In 2025, Low Employee Engagement Cost the World $10 Trillion
by Pamela Coleman
August 2026
Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found that only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work. A drop in manager engagement is driving lower engagement, resulting in $10 trillion in lost productivity. Employee engagement is not only a concern of the HR team.
Leaders understand that they cannot nudge or cajole employees into being more invested in their work. Teams put together what they believe will be culture-building events (things like pizza parties and stocked refrigerators), hoping the rollout will foster fun and collegiality and lead to greater workplace engagement. These efforts fall short because workplace culture is an operating system and not about special parking spots. It establishes behavioral norms and guides decision-making. And just as leaders provide managers with goals, metrics, and resources to achieve financial and operational outcomes, they must also provide managers with coherent guidance on what culture is and how to achieve desired outcomes.
A classic culture failure story happened at pre-IPO Uber under the stewardship of Travis Kalanick. The organization was well-known for its ribald employee events designed to build cohesion and engagement. The day-to-day workplace situation was much different, with misogyny the norm and questionable business practices part of the internal operating code. This became the culture and led to Mr. Kalanick’s removal as CEO.
Without a formal structure, even the best-intentioned cultural efforts become window dressing.
To drive engagement, leaders must drive unity. To get unity, leaders must provide a clear vision. This is routine execution for business strategy, but it is seldom routine for cultural outcomes. Organizations cannot rely on free turkeys or inspiring stories to build culture. Leaders must provide managers with a coherent operating blueprint that unifies them around a set of behavioral and decision-making principles.
What blueprint have you developed to help your managers build and sustain the culture you desire? Your engagement numbers tell the story.
My book, Cultural Coherence: A Model For Turning Culture Into a Strategic Lever, is available on Amazon.