Manager engagement declines: what it means for teams

Organisations may have spent the last few years investing in employee experience, wellbeing and productivity. Yet, according to the 2026 State of the Global Workplace report by Gallup, many of the expected gains from those investments are not materialising.

The global state of employee engagement

Global employee engagement has declined to 20%, marking a second consecutive annual drop and taking it back down to its lowest level since 2020.

The largest drop was in South Asia, which declined by 5 percentage points, but no region in the world saw an increase in engagement in 2025.

Despite recent years being a cause for concern, employee engagement stands 8% higher than it did in Gallup’s first measurement in 2009.

Since each percentage point represents approximately 21 million employees around the world, the workplace has improved for a huge number of people over the last 17 years.

Manager engagement continues to fall

One of the most important (and often overlooked) reasons for the current engagement slump sits with one specific group: managers.

Since 2022, manager engagement has fallen by 9%, with the sharpest decrease occurring between 2024 and 2025, falling from 27% to 22%.

This shift is substantial. Managers have traditionally been more engaged than the teams they lead, often acting as a stabilising force. Many of them carry multiple responsibilities such as reporting to shareholders, allocating team resources, handling budgets, managing team wellbeing, absence and leave, and overseeing the professional development of their team members.

The report also highlights that managers tend to experience a higher rate of negative emotions than those they lead, including higher daily stress, anger and loneliness, and the same level of daily sadness as their individual contributor colleagues.

This may well mean that managers, typically tasked with supporting their team members’ wellbeing, are at risk of burnout and poor wellbeing themselves.

The link between manager engagement and absence

While the report does not explicitly measure absence, the implications are clear when viewed alongside the global trends we’re seeing amongst managers.

Managers play a central role in:

Monitoring employee wellbeing
Managing workload and capacity
Encouraging appropriate use of annual leave
Supporting return-to-work processes following absence
Having empathetic conversations surrounding mental health, performance, and professional development

When manager engagement declines, these activities may become deprioritised or inconsistently applied.

At the same time, the report shows that 40% of employees globally experience daily stress – a widely-recognised driver of both short and long-term absence.

Disengaged or overstretched managers may be less willing or able to intervene in team issues, increasing the likelihood that these issues escalate into absence. Furthermore, with a disengaged manager, employees are more likely to grow resentful in their own roles due to a lack of support, direction or clear progression pathways.

Supporting managers to support their teams

According to Gallup research, managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team-level employee engagement.

That means that more than any other role in an organiation, managers determine whether employees are engaged or not.

Higher engagement means better productivity, less absenteeism, more organisational growth and better employee retention – so it pays to invest in manager development so that they can better support their colleagues.

To do so, organisations must have clear policies and processes in place, especially when it comes to managing team absence, leave and productivity. That gives managers clear procedures to follow, ensuring they’re applied consistently so that every employee is treating fairly.

Alleviating some of the manual burden is a great starting point in freeing up managerial capacity, so that their time may be better spent on more strategic and creative work.

Not only that, but an absence management system can provide invaluable insights on absence trends, helping to flag any individuals who appear to be taking more absence than usual. This data enables managers and HR to investigate cases of frequent absence, ensuring conversations are had with the absent individual to understand the root cause and provide appropriate support or interventions.

Finally, managerial training is still an underexplored tool for many organisations. ‘Accidental’ managers are those that haven’t received any formal leadership or management training to help them in their new role – and a recent study by the Chartered Management Institute found that this was the case for a staggering 82% of bosses.

That could go some way in explaining why managers often report feeling uncomfortable having conversations around mental health with their coworkers – with less than 24% saying they’ve received no training on the subject.

Mental ill health is now the main cause of long-term sickness absence in the UK. That’s something that organisations can respond to, by providing their managers with the tools and resources they need to successfully support their colleagues through difficult periods, potentially limiting and reducing the amount of absence taken, and boosting engagement in the process.