“People don’t quit jobs, they quit bad managers.”
Ah yes, that old chestnut. I bet you’ve heard it at least a dozen times, probably while sitting in some conference room discussing internal comms listening to a consultant talk about “employee engagement.” It’s one of those lines that gets thrown around like gospel truth and everyone nods along because, well, it does make sense. Bad managers really can make people miserable enough to quit.
But here’s what bugs me about that saying: it’s only telling half the story.
The truth is, people are leaving jobs just as much because companies can’t seem to communicate to them like normal human beings.
When’s the last time you read a company-wide email that didn’t sound like it was written by someone who’d never actually worked a day in their life? Or sat through a leadership update that told you absolutely nothing useful while using 500 words to do it?
Here’s what happens when employees constantly feel like they’re getting the corporate runaround: they stop caring about the message and eventually, they stop caring about the company altogether.
You know that feeling when you get yet another “exciting updates from leadership” email that’s basically just corporate fluff? Or when major decisions get made that affect your actual job but you find out about them through office gossip instead of, you know, your actual manager? That’s the stuff that slowly eats away at people.
What starts as rolling your eyes at another pointless newsletter turns into something bigger. You start feeling disconnected. Then you start feeling like you don’t really matter to the company. And then, well, then you start updating your LinkedIn profile.
Here’s the thing that internal communications folks need to understand: if your communication feels like you’re just checking boxes, you’re going to lose good people.
Real communication, the kind that actually connects with people, isn’t some fancy corporate strategy. It’s just being genuine with your team about what’s actually happening. And research shows that 61% of employees have seriously thought about leaving because of poor internal communications. That a full-blown retention problem.
The gap between intent and reality
So if everyone knows communication matters, why does it keep failing?
Most leaders genuinely think they’re nailing the employee engagement thing. They’ve got all the right pieces in place. Weekly newsletters go out on schedule, the company intranet gets its regular updates, and there’s a town hall every quarter where someone talks about “exciting developments ahead.”
From where they’re sitting, it looks like they’re communicating plenty. But here’s the problem: just because you’re sending messages doesn’t mean anyone’s actually receiving them.
The numbers tell the real story. Research states that 80% of leaders are convinced their internal communications are helpful and relevant, but only 53% of employees agree with them.
That’s a massive disconnect between what leaders think they’re doing and what employees are actually experiencing.
You can spot the warning signs everywhere:
People open the company newsletter out of obligation, not because they’re curious about what’s inside. Posts on the intranet get buried and forgotten within hours. Those quarterly engagement surveys start feeling more like performance theatre than genuine attempts to listen.
From the executive floor, it looks like communication is happening smoothly. Down in the trenches where actual work gets done, it feels like background noise that rarely contains anything useful.
And here’s the kicker, this quiet mismatch between intention and reality is exactly what slowly drains trust from your organization. When employees consistently feel like they’re getting generic corporate updates instead of real information about their company, they start tuning out completely.
Why this matters now more than ever
The thing is, employees aren’t coming to work with fresh eyes anymore. They’ve already been trained by how they communicate everywhere else in their lives.
Think about it, outside the office, people are used to getting instant responses on WhatsApp. They’re having real-time conversations in Slack channels. Their social media feeds actually show them stuff they care about, when they care about it.
That’s the bar now. So when someone goes from that world into the workplace and gets handed a quarterly newsletter that reads like it was written by committee, the disconnect is jarring.
It’s not that employees suddenly became impossible to please. It’s that they know what good communication feels like now. They expect it to be immediate, conversational, and actually relevant to them as individuals.
Meanwhile, most corporate communication is still stuck in broadcast mode. The same generic message blasted out to everyone, usually weeks after decisions have already been made.
To someone who’s used to the pace of a group chat or the personalization of their Instagram feed, that all-hands email packed with buzzwords feels like you don’t really care about keeping them informed.
This is about recognizing that people’s expectations have fundamentally shifted. When employees can get better, more timely information about their company from industry blogs than from their own internal communications, something’s broken.
