In my organization’s recent Convergent Leader research with Catalyst, we found companies caught in a contradiction: demanding adaptability while reducing the very opportunities where people learn to become adaptable. A 2025 British Standards Institution study found that 39% of organizations had already cut junior roles, and 43% expected to cut more.

​Many leaders still do not understand that young people are entering a workforce that increasingly feels impersonal, opaque and exhausting before they have even begun. ​

In periods of sustained change, people pay closer attention to who they trust than to what is announced. Employees listen for consistency. Managers look for language that helps them guide teams without overpromising. Leaders sense when messages are technically accurate but not fully understood.

Inside many organizations, the work of making sense of change happens outside formal channels. It happens in conversations, peer groups and communities that help people orient themselves when things feel unsettled.

This is where Employee (or Business) Resource Groups (ERGs) do some of their most important work.

Picture yourself walking through a city. You’ll see beautiful architecture, towering buildings and curb cuts, small sidewalk ramps built for wheelchair users. It’s fascinating how many others they help: travelers with rolling bags, parents with strollers, commuters sprinting for the bus.

When you build for inclusion, everyone benefits. That’s universal design. The workplace should be no different. The “curb-cut effect” is known in these circles already; however, too many organizations are still built for only neurotypical people. Too many organizations are still built for one kind of mind—fast, verbal, linear, endlessly “on.” But that’s not how all brilliance shows up.

For years, organizations blamed performance dips and disengagement on “change fatigue.” But today, something more insidious is taking hold across teams. It’s not resistance to change, but exhaustion from not knowing what matters: uncertainty fatigue.

Our think tank gathered insights from more than 3,200 leaders and employees across industries between April and August 2025. One theme rose above all others: ambiguity, not workload, is what’s draining energy and focus.