I don't think it's naive to wonder about future staffing plans or employee relations. Some businesses genuinely see an alignment between profitability and hirin

I don't think it's naive to wonder about future staffing plans or employee relations. Some businesses genuinely see an alignment between profitability and hiring, or between profitability and increasing their employee morale. Others will cynically parrot these things as "Important" but will not really treat them as such. To find out what category your company belongs to, it helps to see how the conversations they have with owners differs from those that they have with the workforce. I once worked for a company that was honest to a fault with all of us. Potential layoffs were telegraphed months in advance. The things they told us they cared about happened to match up with their subsequent actions. I've also worked for places where the internal employee communication was so clearly disingenuous that we started to just invert whatever was said. That had a material negative effect on the business, as all the best talent left when they could, leaving an organization that just couldn't perform (and profit!) as well as it could have.