The gap between how people communicate in their personal lives and how companies communicate with them has never been wider. And employees notice that gap immediately. When it’s too wide, people start looking for companies that actually know how to talk to them.
What happens when communication feels fake
So we’ve established that internal communication often sucks. But what’s the actual damage? It’s not just about unread emails piling up in inboxes.
When communication doesn’t feel real, it breaks three things every company desperately needs: trust, alignment, and that sense of belonging.
Trust gets murdered first. Picture this: you find out about a major reorganization through a LinkedIn post before your manager bothers to mention it. Or worse, through bathroom gossip. Once that happens, even when leadership does share something truthful and straightforward, people are already sceptical. “What are they not telling us this time?”
Then alignment falls apart. When updates are so generic they could apply to any company on the planet, teams start making their own assumptions about what matters. Instead of everyone rowing in the same direction, you’ve got departments doing their own thing because nobody knows what the actual priorities are.
And without trust or alignment? Belonging becomes impossible. If people don’t feel respected enough to get straight information about their own workplace, they stop seeing themselves as part of the team. The company becomes just a paycheck, not a place they actually want to be.
You can see this playing out in small ways that add up fast:
- A whole department finding out they’re being “restructured” from a news article instead of their own leadership.
- Teams drowning in irrelevant company-wide announcements while the information they actually need to do their jobs never shows up in their inbox.
- Managers delivering updates like they’re reading the evening news instead of talking to actual people who work there.
Each of these moments chips away at engagement. And we’re not just talking about people zoning out in meetings or looking bored at town halls. It’s that quiet mental calculation employees start making: “If I’m clearly not important enough to be kept in the loop here, why should I stick around?”
Research backs this up too, companies dealing with misinformation or inauthentic communication can see significant financial and reputational damage, with some organizations losing millions in market value when false or misleading information spreads. While that study focused on external misinformation, the principle applies internally too: when communication lacks authenticity, trust erodes and people start looking for the exit.
This is why crappy communication isn’t just an HR problem, it’s a retention crisis waiting to happen. People rarely cite “inauthentic communication” on their exit interview form, but you can trace a direct line from those hollow, generic updates to someone updating their LinkedIn profile.
So what does good communication actually look like?
Good news: authentic communication isn’t rocket science.
You can spot it the same way you recognize a genuine conversation. It feels honest, human, and happens when it actually matters.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Transparent: Skip the corporate spin and share the real context behind decisions. Your employees aren’t idiots, they can handle complexity and nuance. In fact, they appreciate it way more than polished BS that tells them nothing.
- Conversational: If your company updates sound like they could’ve been written for a press release, you’re doing it wrong. Use the language people actually speak, not whatever comes out of the legal department after three rounds of sanitization.
- Two-way: Build in ways for people to respond and ask questions. Communication that only flows downward is just corporate broadcasting. Companies like Microsoft and Zappos get this right by creating real two-way dialogue.
- Timely & relevant: A quick, imperfect update that reaches people when they need it beats a perfectly polished announcement that shows up weeks too late.
When you nail these things, something shifts. Employees stop treating company updates like background noise and start seeing them as the actual pulse of the organization. That connection, not some fancy engagement campaign, is what keeps people around.
The test is simple: Does your communication feel like it’s coming from real people talking to other real people about stuff that actually matters? Or does it feel like corporate theatre designed to check boxes?
Many companies get this. They don’t just broadcast information, they create authentic dialogue that makes employees feel like they’re part of something bigger. And that sense of belonging? That’s your retention strategy right there.
How to actually make this happen
Here’s the shift you need to make: stop broadcasting and start having conversations.
Most internal communication is still stuck in old-school broadcast mode: leadership pushes information down, employees are expected to receive it quietly, end of story.
Here’s how to flip that script:
- Start with the right questions: Instead of asking “What do we need to tell employees?” flip it around: “What do employees need to understand or contribute to this conversation?” That small mental shift changes everything. Suddenly you’re thinking about connection instead of just information dumps.
