SINGAPORE: In 2024, global employee engagement dropped from 23 per cent to 21 per cent, said Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2025 report. This decline – only the second in more than a decade, noted Gallup – has cost the world economy an estimated US$438 billion in lost productivity. And the primary driver behind this sobering picture? Manager disengagement.
We’ve all heard the saying “People don’t quit jobs; they quit bad managers.” Gallup calls this a “breakdown”: A cascading effect where disengaged managers lead to disengaged teams, dragging down performance and the productivity of the workplace.
Managers are the last-mile connection between an organisation and its workers. Managers shape culture, drive execution and man the levers of day-to-day motivation. Yet today, many of them are running on empty – and this should deeply concern business leaders, especially as we brace for continued economic headwinds.
Managers of today are not just people leaders. They’re expected to be digital transformation champions, change agents and empathetic connectors, all while navigating employees’ rising expectations for flexibility, inclusion, and well-being.
EngageRocket’s HR Outlook 2025 report finds that managing a multigenerational workforce is a top concern, with many businesses and workplaces seeing four generations (Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and baby boomers) working side by side. Managers are expected to tailor development, communication and engagement approaches to meet divergent needs, all while holding the team accountable to shared goals.
As the post-COVID recovery slows to a cautious crawl, this pressure is amplified by prolonged and mounting economic uncertainty. Locally, employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first quarter of 2025 while unemployment rose, shows data from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). It expects the labour market to continue softening amid growing external risks.
Hiring is down, investments in people programmes are being deferred and cost-efficiency has returned to the top of the boardroom agenda. Managers are being asked to deliver more with less. No wonder it’s becoming increasingly unmanageable for them to “square the circle”, as Gallup says.
As co-host of EngageRocket’s The HR Impact Show, I’ve had many conversations with senior human-resource leaders across Asia and around the world about how organisations are navigating change. Time and again, the same gaps in engagement efforts come to the surface:
First, cutting people investments in uncertain times is a false economy.
Ironically, it's in times of economic uncertainty that employee engagement matters most. Yet in the race to tighten belts, many organisations default to deprioritising investments in their staff. They freeze learning and development (L&D) budgets, delay feedback initiatives and shelve well-being programmes. But this short-term thinking creates long-term consequences. When morale is fragile, even small acts of perceived neglect can compound into costly attrition.
Conversely, when organisations choose to double down on employee engagement during periods of uncertainty, they build trust and emotional commitment – the kind of intrinsic motivation that sustains performance and resilience through challenging times.
And the business case is undeniable. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, companies that doubled down on employee engagement during economic downturns performed twice as well financially as those that deprioritised it. The most engaged organisations outperformed the S&P 500 and, on average, each additional point of employee engagement correlated with a +US$46,511 difference in market capitalisation per employee.
Put simply, companies with highly engaged workforces don’t just feel better, they perform better. Leaders need to treat engagement with the same strategic importance as financial performance.
Second, manager development must be a strategic agenda.
Globally, only 44 per cent of managers say they have received formal management training, noted Gallup’s report. Moreover, many are promoted based on their performance as individual contributors, not for their ability to lead others. When these managers struggle to coach, resolve conflict, or align their teams, it’s too often misread as a personal failing rather than an organisational oversight.
Gallup’s 2025 report also found that younger managers under 35 experienced a sharper five-point drop in engagement, a clear signal of the gap between growing expectations and insufficient preparedness. Many were promoted during times of rapid change and are now leading in hybrid environments with limited experience and support.
The result: a global cohort of people leaders who feel overwhelmed, under-resourced and alone.
But the solution doesn’t need to be complex. Gallup found that even basic management training can halve the number of actively disengaged managers. In other words, a little support goes a long way – and can pay dividends in engagement, retention, and performance.
Many of today's managers were promoted during times of rapid change and are now leading in hybrid environments with limited experience and support. (Photo: iStock)
Third, we don’t measure what matters – or we don’t share it.
Most organisations still rely on annual engagement surveys, a cadence that leaves too much time between signal and response. Worse, some HR teams hold back team-level results, worried that managers “aren’t ready” to interpret or act on the data.
