A summary of Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report

There’s a quiet crisis unfolding in workplaces around the world, and the numbers make uncomfortable reading for anyone who leads a team or runs a business.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 Report, the world’s largest ongoing study of the employee experience, reveals that global employee engagement has fallen to just 20%. That’s the lowest level since 2020, and the first time engagement has dropped for two consecutive years. Put simply: only one in five employees is genuinely engaged at work.

Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the global economy approximately $10 trillion in lost productivity in 2025 that is roughly 9% of global GDP.

If you’re a manager or business owner reading that figure and thinking it sounds like someone else’s problem, it’s worth pausing. Because the data suggests the root cause is closer to home than most organisations would like to admit.

The Manager Problem

Here’s where the report gets particularly striking. The biggest driver of the recent decline in engagement isn’t frontline workers, it’s managers themselves.

Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped by nine percentage points, with the sharpest fall happening between 2024 and 2025. Manager engagement now sits at just 22% globally, almost identical to that of those they lead. For years, managers enjoyed what Gallup called an “engagement premium,” being noticeably more engaged than their teams. That premium has all but disappeared.

This matters enormously because we know from decades of research that the manager is the single biggest influence on team engagement. When managers are struggling with workload, lack of support, expanding team sizes, or unclear purpose, those struggles ripple outward to every person they lead.

The good news is that disengaged managers are not inevitable. Gallup found that in best-practice organisations, 79% of managers are engaged , which is nearly four times the global average. These organisations, spanning all regions and industries, have made employee and manager engagement a deliberate, long-term business priority. That gap between 22% and 79% represents an enormous opportunity for businesses willing to invest in their people.

AI Isn’t Fixing the Problem — People Are

Much of this year’s report focuses on artificial intelligence and what it means for the world of work. The findings challenge some of the more optimistic narratives around AI adoption.

Despite roughly $40 billion in enterprise AI investment, a recent MIT study found that 95% of organisations have seen zero measurable impact on profits. Similarly, an NBER survey of nearly 6,000 global executives found that 89% report no impact on labour productivity. Gallup’s own data shows that only 12% of employees in AI-implemented organisations strongly agree that AI has transformed how work gets done.
So what’s holding AI back? According to Gallup it’s the manager.

Employees whose manager actively champions their team’s use of AI are 8.7 times more likely to say AI has transformed how work gets done in their organisation, and 7.4 times more likely to say AI gives them more opportunities to do what they do best. Yet fewer than a third of employees in AI-implementing organisations say their manager actively supports that adoption.

The lesson here isn’t that AI doesn’t work, it’s that technology without engaged, capable people leadership consistently underperforms. As OpenAI’s own 2025 enterprise report noted, the primary constraints for organisations are no longer model performance but “organisational readiness and implementation.” In plain terms: the bottleneck is human.

The Emotional State of the Workplace

Beyond engagement, the report examines employee well-being, and the picture is mixed.

On a positive note, the percentage of employees who describe themselves as “thriving” rose by one point in 2025, to 34%, after three years of decline. That’s a welcome uptick, but context matters: stress, anger and sadness among workers all remain above pre-pandemic levels, suggesting that for many people, the workplace still feels harder than it used to.

Perhaps the most striking finding in this section relates to leaders themselves. Those at the top of the hierarchy report higher engagement and better life evaluations overall, but they also report substantially more stress (+7 points compared to individual contributors), anger (+12), sadness (+11) and loneliness (+10) on a day-to-day basis.

Leadership can be both meaningful and genuinely hard. The emotional demands on those who lead are real, and they deserve to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as “part of the job.”

Gallup’s research also found that well-being is strongest when employees feel their work is intrinsically rewarding, that it improves the lives of others, and that they have some choice in what they do. These aren’t abstract ideals; they’re practical levers that thoughtful leaders can influence every day.

What This Means for Your Organisation

If you’re a manager or business owner trying to make sense of all this, here are the practical takeaways:

• Engagement starts with the manager. Your team’s engagement is shaped more by their direct line manager than by any other single factor, including pay, perks or office environment. Investing in manager development is not a “nice to have.” It is foundational.
• Emotional intelligence is a business skill. The capacity to understand your own emotions, read the emotions of others, manage pressure and build trust  are precisely the qualities that determine whether a manager lifts or depresses team performance. The evidence is clear that emotionally intelligent leaders build better, more engaged teams.
• Well-being and performance are connected. Stressed, emotionally depleted leaders do not produce thriving teams. Looking after the people at the top, ensuring they have the self-awareness and tools to lead effectively, protects the whole organisation.
• Technology won’t save you without people leadership. Whether your business is investing in AI or simply trying to navigate a more demanding operating environment, the quality of your management is the decisive variable. The organisations achieving best-practice engagement aren’t doing anything magical, they are prioritising their people, consistently and deliberately.

The Gallup report is a timely reminder that in a world of rapid technological change, the human dimension of leadership has never mattered more. The question for every manager and business owner is simply this: what are you doing about it?

This blog summarises key findings from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report. You can download the 2026 report here.

If you’d like to explore how emotional intelligence development or psychological wellbeing programmes could support your team’s engagement, get in touch at julie@julieallenconsulting.com or call +44 28 9042 4746.