During a recent visit to Sydney, Staffbase's International GM Neil Morrison warned that poor use of AI in communication could erode workforce trust without clear governance and human oversight.
His visit comes at a time when Australian workplaces are under intense scrutiny for AI-generated communications that have appeared tone-deaf or impersonal.
"AI tools need to do more than just making communications faster. It's about creating autonomous knowledge within the organisation and trust that materially impacts people's jobs," said Neil Morrison, general manager international markets and global chief people officer, Staffbase.
"Leaders have to curate their position rather than just accept what the AI is going to generate. They have to keep trusting in their voice, not this AI influence over time," he added.
He said leaders must remain able to drive the subsequent conversation. "If you only rely on or over-rely on the AI component and technology, you miss the ability to credibly engage with your workforce in a two-way dialogue."
Risks emerging
Speaking about what he has been hearing from leaders in Australia this week, Morrison noted the rising pressure on executive communication.
"There's already some well-noted missteps, and that's actually pressure on leadership and organisations, because people are looking out for these moments."
He warned that employees increasingly judge authenticity through small signals.
"When you see content and communication posted and you see the double long line in the formatting, how lazy. There's a version of that from within workforce looking up to leadership."
"Using AI without the human touch or the strategic intent is pretty naive. Without having the overall governance and philosophical frameworks, you don't have the boundaries to hold yourselves accountable to in the first place," he added.
Morrison said employee perceptions of overuse could quickly erode sentiment. "The humanness underneath that sentiment is like, the leader was lazy or disconnected or uncaring or tone deaf, and all of that just builds cynicism within the organisation."
He pointed to wider trust trends.
"Edelman released their annual Trust Barometer. What we hear from our leaders and the place I work at is actually, in a way, the last great bastion of trust. We trust that source of information more than we do religion, media, government."
Strategic communication
"There's a direct link between effective communications and higher engagement and retention of teams, and therefore clearly a direct link to overall business performance," said Morrison. "It's not a nice to have. It really is a must have."
He said communication training remains underdeveloped in many organisations.
"You get to a place where you've got an assumed level of competence as a communicator or an accepted level of incompetence."
That gap is widening as organisational transformation accelerates.
"Organisations are going through unprecedented levels of change. Gartner cite that in the last eight years, organisational change at an enterprise level has increased by 400%. The one thing that we know stewards change most effectively is sustainable communication," added Morrison.
He said AI-based sentiment tools can help leaders track how messaging lands. "You don't have to wait for the annual engagement survey in November when it's February."
IT leadership
"It would be too easy for IT and technology leaders to say, our role is to source it and deploy it. My encouragement would be, IT leaders play a critical role far beyond that," said Morrison.
He described what Staffbase calls the "strategic CXO shift".
"It's this bringing together of the technology leader, the people leader and the communicator. They now are this powerful dynamic that together have got all the answers needed, but individually don't."
"This whole thing is 10% technology and 90% human behaviour. The adoption rollouts won't fail because the technology wasn't good enough; it's because people didn't understand why or how they change," added Morrison.
He said effective IT leadership should include observing real-world usage.
"Almost this idea of the technology leader playing cultural anthropology, actually observing the users and their behaviour with the tooling they're recommending."
Morrison argued for "digital equity". "Everyone should have equity to digital tooling and to AI. Look at all of the AI pilots right now. We're creating this white-collar haves and blue-collar have-nots. The biggest value sits in the front line."
Responsible deployment
"The most responsible place we have to start and not move on from until we get it right is data architecture. It's information governance," said Morrison. "We have to build the foundations to create effective and trustworthy outcomes."
He said accuracy is essential as frontline workers validate responses.
"Employees are screenshotting what the agent told them and sending it to HR to say, is that the right answer? They need to know it's the right answer."
Governance, he added, begins with a philosophical stance. "You need a point of view about how you want to see this impacting your organisation. Then you move into boundary setting, having a governance framework that sets a clear set of boundaries or rules of engagement."
Future roles
"I really see it as the partner that can allow both functions to step up into a more strategic impact," said Morrison.
"For a communicator, drafting all the content can shift to curating the right channel mix and sentiment analysis."
He said the interface between employees and organisations will shift.
"The new interface is going to be a conversation, and that's for many cases not going to be with a human."
"Employees' tier one queries and questions are going to get tackled by a trustworthy agent. It's going to mean that people functions can step up to solving far bigger problems around talent and skills and culture," added Morrison.