a translator for employees from leadership. By creating short summation documents following leadership announcements, they can help identify what’s happening and why it matters, pulling out the relevant parts to given teams. That’s a good way to help close the understanding gap between the top brass and employees, leading to improved employee experience.
The AI communications gap
AI is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics in the workplace this year, and the data revealed that there’s quite a gulf between how leaders and employees view the technology and its impacts. The report stated that 69% of C-suite executives and 51% of vice presidents claimed that their companies communicated about AI clearly. But that confidence didn’t hold for other respondents — just 22% of associates and 12% of entry-level employees felt that AI-related communications were clear.
On top of the expectations gaps, the report also found that AI had a direct impact on internal communications. The study found that 43% of people surveyed reported inaccurate content in internal communications messaging because of AI.
AI can be great for helping speed up processes, but it’s not without its flaws. Communicators need to have a diligent framework in place to ensure that when AI is used for internal content, it’s accurate. Communicators should view AI as a drafting tool, not necessarily a publishing tool. For every piece of AI-generated internal content, the comms team should have a fact checker and editor poring over the output.
One major issue with AI is that it’s prone to hallucinations. Those hallucinations can deeply affect content accuracy. A few ways internal comms pros can keep accuracy high include:
- Giving examples fellow communicators of both strong and weak prompts to help guide input for better output.
- Requiring the model to cite its sources.
Additionally, communicators should consider prohibiting AI use for certain comms functions. For instance, with detailed policy changes like RTO processes or benefits changes, it’s better to create that messaging with human beings to keep it people-first and most importantly, pinpoint accurate.
While this report shows that there are communication gaps to close, none of these issues are insurmountable. By working to close the gap in understanding between leaders and employees with clear communication, comms pros can improve employee experience and make sometimes-daunting new technologies like generative AI easier to adopt. That’s the kind of work that not only makes an organization a better place to be — it’s what makes communicators indispensable.
Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.
