Unclear comms are holding employees back from reaching their potential

Dec. 4, 2025 - Ragan

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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.

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.

Read the full article here.