Managers are increasingly on the back foot. And staff are losing momentum
According to a Gallup survey, leaders’ engagement has fallen by nine percentage points since 2022: it now stands at 22 per cent
Key points
Offices are reopening and, as happens every September, there is renewed talk of ‘back-to-work blues’. It is a pity that the malaise pervading the workplace is not merely a passing bout of exhaustion, but rather a structural condition affecting workers. This is confirmed by the ‘State of the Global Workplace 2026’ report by Gallup, the US research firm known for its political polls, which also conducts the world’s largest annual study on the experience of employees.
The 2026 edition reveals that global employee engagement fell to 20 per cent in 2025, from a peak of 23 per cent reached in 2022, hitting its lowest level since 2020. According to analysts’ estimates, this decline would directly result in a loss of productivity estimated at 10,000 billion dollars for the global economy, equivalent to 9 per cent of GDP. Employee engagement, as defined by Gallup, measures the psychological connection that workers have with their job, their team and their employer. And analyses carried out over the years have consistently shown that employees who are unengaged or actively disengaged lead to less profitable organisations, which, in turn, results in slower economic growth.
Italia is also contributing to this phenomenon, with a participation rate of 11 per cent, which is lower than the European average (12 per cent), despite having remained broadly stable in recent years following a sharp drop of four points between 2014 and 2015.
The driving factor
The surprising finding in the study is that the recent decline in employee engagement appears to be driven in particular by the low levels of engagement among managers.
Since 2022, managerial engagement has fallen by nine percentage points. According to the report, between 2024 and 2025 alone it is expected to have fallen by five percentage points, dropping from 27 per cent to 22 per cent. ‘In short,’ the report states, ‘managers once enjoyed an “engagement premium” at work, but their engagement is increasingly limited’. Unless, that is, they work for organisations that adopt best practices. In that case, Gallup notes, 79 per cent of managers feel engaged in their work – almost four times the global average.
