Are We Failing Our Managers?
"We are witnessing a pivotal moment in the global workforce” - Jon Clifton, CEO of Gallup
The newest The State of the Global Workplace: 2025 report from Gallup dropped this week and it’s filled with profound insights and recommendations on how we can ‘fix’ employee engagement and burnout—focusing more on wellness.
The 140+ page document sheds light on many critical topics, but there is one that stands out the most to us, a real crisis: managers.
Since we’re all about the Leadership & here, we of course had to read this chunk of information, digest it and come up with a few theories of our own.
Here’s the recap:
There is a decline in employee engagement—across the globe
Employee engagement dropped from 23% to 21% in 2024
This decrease is estimated to have cost ~$438 Billion in lost productivity
Managers are really struggling
Engagement for managers fell from 30% to 27%
Mostly impacting managers under 35 years old and female managers
Wellbeing is a challenge
Only 33% of employees reported that they are ‘thriving’ in their overall wellbeing, the lowest percentage recorded since 2021.
The primary cause for these dropping engagement numbers was pinpointed to a specific set of employees—managers.
Managers have always had to carry the weight of the organization on their shoulders and play the middle man but since the 2019 pandemic it’s only become increasingly harder to handle. Within the last 5 years the typical organization have experienced:
Pandemic retirements and turnover
A hiring boom and bust
Rapidly needing to restructure teams and departments
Shrinking budgets
Disrupted supply chains
New and increasing customer expectations
Rapid digital transformation and AI tools
New expectations about flex and remote work
And a lot of this is expected to be taken care of by people managers. And simply put, its exhausting—and if this trend continues we will begin to see this impact trickle down and across all parts of the organization, decreasing productivity and wellbeing.
Gallup recommends providing leadership training to managers to combat this trend:
Only 44% of managers say they received training and its been reported that majority of HR & employees feel its lacking.
Teach managers how to effectively coach. Although some naturally pick up and do well coaching others for others it must be taught.
When employers provide manager training, it improves manager thriving
levels from 28% to 34%; however, if they have training and someone at work actively encourages their development, manager thriving increases even further to 50%.
Rethinking the Role of Manager Isn’t Optional — It’s Urgent
Managers aren’t just cogs in the machine—they are the machine. They carry the vision, drive the culture, absorb the shocks, and keep the wheels turning even when the road gets bumpy.
But we can’t keep asking them to do more with less. To be everything for everyone. To lead through uncertainty without support. That’s not leadership — that’s burnout by design.
If we want engaged teams, resilient cultures, and organizations that are built to last, we must start by investing in the humans leading them.
That means:
Rethinking manager roles to include time and space for strategic thinking, not just task execution.
Normalizing ongoing training, development, and emotional support, not just during onboarding, but throughout the management journey.
Creating feedback loops where managers feel heard, empowered, and recognized for the emotional labor they do every day.
The data from Gallup is clear: when managers thrive, so do their teams. When they’re ignored or overloaded, the whole system suffers.
This isn’t about perks or platitudes. It’s about building organizations where leadership is sustainable and deeply human.
Because in this new era of AI, flex work, and constant transformation, the most important leadership capability might just be knowing how to support the people doing the leading.
The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest in our managers. It’s whether we can afford not to.
Sources:
State of the Global Workplace: 2025 Report, 2025 (URL)