Gallup recently released its 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, and the findings on employee engagement are less than stellar — especially when it comes to those managing teams.
Let’s start with the good news: When you look at the macro, engagement is trending upwards. In 2009, the first year of Gallup’s study, the percentage of engaged employees was just 12%. In 2024, that number was 21%. However, this reflects a 2% drop from 2022 and 2023, when engagement was at a historical high of 23%.
This past year marks only the second time that engagement has declined in the last 12 years, costing the global economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity.
So what’s causing this drop in engagement? The answer lies with managers, whose engagement is linked to individual contributor engagement. This is an emerging trend that Gallup has been studying in recent years, and it shows up again in its 2025 report.
Managers experienced the sharpest decline in engagement (from 30% to 27%) than any other worker category. Young managers under age 35 and female managers were the most affected, dropping five and seven points, respectively.
Shrinking budgets, rapidly evolving expectations, technology disruptions, managing hybrid teams and high turnover rates are all factors taking a unique toll on managers.
As leaders, we need to support managers to reverse declines in employee engagement and safeguard profitability and productivity. This requires reimagining what it even means to be a manager in today’s workplace, which is increasingly demanding and complex thanks to the aforementioned factors.
Investing in manager development is not only an investment in their well‑being, it’s a business imperative. Fewer than half of the world’s managers report receiving training for their jobs; however, businesses that provided training saw a 20 to 28% performance improvement.
If we want thriving teams and sustainable success, it starts with empowering the people who lead them.