But depriving managers of real-time, team-specific insights also deprives them of their ability to focus on key areas for improvement in their teams, intervene in a timely manner, and take overall ownership of team engagement.
This kind of timely insight is particularly helpful for female managers, who saw a seven-point drop in engagement, the steepest among any group in Gallup’s 2025 report.
Research by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company shows that women in leadership roles are more likely than men to shoulder disproportionate emotional labour, such as checking in on team well-being, fostering inclusion and ensuring workloads are fair. Yet this labour often goes unsupported, creating higher levels of stress and burnout among female managers.
Real-time feedback systems can help surface these invisible burdens, not just for teams, but for the managers themselves. With better data and more transparent sharing, we can better support all managers, especially those most vulnerable to disengagement, to lead with clarity, empathy, and impact.
As employee engagement continues to dip across all ranks and levels, managers are more important than ever, say experts in the Harvard Business Review. Gallup estimates that managers account for 70 per cent of the variation in employee engagement – as such, they are arguably the most powerful force influencing intrinsic motivation at work.
To effectively leverage this crucial group of change agents, we must build ecosystems of support. That includes formal training, mentoring, regular feedback loops, decision-making autonomy and tools that will enable them to better manage their teams and their own engagement.
These are not “nice-to-haves". They are foundational to organisational health, especially in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.
The good news is that if global engagement reaches the levels seen in best-practice organisations, the world could unlock a US$9.6 trillion productivity boom, estimates Gallup – equivalent to 9 per cent of global gross domestic product. That future starts with better management.
In a world increasingly disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, it’s tempting to look to technology for every answer. But the most powerful lever for employee engagement remains profoundly human.
Managers are not mere implementers of policy. They are architects of team culture; to most employees, they are the face of the company. AI can interpret data and detect tone, but only a manager can hear the pause behind the words or sense the unspoken tension behind a carefully worded response
To rebuild trust and engagement at all levels, we must first rethink what we expect of managers and what we’re willing to invest in their success.
Dorothy Yiu is the chief executive officer and co-founder of EngageRocket, a global employee experience platform.
Continue reading...
We’ve all heard the saying “People don’t quit jobs; they quit bad managers.” Gallup calls this a “breakdown”: A cascading effect where disengaged managers lead to disengaged teams, dragging down performance and the productivity of the workplace.
Managers are the last-mile connection between an organisation and its workers. Managers shape culture, drive execution and man the levers of day-to-day motivation. Yet today, many of them are running on empty – and this should deeply concern business leaders, especially as we brace for continued economic headwinds.
PRESSURE FROM ABOVE, BURNOUT FROM BELOW
Managers of today are not just people leaders. They’re expected to be digital transformation champions, change agents and empathetic connectors, all while navigating employees’ rising expectations for flexibility, inclusion, and well-being.
EngageRocket’s HR Outlook 2025 report finds that managing a multigenerational workforce is a top concern, with many businesses and workplaces seeing four generations (Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and baby boomers) working side by side. Managers are expected to tailor development, communication and engagement approaches to meet divergent needs, all while holding the team accountable to shared goals.
Related:
As the post-COVID recovery slows to a cautious crawl, this pressure is amplified by prolonged and mounting economic uncertainty. Locally, employment growth in Singapore slowed in the first quarter of 2025 while unemployment rose, shows data from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM). It expects the labour market to continue softening amid growing external risks.
Hiring is down, investments in people programmes are being deferred and cost-efficiency has returned to the top of the boardroom agenda. Managers are being asked to deliver more with less. No wonder it’s becoming increasingly unmanageable for them to “square the circle”, as Gallup says.
WHAT WE’RE GETTING WRONG ABOUT ENGAGEMENT
As co-host of EngageRocket’s The HR Impact Show, I’ve had many conversations with senior human-resource leaders across Asia and around the world about how organisations are navigating change. Time and again, the same gaps in engagement efforts come to the surface:
First, cutting people investments in uncertain times is a false economy.
