Every year Gallup surveys employees around the world for its State of the Global Workplace report. The 2026 edition, which covers 2025, carries an uncomfortable number: only 20% of employees are engaged at work. It is the lowest level since 2020.
The rest are not idle. 64% are “not engaged”: they do what is asked, and little more. 16% are “actively disengaged”: unhappy at work, and often letting it show. Gallup's figure for the Middle East and North Africa is lower still, at 14%.
What engagement means
Engagement is not happiness, and it is not a perk. Gallup describes engaged employees as people who are involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. In practice, they are the people who notice a problem and fix it, suggest a better way, and stay when it gets difficult.
What it costs
Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity last year, roughly 9% of global GDP. Inside one organisation the cost is less visible but familiar: work done twice, ideas nobody raises, good people who leave, and improvement efforts that start strong and fade.
The figure leaders should read twice
The sharpest fall in the 2026 report is not among employees but among managers. Manager engagement dropped from 27% to 22% in one year, the largest one-year fall Gallup has recorded for managers.
That matters because managers carry engagement for everyone else. Gallup's earlier research found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in engagement between teams. A disengaged manager rarely leads an engaged team.
Five things leaders can do
1. Start with managers. Before asking teams to be engaged, ask what their managers need: clear priorities, time with their people, and someone who listens to them.
2. Answer every idea. Few things disengage people faster than a suggestion that disappears. A clear “yes”, “not now” or “no, because…”, with a name and a date, tells people their thinking counts.
3. Give people a part in the improvement, not only the result. Engagement grows when people solve problems in their own work rather than receive solutions designed elsewhere.
4. Recognise effort honestly and close to the work. Specific, timely thanks from the person who saw the work matters more than an annual award.
5. Measure it, then act on it. A survey that leads to nothing does more harm than no survey. Share the results, choose one or two actions, and report back on them.
A question for this week
Ask your managers one question: when did someone on your team last improve the way the work is done, and what happened to their idea? The answers will tell you more about engagement than any headline figure.
How Tahseen can help: Tahseen gives every idea an owner and an answer, lets teams run their own improvement projects with a coach beside them, and shows recognition where people can see it. If you would like to talk about engagement in your organisation, write to us at hello@tahseen.om.