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    Global Engagement Hit a New Low in 2026: What Gallup’s Data Means for Resilience

    • Global engagement was 23% in Gallup’s 2024 report. It’s now 20%, the lowest level since 2020, and the second straight year of decline, with no region worldwide bucking the trend.
    • The sharpest new finding: manager engagement specifically has collapsed from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, wiping out what Gallup calls managers’ historical “engagement premium” over the people they lead.
    • Disengagement now costs the global economy an estimated $10 trillion a year, roughly 9% of global GDP, and best-practice organisations still achieve 79% manager engagement, nearly four times the global average, proof this is genuinely fixable, not inevitable.

    Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report has become one of the most closely watched annual snapshots of how work is actually going for people, and the trend line across its last three editions tells a genuinely sobering story. In 2024, global engagement stood at 23%. The 2026 report, published in April 2026 and covering 2025 data, puts it at 20%, the lowest level Gallup has recorded since 2020, and the second consecutive year of decline. Every region measured saw engagement fall or stay flat. None improved.

    Resilience Institute offers a holistic approach to exactly the pattern this data describes, sustainable human performance and wellbeing, not a quick fix. This piece looks at what’s actually changed between the 2024 and 2026 reports, and what the sharpest new finding means for how resilience training should actually be applied.

    Then and Now: What Actually Changed

    The headline numbers moved in a consistent, worsening direction across every recent edition of the report. Global engagement: 23% (2024 report) → 21% (2025 report) → 20% (2026 report), a genuine, sustained decline rather than a single bad year. Daily stress has stayed stubbornly high across the same period, 41% in the 2024 and 2025 reports, 40% in the 2026 report, essentially flat and still well above pre-pandemic levels. One figure did move in the right direction: global wellbeing (Gallup’s “thriving” measure) rose slightly to 34% in the 2026 report, its first improvement in three years, though still meaning fewer than one in three people worldwide report genuinely thriving in their lives overall.

    The economic cost has grown alongside the decline. The 2026 report puts the cost of low engagement at roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity, around 9% of global GDP, a meaningfully larger figure than what earlier reports cited.

    The Real Story: Managers Are the Ones Disengaging Now

    Here’s what the 2024 report couldn’t yet show, and what makes the 2026 report genuinely different rather than just a worse version of the same story: manager engagement specifically has collapsed. It’s fallen from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025, a 9-point drop, with the steepest single-year fall, from 27% to 22%, landing between 2024 and 2025 alone. Individual contributor engagement, by contrast, has stayed relatively flat across the same period. Managers used to hold a real “engagement premium” over the people they led. Gallup’s own language is direct: that premium has essentially vanished, and managers are now barely more engaged than their own teams.

    This matters enormously given a separate, consistent Gallup finding: managers account for up to 70% of the variance in team-level engagement. When the people responsible for driving engagement are themselves disengaging fastest, the effect ripples downward directly. Gallup’s own framing for 2026 is blunt: the manager crisis is now the workforce crisis, not a side issue sitting next to it.

    There’s a genuinely hopeful data point buried in the same report worth holding onto: best-practice organisations still achieve 79% manager engagement, nearly four times the global average. This isn’t an inevitable, structural decline. It’s a solvable problem that most organisations simply haven’t solved yet.

    Beyond Surface-Level Solutions

    Plenty of organisations have addressed stress with surface-level fixes, wellness apps, generic stress management sessions, and these tend to fail at creating meaningful, lasting change. A more holistic approach, one incorporating emotional regulation, physical vitality, and mental clarity together, goes beyond basic wellness toward genuinely sustainable behavioural shift.

    Real resilience requires a systems-level view: the interplay between work, life, and individual capacity, not any one lever in isolation. That’s what makes an intervention resonate with what employees actually need, rather than another well-intentioned programme that doesn’t move the underlying numbers.

    Measuring What Engagement Surveys Miss

    Gallup’s engagement data reveals the scale of the problem clearly. What it doesn’t reveal is the individual mechanics underneath it. Resilience Institute’s Resilience Assessment offers a deeper, more granular view, measuring specific factors like emotional stability, focus, and vitality that often stay hidden inside a traditional engagement survey. This data-driven layer lets organisations target interventions precisely: highlighting, for instance, that a specific team is struggling with sustained energy rather than motivation broadly, information a standard engagement score alone won’t surface.

