Gallup just released its 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, surveying millions of employees across 160+ countries.
And buried in 251 pages of data are three insights every leader needs to know—especially if your team isn’t saying these things out loud.
Here’s the breakdown for you:
1. Your managers are struggling
The headline stat:
Manager engagement has dropped a whopping 9 points since 2022. In the US, only 34% of managers are engaged at work. In fact, it’s managers’ lack of engagement that accounts for most of the recent downturn in overall employee engagement.
Why it matters:
Managers used to be more engaged than the people they lead. Now, that “engagement premium” has disappeared. And when your managers check out, your entire team follows.
What to do about it:
It’s too easy to treat managers as just executors and supervisors. But they’re so much more than that.
Joe Scarlett, former CEO of Tractor Supply, saw his managers as keepers of culture. As he told me in our 2024 conversation:
“We talk about our culture and our values all the time. And we tell our managers: beside your title as a store manager, you’re also the Minister of Culture for your business unit. It’s up to you to continue to promote the culture, encourage the culture, and practice the culture.”
When you see managers that way, you invest in them differently. You look for ways to empower them with the training, support, and resources they need to be those culture carriers. You trust them to do more than just check off boxes—and that trust creates real engagement.
And great results tend to follow: Gallup also found that best-practice organizations achieve 79% manager engagement—nearly quadruple the global average.
2. Your people are more worried about AI than they’re letting on
The headline stat:
18% of U.S. employees say it’s likely their job will be eliminated in the next 5 years due to AI or automation. In organizations that have already implemented AI, that jumps to 23%. And in some industries—finance, insurance, and technology—it’s over 30%.
Why it matters:
You may believe AI will create more opportunities than it eliminates, but your team may not see it the same way. And that fear is affecting how they show up. It might also mean they’re quietly looking for another role altogether.
What to do about it:
When you talk about AI with your team, show how it’s a growth tool, not a productivity tool. Eric Kutcher, a Senior Partner at McKinsey, put it perfectly when he joined How Leaders Lead recently.
In his words, “Most leaders realize it’s super hard to move the organization to get excited about a world where they have fewer employees.” Instead, he wants leaders to talk about AI as a way to add new areas of growth without having to add more heads. How can AI help you pursue new ideas or expand a core part of the business?
When you talk about AI as a way to expand what your team can do—not replace what they do—you change the conversation. You make it about opportunity, not loss, and you give people a real reason to engage with the technology instead of fearing it.
3. Most of your team isn’t engaged
The headline stat:
Only 31% of U.S. workers are engaged at work. So statistically speaking, 69% of your team is either not engaged (52%) or actively disengaged (17%) – yikes.
Why it matters:
Employee engagement isn’t just a squishy, feel-good metric. It shows up in how people feel every day. Disengaged employees report higher stress, more anger and sadness, and lower life satisfaction.
It also shows up in business outcomes: globally, low engagement cost the economy $10 trillion in lost productivity last year alone.
What to do about it:
Engagement comes from feeling like your work matters and that you have a real voice in how it gets done.
Oscar Munoz, former CEO of United Airlines, learned this early in his turnaround of the company. He was walking through a plane talking to flight attendants when one of them broke down. She told him she was exhausted from constantly apologizing—for bad coffee, for delays, for policies she had no control over.
Oscar quickly realized that achieving all his lofty turnaround goals would be impossible with a workforce that felt like that.
As he told me: “Constantly having to apologize for things and policies and procedures and processes that you have nothing to do with—having no input or value—makes you become disengaged, disenfranchised, and disillusioned.”
His top priority became regaining the trust of his employees, and it became the heart of their turnaround success story.
Employee engagement isn’t a “would-be-nice” extra you can fix with a free lunch or a foosball table. It’s built in the fundamentals – listening to employees, giving them real agency in their work, and articulating a clear vision of why that work matters. When you get it right, all your other goals get easier.
—
If you’re reading this and thinking, “My team would tell me if something was wrong,” I’d ask: would they?
Because Gallup’s data suggests millions of employees are struggling—with disengaged managers, fear about AI, and feeling disillusioned by their work. And they’re quietly checking out.
But as I always say, the first step to fixing any issue is to define reality. After reading this, you have it: the cold, hard numbers on what teams are experiencing.
Now, it’s time to understand how these trends might be showing up for your people. And the only way to do that is to actually ask. Not in an annual survey. Not in a town hall where no one speaks up. But in real conversations with your managers, your team members, and the people doing the work every day.
Then listen—really listen—and be ready to act on what you hear.
Which of these stats surprises you most? Drop a comment so I can get your take.
Source: Gallup 2026 State of the Workplace Report
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