If you want to understand the health of an organisation, look at its managers. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report shows that global employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level since 2020, and that the decline is concentrated in one group: people who manage others.
The numbers
Manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025. Engagement among individual contributors, by contrast, has been broadly flat for three years. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy around $10 trillion a year. The gap between average and excellent is large: best-practice organisations report manager engagement of 79%, nearly four times the global figure.
Why managers matter so much
Managers translate strategy into daily work. When they are disengaged, the effect multiplies across every team they lead. The same report shows the effect on technology adoption: employees whose managers actively support the use of AI are 8.7 times more likely to say AI has transformed their work. As Gallup CEO Jon Clifton put it, “even the most sophisticated neural network cannot overcome an indifferent team leader.”
What leaders can do
- Treat manager development as a strategic investment, not an HR programme.
- Reduce administrative load on managers so they have time to coach.
- Measure manager engagement separately; it is an early warning signal for the whole company.
Sources
Photo: Dylan Gillis / Unsplash