A recent annual Gallup report, the Global Flourishing Study 2025, discovered that global employee engagement fell, costing the world economy US$438 billion in lost productivity. The report highlighted that the primary cause was a drop in manager engagement. Since the pandemic, managers have been asked to square the circle of new executive demands and employee expectations. We are starting to see the toll. But it is not going to stop with managers. Manager engagement affects team engagement, which affects productivity. Business performance — and ultimately GDP growth — is at risk if executive leaders do not address manager breakdown.
UK engagement ranks 30th in Europe, with only 10% of employees claiming to be engaged. In 2024. The global percentage of engaged employees fell from 23% to 21%. Engagement has only fallen twice in the past 12 years, in 2020 and 2024. Last year’s two-point drop was equal to the decline during the year of COVID-19 lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders.
What caused the decline in engagement?
Managers drove the decline. Two types of managers were particularly affected:
- Young (under 35) manager engagement fell by five percentage points;
- female manager engagement dropped by seven points.
Why the decline in Manager engagement?
In the last five years, the typical organisation has experienced disruption at every level:
- post-pandemic retirements and turnover
- a hiring boom and bust
- rapidly restructured teams and departments
- shrinking budgets as stimulus programmes ended
- disrupted supply chains
- new customer expectations
- digital transformation and AI tools
- new employee desires regarding flexibility and remote work.
If manager engagement continues to decline, it won’t stop with managers, and it won’t stop with engagement. The productivity of the world’s workplace is at stake.
What can you do to reverse this decline. A cost-effective way to build engagement is supporting the development of your employees in a way that also brings value to the business. The British Brands Group provides a range of functional training with courses covering GSCOP, Competition law and compliance and Trading with Amazon. These will enable you to offer cost effective development opportunities that will directly impact your business results.
All feature a strong commercial bias, being about both understanding and application in the trading world. This training is available as face-to-face or online offerings. The Group is also open to exploring your specific needs if you want to run an in-house course exclusively for your team. The next available training dates are:
- Fridays 13 & 20 June, GSCOP modular course, online (2 afternoon sessions lasting 2.5 hours each [13:30 – 16:00])
- Monday 16 June, Competition Law and Compliance, in person, Blackfriars