To me, the real difference is knowing why. If you don't tell me why, I'm going to assume the worst. And history has shown that at least one of my co-workers will, too, and he or she will go around to everyone else and talk about these fears. Since they can't be countered (co-workers don't have any information about the situation), the fears will fester and rot until someone finally does explain the situation.

In most companies, that explanation never comes. After you've been there a few years, you've got an insane backlog of things you're still worried about. You'll probably have forgotten most of them at any given time, but it just takes a small trigger to bring it back to active memory.

That's the real morale killer.