The needs that drive people at work have flipped: employees no longer respond most to certainty and belonging, but to fairness, autonomy, and evidence that they have a genuine voice.
That's the headline finding from the NeuroLeadership Institute's (NLI) latest SCARF® Model update. If most of your effort goes into keeping people informed and connected, this could change your next internal comms plan.
Since Dr David Rock introduced it in 2008, SCARF® has given HR, change, and the more switched-on comms professionals a brain-based way to read behavior at work. The premise: the brain treats social threats like physical danger.
Trigger one of the five social drivers, and it responds unconsciously, either to avoid or to approach. People feel your message before they understand it, and if it lands as a threat, they resist.
I've used SCARF® for years in change communication and coaching, have written about it for IABC, and have presented on it at the 2025 World Conference. The latest update, the first in 13 years and drawing on more than 15,000 assessment responses, shows "what employees need to feel safe, motivated, and engaged" and represents a complete reversal of what drives people at work.
The Five Drivers, ranked as they stand today:
Fairness. Perceived equitable treatment and honest process. Now, the top driver, perceived unfairness, activates the same brain region as physical disgust.
Autonomy. Control and choice. Dead last in 2012, now second. As work becomes more complex, the desire for agency has moved past the need for certainty.
Status. How respected and valued we feel. Steady in the middle, though its meaning has shifted from rank to recognition for contribution.
Relatedness. Trust, connection, belonging. Second in 2012, fourth now.
Certainty. Knowing what's coming. First in 2012, last today.
In 2012, people most needed to know what was coming and to feel they belonged. Today, they most need to be treated fairly and to have a say.
Clarity and belonging haven't stopped mattering. They're foundational. What moves the dial now is fairness and agency.
The NLI researchers call certainty and relatedness hygiene factors: their absence still triggers a threat response, but their presence no longer drives engagement.
Certainty itself has changed shape: nobody expects a predictable future anymore, so what counts is transparency and clarity about what's known now.
Why does this matter to IC? Clarity and alignment still top most IC priority lists, and most organizations still deliver them poorly (to dive deeper on this watch this Poppulo webinar.
AI has made this worse, multiplying the volume of communication while not improving shared understanding. The bar has been lifted before most functions managed to clear the old one. We now have to get the basics right and address fairness and agency on top.
You've Already Seen this Play Out
Take the two loudest flashpoints of the past two years. Return-to-office mandates are becoming more widespread as autonomy is being reduced without enough employee voice.
AI adoption is landing as a fairness issue as organizations cut roles, roll out tools without a clear strategy for what they mean for people, then rehire into similar roles months later.
It's a major transformation treated as a tech change when it's a people change. No amount of polished messaging fixes that; the failure lies in how the decision was made, the process itself, and the explanation.
The Blind Spot
One part of the data should concern comms teams. As people become more senior, their need for certainty drops and their need for autonomy grows. So the executives shaping the message often feel the least need for the clarity their people still require as a baseline.
The fairness finding also impacts women and individual contributors more, the people often furthest from the decisions. If the rationale for change resides only in the executive team's heads, those most sensitive to fairness are left to wonder and fill in the gaps.
What This Means for Internal Comms
Work has changed underneath internal comms, and the function is now needed to solve a different organizational problem.
The old problem was an information gap: people didn't know what was happening, so we informed them through well-crafted messages, cascades, town halls, leader talking points, and channel plans. That work still matters, but it serves the hygiene needs. Doing it well earns you a pass, not impact.
The new problem is a fairness and agency gap. People want to understand why decisions were made, see that the process was even-handed, and have a genuine way to contribute.
The role has evolved beyond keeping people informed. Now it's about helping people understand, contribute, and commit. This work looks less like producing content and more like advising leaders, enabling alignment and building capability.
Where to Start
- Communicate the why, always. Fairness is now the strongest driver. Nudge leaders to share the rationale and criteria behind decisions, even unpopular ones. People accept outcomes they don't love when the process is visibly fair.
- Move from cascade to conversation. Create genuine ways for people to shape how change lands in their area, then show what their input changed. Feedback that disappears into a void does more harm than not asking at all.
- Build in choice. Frame the destination and boundaries, then leave room for teams to work out the how. The same goes for channels: let people choose how and when they consume updates.
- Recognize contribution wherever it sits. Status today is about expertise and value, so spotlight the analyst, call center staff, and the frontline team lead alongside the leaders.
- Offer clarity, not false certainty. Say what's known, what isn't, and when people will hear more. Then coach your leaders on their blind spots. They often under-communicate because they need less certainty than their teams do, and because they're so close to the strategy launch or change, they assume it's understood.
The needs have flipped, and IC now has a choice: keep perfecting information delivery, or step into the harder work of making change feel fair, participative and credible.