Keeping employees engaged ‘isn’t about gimmicks, it’s about listening’

As my colleague Orianna Rosa Royle writes in her opening essay, employees are clear: engagement “isn’t about gimmicks, it’s about listening.” Orianna also wrote about worker wellness and work-life balance as part of our editorial package.

Be sure to also check out Sara Braun’s article on Atlassian’s “Team Anywhere” remote work policy and a story by Beth Greenfield on the employee volunteer program at Cisco, as well as Brit Morse’s look at the parental leave policy at Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the changing DEI landscape in corporate America.

I will be heading to the Great Place To Work For All Summit in Las Vegas next week, where I will speak with Penny Pennington about her strategy in leading Edward Jones. I’ll also speak with Jim Kavanaugh, co-founder and CEO of WWT, and Marriott International CEO Tony Capuano about what got their companies on the list, and how they’re leading in this environment. We’ll be joined by members of the Coins2Day CEO Initiative and other leaders of companies on this year’s list.

If you can’t make that, I invite you to join us on April 30 at 12 p.m. EST for a live webinar with Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work. We’ll talk about redefining leadership and mastering change in a complex world.  Here’s a link to register for that event.

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]

Top news

Trump’s tariff announcement begins at 4 p.m. ET. The president will outline his new international trade tax regime at a Rose Garden event after the markets close. White House officials were still hashing out the details late Tuesday.

Manufacturers are nervous. Of the 84 firms in Texas surveyed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas this month, many say they’re frustrated by President Trump’s changing approach to tariffs and uncertainty around how the economy will react to them. “The known risk currently seems to outweigh the unknown opportunity,” one respondent said. 

“The investor community is universally anxious,” Robert Tipp, the head of global bonds at asset manager PGIM, told the FT. “People [are] reducing risk and backing away from credit, backing away from the dollar, backing away from stocks,” he said.

The dollar is weakening. Currency traders have wiped 4% off the value of USD—as measured by the DXY dollar index—since the beginning of the year.

Asia is ready to respond. Vietnam and India have offered to lower tariffs. Japan, South Korea, and Australia tried to negotiate with Washington but got nowhere. China says it’s ready for war.

Trump thinks the tariffs will raise $600 billion to $700 billion in new revenues annually. But that “is not even in the realm of possibility,” according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s. “If you get to $100 billion to $200 billion, you’ll be pretty lucky.”

TikTok’s fate will be decided today. The app has until Saturday to make a deal to sell itself to a U.S. Entity or be banned, due to its links to China. Trump will meet with aides today to discuss its future. Blackstone, Oracle, MrBeast and Jesse Tinsley, Frank McCourt and Kevin O'Leary, and Perplexity are among the candidates interested in taking it over. 

Democratic judge wins in Wisconsin. Susan Crawford won 55% of the vote despite Elon Musk bankrolling the Republican candidate. The GOP retained the other special election seats in Florida.

Mike Waltz used Gmail for government business. It’s even less secure than Signal.

Drug tests for Musk? Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) Introduced a bill that would require Elon Musk and his DOGE staff to be routinely tested for drugs. Musk has a long history of drug use. The bill is not likely to pass.

OpenAI goes open. On the heels of the announcement that OpenAI raised $40 billion—in what is now the biggest investment funding round ever by a private tech company—CEO Sam Altman announced the AI giant is making an open-source AI model for the first time since 2019. That means outsiders will get to see how the model processes information. 

Circle files to go public. Crypto firm Circle Internet Financial filed for an IPO on Tuesday, making the second time the issuer of USD Coin has sought to become a public company. Circle earned more than $1.6 billion in revenue in 2024. 

Val Kilmer died. The star of Batman Forever and Top Gun was 65. 

The markets

• The S&P 500 added 0.38% yesterday to close at 5,633.07. The index is down 4.23% YTD. S&P futures were off 0.23% this morning, premarket. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.87%. MicroStrategy was up 6.16% and is now up 5.66% YTD (although it remains far below its all-time high). Tesla was up 3.59% after Attorney General Pam Bondi threatened to imprison anyone who damages a vehicle or dealership. Stocks in Japan were mixed but Europe declined in early trading. The Euro Stoxx 600 was down 0.47% this morning.

From the analysts 

• Goldman Sachs on hiring: “Most surveyed analysts did not expect firms to reduce hiring as a result of government policy changes and expected demand to remain healthy this year, but roughly half of surveyed analysts reported that firms now forecast a higher probability of recession within the next 12 months than they did at the beginning of the year,” per Jan Hatzius et al.
• Ark Invest on the xAI and X merger: “Strategically, the merger gives xAI more direct control over its distribution and its exclusive data while allowing X to integrate AI into its platform more seamlessly… vertical integration could prove the winning strategy in AI. Ford achieved dominance in the automotive industry by vertically integrating mass production all the way through rubber manufacturing in the early 20th century,” per Brett Winton.
• Apollo on the U.S. Consumer: “Household sector leverage and banking sector leverage have declined significantly since 2008, see chart below. Over the same period, federal government leverage has increased significantly, and corporate leverage has moved sideways. The bottom line is that the private sector in the US is in incredibly good shape,” per Torsten Sløk.

Around the watercooler

The mastermind behind Europe’s hottest new car brand is leaving Volkswagen in a shock departure by Christiaan Hetzner

Mark Cuban warns Trump’s tariffs mean his Cost Plus Drugs ‘won’t have a choice’ but to raise prices for consumers by Ani Freedman

Shake Shack founder shares the green flags he looks for in new hires: ‘I really don’t give a damn what your IQ is’ by Preston Fore

These are the people who want to buy 23andMe by Lila MacLellan

Wall Street hails Charlie Javice conviction—but wonders how JP Morgan failed to catch young woman’s $175 million fraud by Luisa Beltran