Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2026 report landed with a warning that many leadership teams missed. Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the lowest since 2020. The bigger story sits underneath that number. Manager engagement fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, including a five-point drop in the last year alone. For the first time in years, the people charged with stabilizing teams are now less stable themselves.
The data that got my attention
Manager engagement is now only three points above individual contributor engagement. In 2022, the gap was eleven points. The shrinking advantage matters because managers create the conditions that produce engagement. Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement scores across business units. When managers disengage, the effect multiplies downward.
The drop is not evenly distributed. Gallup found the largest single-year decline between 2024 and 2025, from 27% to 22%. The U.S. manager engagement rate is higher at 36%, but it has also fallen. Best-practice organizations still reach 79% manager engagement, which shows the decline is not inevitable. It is structural.
Why this matters now
Organizations have spent years flattening structure. Gallup’s 2026 span-of-control research found the average number of direct reports per U.S. manager rose from 10.9 in 2024 to 12.1 in 2025, a roughly 50% increase since 2013. Median team size is still five to six, which means the average is being pulled up by a smaller group of managers who now oversee 25 or more people.
At the same time, managers still spend a median of 40% of their time on individual-contributor work rather than managing. The job has grown wider while the time to do it has stayed flat. Add AI adoption, return-to-office debates, and continuous transformation, and the manager role becomes a capacity problem that no amount of personal resilience can solve.
What the research actually shows
Gallup’s global data show employee engagement at 20% and manager engagement at 22% in 2025. The $10 trillion annual cost of low engagement is a reminder that the problem is measured in productivity, not sentiment. DDI’s 2025 Global Leadership Forecast adds that 71% of leaders report increased stress from their roles, and 40% of those stressed leaders are thinking about quitting.
The table below compares manager and employee engagement trends over the past four years.
| Year | Global employee engagement | Global manager engagement | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 23% | 31% | 8 points |
| 2023 | 23% | 27% | 4 points |
| 2024 | 23% | 27% | 4 points |
| 2025 | 20% | 22% | 2 points |
The narrowing gap is the signal. Managers used to buffer stress from the rest of the organization. Now they are absorbing it without the same support, and their engagement is converging with the people they lead.
A practical framework for leaders
Fixing manager burnout requires changes to the job, not just wellness reminders. Leaders can use a four-part framework.
- Right-size spans of control. Teams of 8 to 10 are realistic for most managers. Going past 12 requires extra support, lighter individual-contributor workload, and stronger delegation systems.
- Protect manager time. Block time for one-on-ones, coaching, and team development. If 40% of a manager’s time still goes to doing the work, the team will never scale.
- Build feedback loops upward. Managers need safe channels to report overload and conflicting priorities. Annual surveys are too slow. Pulse checks and skip-level conversations surface problems while they are still fixable.
- Invest in human-centered skills. Emotional intelligence, conflict management, and coaching are the skills that keep managers effective as their teams grow. Technical expertise gets someone promoted; people skills keep them there.
Start with a workload audit. Map how each manager’s hours are actually spent, then redesign the role so managing is the main job.
The bottom line
Manager burnout is not an individual failing. It is a design problem. The role has expanded faster than the support around it, and the result is a seven-point drop in manager engagement in three years. Organizations that protect manager capacity will protect team engagement. Those that keep adding reports, initiatives, and tools without adjusting the job will keep watching engagement fall.
Where to go from here
Leadership teams need a clear view of where manager capacity is breaking before burnout becomes turnover. Start with an assessment that measures span of control, workload distribution, and the people skills managers need most, then build a targeted coaching plan for the managers who carry the heaviest load. executive coaching
