Crisis communications expert Peter Wilkinson provides a tip sheet on how to effectively communicate uncertainty around employment to staff, using Commonwealth Bank CEO Matt Comyn’s refreshingly straight talk about the possibility of AI job losses as a leaping-off point.
Matt Comyn, CEO of Commonwealth Bank
The truth is refreshing. Here’s how Matt Comyn, CEO of CBA is quoted in the AFR this morning, warning that AI would trigger job losses.
“AI will have workforce consequences throughout the economy, and they should be faced directly. This will mean real change for people. At CBA, as in many large organisations, some work will be done by smaller teams.”
In other companies, the future might not be as clear. As a leader, how do you answer, “Is my job safe?” when the truth is uncertain?
“Yes, of course” or “I don’t know” will be called out as bullshit. And silence is never neutral.
And if you are an employee hearing your boss, you factor in the noise around you: Trump’s tariffs, the Iran conflict, three RBA rate rises since February, artificial intelligence and more.
The Roy Morgan Business Confidence (in the future) survey for April 2026 recorded a new low — the lowest reading since the survey began in 2010 — fractionally below the trough of the first full month of COVID lockdowns.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 66% of Australians already worry business leaders are lying to them.
Therefore, the danger of a glib answer goes deep. With employees already predisposed to scepticism and possibly looking for a reason to confirm it — “Is my job safe?” is a laden question.
The starting point for every leader should be, that every day you must aim to build trust, the basis of your personal reputation.
Here are the basic tips we’ve learned in 24 years of crisis communications.
The author – Peter Wilkinson
First rule: don’t lie
When pessimism is spreading, people would rather hear an honest appraisal of the problem and a credible pathway out of it.
An ‘on-the-run’ answer also undermines trust
So, if it’s a one-on-one exchange and you are not ready to answer the question with sincerity, how about combining these three phrases:
- “I’m really happy to answer that question, and you deserve a thought-through answer”
- “Can I check back with you at [insert time]”
- “Is that okay?”
The first two phrases engage and inspire confidence, while asking, “is that okay” gives the other person a sense of participation, of not being fobbed-off, and so reduces the appearance of avoiding the question.
Variations on those three phrases, said together, make up a great “get-out-of-jail” response when you are asked a difficult question (including by a journalist) and you are unprepared, but don’t want to appear to be avoiding answering.
It helps to remember that a key job of the leader is to build trust.
Put simply: Trust = Truth + Transparency + Traceability.
You need to tick all three. Traceability is the new one people miss. With AI, people can check the consistency of what you said yesterday and yester-year. AI makes that check trivial.
A killer question for Claude will soon be, “Is my boss honest?” Think of the business leaders in this country who are most consistent over time: Frank Lowy, Gina Rinehart, Harry Triguboff, David Gonski. They have said the same things, grounded in the same values, for decades.
Create messages that connect
In media training and crisis rehearsals, we work on three types of messages, and they are distinct.
The first is the incident message: What happened, the facts, the timeline, what is known and what is not yet known. In this case, it might be, “I don’t know how the future is going to impact your job” or “we know AI is going to have an impact on jobs like yours, we just don’t know how deeply and when.”
On its own, not exactly encouraging.
The second is the company message: What the organisation stands for, what it has done, and what it will do. Remember truth and transparency. The “company” message is often not said, but can be the most important.
“The company is doing a lot of work staying ahead of the changes. We are a strong company only because we look after the people who work with us, like you. So, we’ll work hard to keep you, if that’s possible.”
The third is the personal message: What the leader feels, what they are committed to, and why.
“I love this company, and this means working to make sure we are stronger tomorrow than we are today.”
Most leaders cover the first two. Almost none articulate the third, but it is the passion in the third that moves people.
Watch your tone on delivery
You want to convey strength, certainty, and honesty. In a group setting:
- Stand when you speak; it gives power and projection.
- Keep your head up and speak out – it frees your vocal cords.
- Speak from notes or ad lib rather than a script – it feels more sincere, and you are less likely to drift into simply reading without meaning.
Take care with props. Don’t hide behind a Powerpoint presentation or a corporate video. They can support you, but for trust, you want people looking at you, your eyes, your mouth, your emotions.
Tell a story to build out the messages
Outline a narrative of what is possible and what is required, and let the audience see themselves in the path ahead.
The great crisis speeches in history were not great because of the rhetoric. They were great because the speaker had the courage to name the problem honestly and then show a way through it.
Churchill facing the German advance. Lincoln winning a war and then having to unite a broken country. John Curtin declaring, in December 1941, that Australia now looked to America, a rupture with imperial convention that required enormous nerve to say out loud.
When Matt Comyn walked into the Commonwealth Bank chief executive role in April 2018, the bank was heading into the Financial Services Royal Commission. Austrac had accused it of serious anti-money laundering failures. He didn’t spin the situation.
“We have let some of our customers down when they have needed us most,” he wrote in part. “We have been too slow to fix mistakes… This is unacceptable.”
It’s not complicated. Accountability first. Recovery built from it.
Many leaders are tempted to choose silence. They convince themselves that the situation needs to stabilise before they speak.
Silence is high risk. And it’s simply not grounded in our experience. There is never a best time for awkward truths.
A truism to remember: “If in doubt about spending money, don’t; if in doubt about communicating, do!”