    Addressing Loneliness Directly

    Loneliness remains a genuine, persistent thread across every recent edition of Gallup’s report, particularly among remote and younger workers, and it’s directly linked to declining mental health, disengagement, and lower productivity. Human connection is a genuine cornerstone of resilience, and programmes built to strengthen social bonds within teams, guided reflection, small group discussion, structured check-ins, even in virtual settings, measurably help counter the isolation the data keeps flagging year after year.

    What This Means for Building Resilient Leadership

    Invest in Managers Specifically, Not Just Employees Broadly

    Given managers are now the fastest-disengaging group in the entire dataset, resilience investment aimed only at individual contributors misses the actual point of leverage. Managers need real support for their own resilience before they can genuinely model or sustain it for a team.

    Build Regular Feedback and Clear Expectations

    Practices like consistent feedback, clearly set expectations, and genuinely modelled emotional intelligence help managers create an environment that naturally reduces stress rather than compounding it.

    Prioritise Organisation-Level Change, Not Just Individual Coping

    Gallup’s own findings consistently favour organisation-level initiatives, changes in management practice, better resource allocation, over individual stress-management interventions alone. Resilient leaders create the conditions; individual coping skills matter more once those conditions are actually in place.

    Moving From Surviving to Thriving

    Gallup’s data consistently shows engaged employees are more likely to thrive across their whole life, not just at work, and building genuine resilience means helping people move past survival mode, where stress and overwhelm dominate, toward a state where they can find real meaning, purpose, and satisfaction in their role. A thriving workforce isn’t just more pleasant to manage. It’s measurably more productive, innovative, and adaptive, genuine advantages as organisations navigate a working environment that shows no sign of settling down.

    The data didn’t just get worse between 2024 and 2026. It got more specific. The manager crisis is the workforce crisis, and that’s exactly where resilience investment needs to go first.

    What Early 2026 Is Revealing About the Pressure Women Leaders Face

    As International Women’s Day approaches, several developments this first quarter of the year point to a reality many organisations are only beginning to recognise.

    The pressures women leaders face today are becoming more complex and more visible.

    In Singapore, the government recently introduced subsidies for genetic testing that identifies hereditary breast and ovarian cancer risks. The move reflects a growing understanding that women often delay health screening while balancing work, caregiving and leadership responsibilities.

    Conditions such as endometriosis, menopause and hormonal health are often under-diagnosed or poorly understood. Nearly 7 in 10 working women in Singapore say social stigma prevents them from discussing menopause at work, and over 40% feel completely uninformed about it

    At the same time, new research on the women’s health gap highlights a striking statistic. Women in Singapore live to about 85 years on average, yet spend around 12% more of their lives in poor health compared with men. Much of this gap occurs during the working years between 20 and 50, when many women are building careers and stepping into leadership roles.

    These health realities rarely surface in boardroom conversations, yet they shape daily performance.

    Globally, the picture is evolving in other ways.

    The United Nations reports that women are increasingly leading initiatives in climate resilience, conflict prevention and peacebuilding. In many communities, women are the first to organise solutions when climate disruptions threaten food security or livelihoods.

    But leadership in these areas often comes with intense pressure. These women are making decisions that affect entire communities while navigating resource constraints and political complexity.

    Closer to home, Singapore’s cultural institutions are also amplifying women’s voices. The National Gallery’s International Women’s Day programmes this year explore themes of identity, creativity and leadership through art, dialogue and community events.

    Across sectors, a common thread is emerging.

    Women are stepping into more visible leadership roles, yet many are doing so while carrying pressures that organisations still underestimate.

    Health responsibilities. Caregiving roles. Expectations to perform consistently at senior levels.

    Recently, one executive shared that during a regional leadership call she suddenly lost mobility in her arm due to a perimenopause-related condition. She continued working through months of rehabilitation while managing a high-stakes leadership role.

    Stories like this are more common than many leaders realise.

    This is where resilience becomes practical.

    Resilience is not about pushing through pressure. It is the ability to regulate stress, maintain clarity and recover quickly during demanding periods of work and life.

    Organisations that recognise these realities are beginning to respond differently. They are building cultures where leaders can speak openly about challenges, access support earlier and maintain sustainable performance.

    As we mark International Women’s Day this year, the most meaningful progress may not come from symbolic gestures.

    It may come from understanding the invisible pressures many women carry and strengthening the resilience that allows them to lead with clarity, confidence and care.

    Because when leaders are supported to sustain their health and wellbeing, organisations benefit from stronger decisions, better collaboration and more resilient teams.

    Original Source: https://resiliencei.com.sg/pressure-women-leaders-face/