Open this photo in gallery:
Diy13/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
This is the weekly Work Life newsletter. If you are interested in more careers-related content, sign up to receive it in your inbox.
“Can we chat?”
It’s the message your manager just sent you. There’s no context and the meeting isn’t until late in the afternoon. Suddenly, you’re replaying your last few weeks of work and wondering what went wrong.
It might seem like a harmless message, but Jason Murray says small interactions like this can have an outsized impact on how employees experience workplace culture.
“It’s actually a mistake for employers and leaders to think that they can rely on strategic plans or websites or annual retreats or anything of that nature to see culture form because employees experience culture in smaller everyday moments,” says Mr. Murray, founder, president and managing partner of BES Executive Search in Toronto.
That’s increasingly important as more workplace communication happens through screens.
“We don’t pick up the phone these days to actually call people to hear tone and intention and emotion,” he says.
Without those cues, employees are left to interpret the words in front of them. Mr. Murray says leaders can make that experience better by being more intentional with their language.
One place to start is adding context.
Short messages aren’t necessarily bad. Instead of simply asking, “Do you have a moment to speak?” Mr. Murray suggests adding what you want to discuss: “Do you have a moment to speak about the project that we’re working on together?”
That small addition means people know what to expect instead of “filling in the storyboard for themselves,” he says.
Leaders should also reconsider language that creates unnecessary urgency.
Words such as “ASAP,” “now” and “priority” can immediately put employees on alert, Mr. Murray says.
“Too often we think everything is critical, everything is red alert, everything is an emergency,” he says. Before hitting send, consider whether the request actually warrants that urgency.
And if being more thoughtful about every email or Slack message sounds time-consuming, he says slowing down is okay. With practice, intentional communication becomes more efficient.
It can also become part of your professional identity.
Mr. Murray tries to bring personality to his writing, using his messages to add levity to an employee’s day. He says some employees have even told him they look forward to receiving his emails because they feel like they’ll get something from them.
Even the way he ends his emails is intentional, signing off each message with “Create a great day.”
“It’s the last way that I’m communicating, which means that it’s going to have people feeling a particular way at the end of the email,” he says.
Culture may be discussed at annual retreats, but employees experience it every day – sometimes in something as small as the words at the bottom of an email.
Fast fact
Career caution
69 per cent
That’s how many Canadian knowledge workers say it feels too risky to leave their job right now, according to HP’s 2026 Work Relationship Index.
Career guidance
Distinctly human
Artificial intelligence is making it increasingly important for leaders to protect and develop the distinctly human capabilities of creativity, curiosity and collaborative thinking. The challenge is that creativity can weaken when people rely too heavily on familiar perspectives or limited forms of interaction.
Marilyne Crépeau and Mike James Ross, consultants from leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder, advise leaders to deliberately seek diverse perspectives and in-person collaboration, while creating psychological safety so people feel comfortable challenging ideas, experimenting, failing and pivoting quickly. Surrounding yourself with people who think differently and engaging with them face-to-face can generate stronger ideas by exposing you to perspectives and non-verbal cues that may be missed virtually.
Read more
Quoted
Prompt speak
“I will catch myself when I’m writing where I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I shouldn’t have even written that. I should have just let AI do it because it sounds the same,” says Will Barnett, head of recruiting for a California startup. “It’s trained me to be more like it, instead of the reverse.”
This Wall Street Journal article looks at how consuming large amounts of AI-generated content may be changing the way people communicate, with some increasingly adopting “prompt speak” and other writing and speech patterns commonly used by large language models.
On our radar
Stelco showdown
Cleveland-Cliffs, the U.S. owner of Stelco, says it’s well within its rights to idle its Hamilton steel mill and cut up to 500 jobs, pointing the finger at the Canada-U.S. trade war and a domestic market flooded with imports. Ottawa isn’t buying it, with Prime Minister Mark Carney threatening legal action over the job promises Cleveland-Cliffs made when it bought Stelco in 2024.