Engagement Is a Word Bosses Use

Engagement Is a Word Bosses Use

Gallup says global engagement just fell to its lowest point since 2020, and the people cracking hardest are the managers nobody ever trained.

Stavros Roussos

An empty meeting room with chairs around a table, no people and no brands, for the piece on collapsing employee engagement and the untrained managers who take the worst of it

Photo Raj Rana / Unsplash

Engagement is a boss word. It sounds like something you feel; it is scored like something you owe.

Gallup puts global engagement at 20 percent in 2025, the lowest since 2020, an estimated $10 trillion in lost productivity. But read who fell: managers, from 31 percent in 2022 to 22 in 2025, while the people they manage barely moved. And only 44 percent of managers have ever had any management training. Companies optimized away the training, the slack, and the second manager, then acted surprised when the survey came back low. You cannot meditate your way out of a job designed to be impossible. Train the people you put in charge. Give them fewer to be in charge of.