Gallup's 2026 data shows managers are now barely more engaged than their teams, with South Asia, mostly India, falling fastest. What to do about it.
Key takeaways
- Gallup reports that global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, the second straight annual decline and the lowest level since 2020. Gallup links most of that downturn to lower engagement among managers (Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026).
- Manager engagement stands at 22%, down about nine points since 2022, while individual contributors sit at 19% and have barely moved. The manager "engagement premium" has shrunk from roughly 11 points to about 3.
- South Asia, which is mainly India, recorded an eight-point fall in manager engagement in 2025, the largest drop of any region. The share of managers in the region also declined, and Gallup points to organisational flattening as a possible factor.
- In organisations Gallup classes as best practice, 79% of managers are engaged, nearly four times the global average. The problem is solvable, and it is not inevitable.
- A disengaged manager is a team-level risk, not a personal one. The practical response is to train, support and measure managers as deliberately as the teams they run.
Last updated · Bodhih Insights team · reviewed by Siddharthan VGJ, Founder
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report quietly breaks that pattern. The gap between managers and the people they lead has nearly closed, and not because the team got happier. The managers lost ground.
If your organisation depends on managers to carry culture, change and now AI adoption, this is the number to look at before you plan next year's training.
What Gallup Found, in Plain Terms
Gallup's 2026 report, covering 2025, shows three things worth separating.
First, engagement overall is low. Only about one in five employees worldwide is engaged at work, meaning enthusiastic and involved. Gallup puts 64% in the "not engaged" group and 16% in "actively disengaged".
Second, the fall is a manager story. Non-manager engagement has been close to flat for three years, at around 19% to 20%. Manager engagement, by contrast, dropped from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025. Most of the global decline comes from that single group.
Third, India sits at the sharp end. In South Asia, manager engagement fell eight points in 2025 alone. That is the steepest regional fall in the dataset. Note that "South Asia" in Gallup's data is dominated by India, so treat the regional figure as a strong signal about Indian workplaces, not a precise India-only number.
A caution on interpretation: these are survey results, and Gallup describes flattening as a possible explanation, not a proven cause. The pattern is clear. The reason behind it is still a hypothesis.
Why Managers Are Running Out of Fuel
Gallup does not claim to have one cause. But the conditions that drain a manager are easy to see in Indian organisations right now.
- Bigger teams, same hours. As companies remove management layers, remaining managers inherit more direct reports. We wrote about the mechanics in The Great Flattening. Gallup's finding that the share of managers in South Asia fell is consistent with that story.
- Squeezed from both sides. Managers absorb pressure from leadership to deliver and from teams who want support. They rarely have the authority to change either.
- Promoted for output, not for managing. Many Indian managers were top individual performers who were handed a team without ever being taught how to run a one-on-one, give hard feedback or coach.
- AI adoption lands on their desk. Managers are expected to lead their teams through new tools and agents they are still learning themselves. We covered this in AI Limbo.
- Few people look after them. Training budgets and wellbeing programs usually aim at employees and senior leaders. The middle gets a laptop and a target.
Five Moves That Help
The 79% figure for best-practice organisations tells us managers can stay engaged under the right conditions. These moves are drawn from what such organisations tend to do, and from what we see across Bodhih programs.
- Measure managers separately. Break your engagement and pulse data out by people-manager versus individual contributor. If you see the same gap Gallup does, you have found your priority group.
- Check span of control against capability. Before widening a team, ask whether the manager has the delegation, coaching and prioritisation skills the new size demands. A readiness assessment answers this better than a tenure check does.
- Teach the job, not just the role. New and recently promoted managers need structured practice in one-on-ones, feedback, delegation and handling former peers. A one-time induction is not enough; practice, follow-up and a peer group are what make it stick.
- Give managers a coach, not just a course. Coaching helps a manager work through their own pressure while improving how they coach others. It also keeps their reasoning visible, which matters more as AI takes on routine work.
- Protect their recovery. Resilience, workload design and honest conversations about what can be dropped matter as much as skills. A manager at 100% capacity has nothing left to give a struggling team member.
How Bodhih Helps
Bodhih supports the manager layer across the full arc, from first promotion to leading managers of managers.
- First-Time Manager Training prepares newly promoted managers to lead people rather than tasks, covering the identity shift, delegation, one-on-ones, feedback and managing former peers, with follow-up after the workshop.
- Team Leader Training and Managing Managers Training build the skills needed as spans widen and the role shifts from doing to leading through others.
- Coaching for Managers gives managers a repeatable framework for development conversations that still works with a larger team.
- Resilient Leadership Training and Workplace Resilience Training address the pressure side of the role.
- Psychological Safety Training helps managers build teams where problems surface early.
- Leading Human + AI Teams Training helps managers decide how work is shared between people and AI, and set quality standards.
- Leadership Assessment and 360-degree feedback give you evidence of where each manager stands before you design the program, and whether it worked afterwards.
- Our Learning Journeys, including the First-Time Manager Learning Journey, combine workshops, practice and follow-up so skills carry into the weeks after training.
Corporate batches are private and tailored to your roles, team sizes and tools. Open workshops are fixed-date public batches.
The Bigger Idea
When companies talk about engagement, they usually talk about the front line: the people doing the work. Gallup's 2026 data suggests that the weak point has shifted one level up. Managers are the channel through which strategy, culture, feedback and change reach everyone else. When that channel loses energy, everything that passes through it weakens.
The encouraging part is in the same report. Where organisations invest in managers, close to four in five stay engaged. So the question for an L&D or HR head this quarter is simple: who is looking after the people who look after everyone else?
Frequently asked questions
What does Gallup's 2026 report say about manager engagement?
Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 reports that global manager engagement is about 22%, down roughly nine points since 2022, while individual contributor engagement is around 19% and largely unchanged. Gallup ties most of the global engagement decline to the fall among managers (Gallup).
Is manager engagement in India falling faster than elsewhere?
According to Gallup's 2026 report, South Asia, which is mainly India, saw an eight-point drop in manager engagement in 2025, the largest of any region. Because the region figure covers more than one country, read it as a strong indication for India rather than an India-only measure.
Why are managers becoming less engaged?
Gallup does not give a single cause. It suggests organisational flattening may be a factor in South Asia, since the share of managers fell there too. Other commonly cited pressures include larger teams, limited training for the role, performance pressure from above and the demands of introducing AI tools.
How can HR measure whether managers are disengaged?
Split engagement or pulse survey results by people-managers and individual contributors, and track the gap over time. Add 360-degree feedback, one-on-one frequency and team attrition for each manager. Bodhih's assessments and 360-degree feedback can help structure this.
What training helps an overloaded manager?
The most useful mix is practical skills (one-on-ones, feedback, delegation and coaching), resilience and workload skills, and support from a coach or peer group. See First-Time Manager Training, Coaching for Managers and Resilient Leadership Training.
Where do the facts in this article come from?
The engagement figures are from Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026, covering 2025 data. The 79% best-practice figure and the South Asia manager findings are from the same report, as summarised in coverage of it. Gallup presents flattening as a possible explanation, not a confirmed cause. Our earlier posts on the great flattening and AI limbo provide the wider context.