- Build in space for people to respond: Embed quick polls in your updates. Run anonymous Q&As where people can surface the uncomfortable questions everyone’s thinking but nobody wants to ask. Create feedback loops that actually work. When you give people a way to react, they start engaging instead of just consuming.
- Meet people where they are: Your employees aren’t sitting at desks refreshing the company intranet. They’re on their phones. If you’re still assuming people will hunt for updates on a desktop, you’ve already lost them.
- Make it feel human: A quick video from the CEO recorded on their phone talking about what’s actually happening beats another polished corporate video every single time. Real beats perfect. Authentic beats sanitized.
The best companies get this. They’re creating spaces where employees feel like their input matters. When communication becomes a two-way street, something magical happens: people stop just consuming updates and start helping shape them.
That’s when you move beyond “keeping people informed” and into building something that actually keeps people around.
How do you know if it’s actually working?
Here’s where most internal communications teams screw up: they measure the easy stuff instead of the stuff that actually matters.
Open rates, click-throughs, meeting attendance numbers, sure, they’re neat and tidy for a dashboard. But they don’t tell you jack about whether people actually trust what you’re saying or if your communication is doing anything useful.
If you want authentic communication, you need to track authentic metrics.
Here’s what actually matters:
- Look at dialogue, not just broadcast numbers: Track how many of your messages spark actual conversations: questions, comments, discussions versus how many just sit there like digital tombstones. Real engagement is about whether people care enough to respond.
- Measure how fast people “get it”: When you announce something big, how long does it take for employees to actually understand what’s happening? Days? Hours? The faster people grasp what you’re telling them, the better your communication is working.
- Ask the simple question: Do you trust what leadership tells you? Build a quick recurring check that tracks this over time. Watch that trend line like a hawk. When trust drops, retention usually follows.
- Connect the dots to retention: Compare your communication engagement data with exit survey insights. If the teams that tune out your messages are also the ones walking out the door, you’ve got proof that communication isn’t just a “nice to have,” it’s a business risk.
Here’s the thing: when you show these kinds of numbers to leadership, you stop looking like the team that “sends updates” and start looking like the team that “drives trust and keeps people from leaving”.
Research shows that companies with effective internal communication see employees who are more productive. That’s a story every executive understands, and it’s way more compelling than email open rates.
The goal isn’t perfect metrics, it’s meaningful ones that show whether your communication is actually connecting with people or just adding to the noise.
The real test of communication
Remember that saying we started with? “People don’t quit jobs, they quit bad managers.” Well, if you’ve stuck with me this far, you know there’s more to it.
The truth is, people are just as likely to walk away because of communication that makes them feel like they don’t matter.
So here’s the question that cuts through all the corporate fluff: If your internal communication disappeared tomorrow, would employees actually miss it? Or would they just feel relief that there’s less noise in their inbox?
It’s an uncomfortable question because it forces you to stop looking at vanity metrics and start thinking about real impact. Do people actually rely on your messages to understand their work and feel connected to something bigger? Or have your updates become so hollow that nobody would notice if they stopped coming?
Look, authenticity isn’t some buzzword for communications teams trying to jazz up their quarterly reports. It’s the foundation that determines whether people stick around or start browsing LinkedIn during lunch breaks.
Research shows that employees who trust the information they get are significantly more likely to stay. According to research, companies with effective communication see 4.5 times higher retention rates. They’re more likely to understand company priorities, contribute their best work, and actually care about outcomes.
Without that trust? It doesn’t matter how many strategy decks you create or engagement campaigns you run. When communication feels fake, people check out mentally long before they check out physically.
For internal communications leaders, this is the wake-up call: stop treating authenticity like a nice-to-have add-on and start treating it like the core of your job. When communication feels real, people stay. When it doesn’t, they leave.
And honestly, with 52% of employees actively looking for new opportunities right now, can you really afford to keep sending messages that nobody believes?
The choice is pretty simple: start talking to your people like they’re actual humans with actual brains, or watch them walk out the door to find companies that will.
