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Sharon O'Dea has had a front row seat to the changes in our digital workplaces for over 20 years, from her start as an internal communications professional to her current role as co-founder of Lithos Partners, where she advises companies on how to communicate and collaborate to get work done. Sharon taps these experiences to inform her columns, where she frequently challenges the promises of tech vendors with the lived reality of employees.
This isn't to suggest Sharon is a technology naysayer. Rather, she reminds organizations that technology is here to serve humans, not the other way around.
Below are just a few of the themes Sharon's columns touched on in 2025:
More Information ≠ Better Communication
Internal communications needs a content diet: a more disciplined approach to messaging to respect and protect employees' attention. She challenges internal comms professionals to say "no one needs this message," because they understand that visibility alone doesn't produce results.
Clear internal communication doesn’t just help people do their jobs. It helps them feel confident doing them. When employees can find information quickly, trust that it’s current and understand it the first time, then comms is positively impacting people's work.
It cuts friction. Fewer “just checking” emails to HR. Fewer “who owns this?” messages to IT. Fewer workarounds, repeated questions and whispered desk-side confusion.
Most importantly, clarity builds credibility.
'Helpful' Technology Is Having the Opposite Effect
On paper, employee self-service and nudge tech sound good: the former allows employees to solve their own problems, the latter reminds them to keep on track. But in reality, both are burdening employees, by adding administrative work and interrupting their already fractured days. The common thread across both applies to other technology implementations: technology without human-centered design can do as much harm as good.
As AI continues its mission to reinvent the wheel but this time with prompts, we’re at a crossroads. We can keep cranking out more noise — more nudges, more notifications, more unsolicited “helpful suggestions” that arrive just in time to derail your one moment of actual focus.
Or we could do something radical: build systems that know when to shut up.
Because the future of work isn’t about endless engagement. It’s about useful engagement.
Employee Engagement Can't Be Mandated
Companies have poured money, resources and time into employee engagement efforts to little effect. Whether it's the metamorphosis of enterprise social networks, the changing role of internal communications or the unexpected community created in weeks among a group of digital nomads, certain factors build the engagement companies crave: trust, peer to peer connection and shared purpose.
Work is becoming more fluid, fragmented and flexible. Around the world, more people are freelancing, contracting or working hybrid than ever before. Even within organizations, teams assemble and dissolve around projects, not departments. The boundaries between “inside” and “outside” the company are blurring as work is delivered by collectives of employees, contingent workers and suppliers.
That’s why how we build connection, and who we build it with, matters more than ever.
