Return-to-office policies, poorly trained managers, “mental distance” from coworkers and few opportunities for growth are all likely contributors to employee engagement scores that have dropped to their lowest point in 11 years, a new Gallup analysis found—all as the job market remains strong but layoffs have risen and job openings have cooled in certain sectors.
The research and advisory firm, which tracks on an ongoing basis how involved employees are in their jobs, found that in the first quarter of 2024, worker engagement dropped three percentage points to 30% from the end of the year prior, representing 4.8 million fewer employees who are “engaged” in their work, the lowest since 2013.
“We’re down to a level of engagement now that we saw 11 years ago after a decade of growth,” says Jim Harter, Gallup’s chief scientist of workplace and wellbeing. “That’s disturbing.” (The latest surveys were conducted in February of a random sample of more than 18,700 U.S. adults.)
Harter says some of the biggest drops came among the youngest age groups, as well as among employees with work arrangements on both ends of the flexibility spectrum. Gen Z workers, or those born after 1997 (but who were at least 18 in this survey) had the most pronounced fall-off in engagement, the analysis found, dropping six percentage points in the first quarter.
People who work remote exclusively—as well as those who work full-time in-office but in jobs that can be done remotely—also both saw sharp drops in engagement, falling five and six percentage points, respectively. Employees with hybrid work arrangements did not see as steep a drop in sentiment.
The data, Harter says, “suggest that physical distance is becoming mental distance, and then on the other end, people see others with remote-ready jobs who have flexibility and they don’t. I think that’s that’s causing some disengagement.” He adds “there’s kind of a happy medium there that I think organizations need to get right.”
The numbers reached a peak in 2020 amid the pandemic, Harter says, when 36% of workers were highly engaged in their jobs, which Gallup defines as being involved and enthusiastic about their work and workplace. Gallup measures worker sentiment on issues such as whether people feel they know what’s expected of them, whether they have opportunities to grow and whether they feel connected to an organization’s purpose.
On the latter question, workers who work fully onsite but in jobs that could be done remotely saw a significant drop, falling from 38% who agreed in 2021 to 32% early this year. These workers “have taken a big hit in engagement over time,” Harter notes. “Honor autonomy, but build a framework for great clarity and collaboration led by a manager who coaches.”
So far, it does not appear that layoffs in certain sectors or lower quit rates are having an impact, Harter says. (In March, the U.S. added far more jobs than expected, and the unemployment rate dipped slightly, but separate reports show layoffs hit a 14-month high and the number of workers quitting their jobs has fallen.) “Generally, when we see the economy go down, it leads to lower levels of active disengagement,” he says, referring to people who are more than just unenthusiastic about their jobs, but actually resentful of them, “because people have a tough time getting out of a bad job.”
That’s not yet showing up significantly in the “active disengagement” numbers, which remain stable from the fourth quarter of last year (17%). “That would tell me that the economy isn’t at a point where people don’t still have some choice.”
