$10 Trillion and Counting

What Gallup’s 2026 report tells us – and the problem isn’t AI

I’ll be honest - I’m sad that my predictions came true.

Back in November 2025, I spoke at an IABC Calgary event and made two predictions:

• global employee engagement would drop back to 2020 levels

• the cost of that disengagement would rise past the reported $8.9 trillion

Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report has just confirmed both.

Engagement sits at 20% globally - its lowest since 2020, falling for the second year in a row. And it’s costing $10 trillion. That’s 9% of everything the global economy produces.

What’s scarier is that not a single region in the world improved its engagement levels in the past year. Wherever you are in the world, the picture is the same and we’re still not addressing the real problem.

It’s not AI

A lot of people will point to artificial intelligence (AI). The disruption, the uncertainty, the worry about jobs disappearing. It feels like the obvious explanation.

But Gallup’s data says otherwise. 65% of workers (in organizations that have introduced AI) say it’s actually helped them get more done personally. People are generally fine with the tools.

The problem is that all those small individual gains aren’t adding up to anything at the company level - 89% of executives report no measurable improvement in overall productivity.

That gap exists because of people problems, not technology problems. If teams are disengaged, unclear on direction and led by managers who are burnt out, the best AI tools in the world won’t move the needle.

You can give everyone a faster car but if they don’t know where they’re going, it’s just not going to help.

So, what is causing it?

Gallup doesn’t name specific causes, but the patterns in the data are hard to ignore.

One of the things Gallup measures is whether people feel there are decent job opportunities out there for them - a sense that they have choices about where they work and how.

In 2025, that confidence dropped sharply for one particular group: people whose jobs could be done remotely, and who had been working from home, yet were told to come back to the office. Their confidence dropped 14 points in a single year.

The people most affected by return-to-office mandates are the people who feel worst about their working lives.

And it makes sense when you think about it: you had flexibility, it worked, and then it was taken away without a clear reason. So, you want to leave but there are fewer flexible roles to move to. So, you're forced stay and you disengage. That’s the spiral the data is reflecting.

It’s also worth saying, returning to the office isn’t always wrong. Some businesses genuinely benefit from in-person collaboration. The issue has never been the decision itself - it’s been the communication around it. The lack of honesty about the real reasons, the absence of employee input and the “because we said so” energy that erodes trust far faster than any policy change.

The report is also completely silent on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Not a single mention and that silence sends its own signal. When organizations quietly step back from inclusion commitments, the people who relied on them don’t stop noticing, they stop trusting altogether.

A fair challenge

I can already hear the response from some leaders: “Our engagement survey results look fine.” And maybe they do on paper.

But annual surveys (where people often answer cautiously, unsure whether their manager will see the results) are a blunt instrument. They capture a single moment, not a slow drift. And they often measure whether people are just satisfied, not the deeper stuff Gallup is tracking: whether they genuinely care about their work.

A disengaged employee doesn’t usually look disengaged. They show up, they answer emails, they sit in the meetings. But they’re not bringing the best of themselves to the table - and that’s the quiet cost.

The ideas not shared, the problems not flagged, the customers not delighted, the colleague not supported. It adds up slowly and invisibly, until it shows up in your numbers.

The manager in the middle

Manager engagement has dropped 9 points since 2022 - with 5 of those points disappearing in a single year.

Until recently, managers tended to be more invested in their work than the people they led - Gallup calls this the “engagement premium.” Well, that premium has gone. Managers are now only as engaged as their teams.

This matters enormously, because almost everything that makes an employee feel engaged happens through their manager. Knowing what’s expected of them. Feeling like someone at work actually cares about them. Getting a genuine conversation about how they’re doing. Being recognized for good work.

A manager who is checked out isn’t having any of those conversations.

People don’t leave organizations. They leave managers.

It's the same spiral we saw with the return to office scenario and it plays out just as fast. If a manager is disengaged, the people who can leave will. The ones who can't, will stay and disengage instead. The organization loses either way.

And to be fair to managers: this isn’t about them not caring. Gallup’s data shows that leaders and senior managers actually report more stress, sadness, anger and loneliness than the people they manage.

They’re just caught between a leadership team that isn’t communicating clearly enough and teams that are looking to them for answers they don’t have - while nobody is looking after them.

What actually needs to change

Gallup found that in best-practice organizations, 79% of managers are engaged, compared to 22% globally. Nearly four times the average.

And these aren’t unicorn companies. They span every industry and region. What they have in common is that they treat engagement as a core part of how they run the business; not a wellbeing initiative or a line on an HR report.

The answer isn’t more communication. It’s better communication - at every level, in both directions.

That means leaders communicating with enough clarity and honesty that managers can actually translate it for their teams. It means giving managers the skills and the space to have real human conversations - not just updates and targets, but the check-ins, the recognition, the “how are you actually doing” conversations that make people feel like they matter.

This is why the focus on people has never been more important - and why I created the Resonate with People™ program. To ensure that communication is viewed as an integral part of business strategy and success, not an afterthought.

We need to move from just good intentions to truly intentional communication and engagement - for both employees and their managers.

The real competition isn’t human vs machine

There’s a lot of noise right now about AI replacing people. But Gallup’s data tells a different story. The biggest threat to organizational performance isn’t the technology - it’s the breakdown in human connection that was already happening before AI arrived.

People not feeling heard. Managers not feeling supported. Leaders not communicating with enough honesty or clarity for any of it to land.

We’ve spent the last few years asking whether machines can do what humans do.

The more urgent question is whether we're actually letting humans do what humans do best - connect, lead, trust and care.

$10 trillion is a number that should stop people in their tracks. But so should the 64% of the global workforce just going through the motions, in workplaces that have quietly stopped making them feel like they matter.

AI didn’t cause this. And a pop-up employee engagement initiative isn’t the answer. What will fix it, is the genuine investment in people.

Interested in bringing the Resonate with People™ program into your organization? Get in touch or download the free guide to learn more.