Happy Thursday, everyone. I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.
This week in workplace whiplash 🌀
The world keeps shifting. Work keeps moving. Here’s a few of the tensions playing out this week:
✈️ Business travel is back… kind of
TSA workers are receiving backpay following a new funding agreement aimed at addressing longstanding pay disparities. The move comes as business travel continues to recover, with workforce conditions still adjusting post-pandemic.
👉SHRM⚖️ DEI just moved further into compliance territory
A new order, “Addressing DEI Discrimination by Federal Contractors,” is tightening scrutiny on how DEI is implemented, with real consequences for getting it wrong. What was often treated as a culture or values conversation is now being framed much more explicitly as a compliance issue.
👉The HR Digest🎥 When “empathy” misses the moment
Air Canada’s CEO is stepping down following backlash over an English-only condolence video after last week's fatal collision at LaGuardia Airport in New York. It was particularly criticised given one of the pilots was from French-speaking Quebec.
👉BBC
The Air Canada backlash is a reminder that acknowledging difficult moments isn’t simple, and getting it wrong can land just as badly as saying nothing at all…
It’s been a pretty relentless stretch of headlines.
Wars that don’t seem to resolve. Political instability that resets every few weeks. Whole populations living through things most of us can only scroll past.
And then your Slack pings: “Quick nudge on this when you have a sec 😊”.
There’s something slightly surreal about how neatly these two realities sit alongside each other. You can scroll past footage of something genuinely quite traumatic on Instagram, close the app, and immediately be back in a meeting where someone is asking if we can “tighten the narrative” on a slide deck.
A recent Forbes article describes what some are calling an “empathy gap”, where responses to large-scale human events feel increasingly muted, particularly in institutional settings. The issue isn’t whether people care. It’s that systems are set up to keep moving, to stay focused on priorities, and to carry on regardless of what’s happening outside.
And that gap isn’t just theoretical. The Businessolver Workplace Empathy Report consistently shows that when employees feel their organisation lacks empathy, it impacts engagement, trust, and retention.
All of which leaves people in a slightly strange position. We’re human, so we’re not untouched by what’s going on. But we’re still expected to show up as if we are, to stay focused, keep things moving, and not let any of it get in the way
🧠The behavioural science lens
When people are asked to hold competing realities without acknowledging the tension between them, it changes how they think, feel, and show up day to day:
We’re not just reading what’s happening, we’re absorbing it: Exposure to conflict, crisis, and instability doesn’t need to be direct to have an impact. Research on vicarious trauma shows that repeatedly engaging with distressing events, even through media, can shape how people feel and respond. It’s not always obvious, but it accumulates in the background.
Holding two realities at once is cognitively expensive: Switching between “the world is a lot right now” and “let’s finalise this deck” requires constant mental gear-shifting. Research on task switching shows that moving between competing contexts drains attention and increases cognitive fatigue, even when the tasks themselves are manageable. It’s rarely just the work that’s tiring, rather the switching between realities.
Suppressing reactions doesn’t remove them, it just relocates the load: Most workplaces don’t explicitly say “don’t react to what’s happening in the world,” but the expectation is implied. Emotional suppression research shows that holding back reactions doesn’t make them disappear, it increases internal strain and reduces cognitive capacity elsewhere. You can ignore something, but your brain still has to carry it.
🚀What this means for leaders
If people are already cognitively stretched, pushing harder isn’t going to fix it. The focus needs to shift to how work is designed in the first place:
Recognise the split people are managing: People aren’t coming to work as blank slates. They’re carrying context in, whether it’s acknowledged or not. When leaders ignore that completely, it creates a subtle disconnect that people feel, even if no one names it.
Stop designing work as if attention is unlimited: If people are already switching between contexts and holding background load, the margin for poorly designed work is much smaller. Clarity, structure, and fewer unnecessary touchpoints matter more than they used to.
Make empathy visible in how you lead, not just what you say: People don’t need a big response to every global event, but they do notice when there’s none at all. Small signals, acknowledging what’s going on, checking in, or simply adjusting expectations slightly, go further than silence.
Do you feel like you’re expected to act “normal” at work, regardless of what’s happening in the world?
💬 Final thoughts
Workplaces can’t realistically pause for every global event or talk through everything that’s happening in the world.
But people don’t leave that context at the door.
They carry it in, quietly, and it shapes how they show up. Some days just feel heavier. Tolerance drops, and interactions get shorter.
When leaders ignore that completely, it’s easy to mistake overwhelm for disengagement.
How's the depth of today's edition?
If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.
Until next week,
Frank
P.S. If you want to get a feature about your own story, reply to this email. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.
If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.
✨ Insane Media is more than one voice
💡 Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the founders, creator economy, e-commerce marketing, and AI founders.