Ironically, it's in times of economic uncertainty that employee engagement matters most. Yet in the race to tighten belts, many organisations default to deprioritising investments in their staff. They freeze learning and development (L&D) budgets, delay feedback initiatives and shelve well-being programmes. But this short-term thinking creates long-term consequences. When morale is fragile, even small acts of perceived neglect can compound into costly attrition.
Conversely, when organisations choose to double down on employee engagement during periods of uncertainty, they build trust and emotional commitment – the kind of intrinsic motivation that sustains performance and resilience through challenging times.
And the business case is undeniable. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, companies that doubled down on employee engagement during economic downturns performed twice as well financially as those that deprioritised it. The most engaged organisations outperformed the S&P 500 and, on average, each additional point of employee engagement correlated with a +US$46,511 difference in market capitalisation per employee.
Put simply, companies with highly engaged workforces don’t just feel better, they perform better. Leaders need to treat engagement with the same strategic importance as financial performance.
Second, manager development must be a strategic agenda.
Globally, only 44 per cent of managers say they have received formal management training, noted Gallup’s report. Moreover, many are promoted based on their performance as individual contributors, not for their ability to lead others. When these managers struggle to coach, resolve conflict, or align their teams, it’s too often misread as a personal failing rather than an organisational oversight.
Gallup’s 2025 report also found that younger managers under 35 experienced a sharper five-point drop in engagement, a clear signal of the gap between growing expectations and insufficient preparedness. Many were promoted during times of rapid change and are now leading in hybrid environments with limited experience and support.
The result: a global cohort of people leaders who feel overwhelmed, under-resourced and alone.
But the solution doesn’t need to be complex. Gallup found that even basic management training can halve the number of actively disengaged managers. In other words, a little support goes a long way – and can pay dividends in engagement, retention, and performance.
Many of today's managers were promoted during times of rapid change and are now leading in hybrid environments with limited experience and support. (Photo: iStock)
Third, we don’t measure what matters – or we don’t share it.
Most organisations still rely on annual engagement surveys, a cadence that leaves too much time between signal and response. Worse, some HR teams hold back team-level results, worried that managers “aren’t ready” to interpret or act on the data.
But depriving managers of real-time, team-specific insights also deprives them of their ability to focus on key areas for improvement in their teams, intervene in a timely manner, and take overall ownership of team engagement.
This kind of timely insight is particularly helpful for female managers, who saw a seven-point drop in engagement, the steepest among any group in Gallup’s 2025 report.
Research by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company shows that women in leadership roles are more likely than men to shoulder disproportionate emotional labour, such as checking in on team well-being, fostering inclusion and ensuring workloads are fair. Yet this labour often goes unsupported, creating higher levels of stress and burnout among female managers.
Real-time feedback systems can help surface these invisible burdens, not just for teams, but for the managers themselves. With better data and more transparent sharing, we can better support all managers, especially those most vulnerable to disengagement, to lead with clarity, empathy, and impact.
START WITH MANAGERS
As employee engagement continues to dip across all ranks and levels, managers are more important than ever, say experts in the Harvard Business Review. Gallup estimates that managers account for 70 per cent of the variation in employee engagement – as such, they are arguably the most powerful force influencing intrinsic motivation at work.
Related:
To effectively leverage this crucial group of change agents, we must build ecosystems of support. That includes formal training, mentoring, regular feedback loops, decision-making autonomy and tools that will enable them to better manage their teams and their own engagement.
These are not “nice-to-haves". They are foundational to organisational health, especially in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.
The good news is that if global engagement reaches the levels seen in best-practice organisations, the world could unlock a US$9.6 trillion productivity boom, estimates Gallup – equivalent to 9 per cent of global gross domestic product. That future starts with better management.
In a world increasingly disrupted by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, it’s tempting to look to technology for every answer. But the most powerful lever for employee engagement remains profoundly human.
Managers are not mere implementers of policy. They are architects of team culture; to most employees, they are the face of the company. AI can interpret data and detect tone, but only a manager can hear the pause behind the words or sense the unspoken tension behind a carefully worded response
To rebuild trust and engagement at all levels, we must first rethink what we expect of managers and what we’re willing to invest in their success.
Dorothy Yiu is the chief executive officer and co-founder of EngageRocket, a global employee experience platform.
Continue reading...