Earlier in my career, I worked fully remote for two and a half years. By the end of it, I was the least energetic version of myself I'd been in a long time.
So when Alex Bailey used the phrase "quiet erosion of human connection" in our recent Deep Dive recording, I put my notes down and just listened. It was the same instinct that had told me something was off in my own working setup, but I'd never quite articulated it. She had.
That's what happens across the whole conversation. Alex has a way of putting language to things a lot of us have felt but couldn't name. And there's a lot to feel right now.
Here are the two moments I'm still reflecting on a few week's down the line.
Nine changes a year, all stacking
Alex opened the episode with a stat that reframed the whole conversation for me. HR leaders used to plan for around two changes a year. They could stagger them: restructure first, then tech transformation, then whatever came next.
Today the average is nine. And none of them wait their turn. AI, employment law, hybrid fallout, restructures, the disappearing junior workforce. All of it landing at once. All of it landing on HR.
Reading that back now, it explains something I'd been sensing in the conversations we have with senior HR leaders. There isn't a single burning issue right now. There are nine, and they're all stacked on top of each other.
It makes HR's job harder but it also makes the old response models obsolete. You can't handle nine simultaneous changes with a change management framework built for two.
Alex used the word "sleepwalking" at one point. Not in a critical way. In a warning way. The scale of what's changing is so big that a lot of good people are quietly walking into problems they haven't yet named. Junior roles being absorbed by AI. Leadership pipelines quietly emptying. Cultures that used to hold themselves together getting thinner in ways no one's tracking.
"Engagement scores are lying to you"
The other moment that stopped me was Alex's reframe of engagement versus energy.
Engagement, she argues, is one measure. It tells you how people feel about being at work in the abstract. Energy is different: it tells you how much of themselves people are actually bringing into meetings, into decisions, into the work.
She described conversations she'd had with senior leaders who told her their engagement scores looked great, but something still felt off. And when she'd ask them where the energy sat in the organization, they could name it exactly. This team is buzzing. That team is drained.
I found myself thinking about how many organizations are relying on engagement dashboards to tell them things they'd learn faster by walking around and paying attention. Engagement scores travel well in board packs. Energy doesn't. But energy is what actually shows up on Monday morning.
What Alex is really saying
Underneath both of these, and honestly underneath most of what Alex talked about, is a simple argument: the human side of work has fallen behind the technology side. If HR doesn't close that gap fast, we lose the humanness of what makes work worth doing.
That's the argument at the heart of her new book, Rapid Reculturing, co-written with Kerri O'Neill, which is well worth a look!
For now, the full conversation with Alex is worth an hour of anyone's day if you're in HR or leadership. She's practical without being reductive, and honest without being cynical.
Listen to the full episode of The Deep Dive here, and enter the giveaway to win a copy of Rapid Reculturing. Details on the episode page.
Sarah Kelsey - Saville Assessment
