Engagement Just Hit a Five-Year Low. Here’s What Happened.
Gallup just reported that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025. That is the lowest it has been in five years, and it is costing the world economy around $10 trillion in lost productivity.
The immediate reflex is to blame the workforce. “People don’t want to work anymore.” “Gen Z checked out.” “It’s the quiet quitting thing.”
In this article, I’m going to push back on all of it. Because the data tells a different story, and it points somewhere most leaders are not looking.
The disengagement starts one level up
Look closer at the same Gallup report and you find the real fault line.
Manager engagement dropped five points in a single year, from 27% to 22%, and it is down nine points since 2022. Managers used to carry an engagement premium. They were the most plugged-in people in the building. Not anymore. Today they are barely more engaged than the people they lead. They are what I call, Tolerators… tolerating mediocre behavior, work ethic, and engagement to just get by and get paid.
This matters because
you cannot ask a checked-out manager to build a fired-up team. Engagement rolls downhill. When the person setting the tone for eight or ten people is running on empty, every one of those people feels it, and starts to mimic what was modeled to them.
The trust is still there. The energy is gone.
Here is what makes this sneaky. In our National Workplace Trends Study, 75% of workers told us they respect and trust their manager, and that number climbs to 80% among people who manage others themselves. So your managers are not disliked. They are not villains. Your people still believe in them.
They’re just exhausted, under-supported, and quietly settling into a smaller version of the job. And because they are still well-liked and still hitting their numbers, nobody flags it. That’s the trap. The most overlooked Tolerator in your company is rarely the loud underperformer. It’s the well-respected manager you have allowed to coast on fumes.
Bar Raisers™ become your biggest asset for engagement.
This is where the Bar Raisers™ lens matters most. A Bar Raiser™ brings Contagious Excellence and a multiplier mindset. Their standard spreads without a word, and average becomes uncomfortable for everyone around them. A Tolerator does the opposite. They make “good enough” feel normal, and they do it quietly.
A burned-out manager did not wake up one day and decide to settle. They got handed more people, more challenges, and less support, so they stopped trying. That’s not a character flaw. It’s what happens when no one invites them to rise, and no one gives them the tools to.
The cost
While you are pouring retention budget into the front line, and leadership development at the executive level, the disengagement at the middle manager level is quietly bleeding out your best people. Our research found that 29% of workers would not recommend their workplace to anyone. That is almost one in three. And 25% say their workplace is outright toxic.
Those numbers do not come from one bad apple on the night shift. They come from teams led by people who used to bring energy and no longer do, because the system around them ran them into the ground and called it leadership.
Here’s the opinion I will stand on: most companies do not have an engagement problem. They have a middle manager development problem they have mislabeled as an engagement problem.
Every organization has a standard problem disguised as a performance and retention problem.
What to do Monday morning
The Bar Raisers™ DNA has 12 unstoppable traits, and the one I would put to work first here is number 12: the Multiplier Mindset. A Bar Raiser™ does not just inspire people. They invest in them. They see potential others miss, they address growth gaps, and they deliberately create a moment for people to grow.
They don’t just raise the bar. They raise the person.
So on Monday, don’t start with the front line, or even the executive team. Start in the middle. Pick one manager you have quietly written off as “fine” and ask yourself an honest question: when is the last time I developed this person instead of just delegating to them?
❌ Don’t fix this with another all-hands pep talk.
❌ Don’t pour the whole retention budget into the front line and ignore the manager.
Do this instead 👇
✅ Sit down with that manager to re-recruit them, not to review their metrics.
✅ Ask what is draining them, and what they actually want to grow toward.
✅ Hand them one real investment this week: a stretch project, a coaching conversation, or a decision you trust them to own.
You re-engage a team by re-engaging the person who leads it.
About Betsy:
Betsy Allen-Manning is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. She’s a high-energy leadership keynote speaker and creator of the Bar Raisers™ Movement: a proprietary system redefining how organizations are approaching performance, leadership, and culture. Featured on FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC, and TEDx, Betsy works with organizations across corporate, franchise, association, nonprofit, and government sectors. She’s the lead researcher behind the National Workplace Trends Study, and delivers programs around her Bar Raisers™ and Leadership Mastery frameworks. She is the founder of Destination Workplace®, an award-winning leadership development firm in Dallas, Texas.
Your managers don’t need another motivational email. They need to be developed. That’s exactly what we build at
Destination Workplace®. Our leadership development programs turn worn-out managers into Bar Raiser™ leaders - who create teams people don’t want to leave.
