Only 31% of Workers are Engaged on the Job

Employees’ involvement and enthusiasm in their work and workplace fell to a 10-year low in 2024, according to a Gallup report.

Corporate executives are well-known to extol the excellence of their workforce, as in, “Our people are our greatest asset.”

Perhaps they’re mostly referring to the company’s higher achievers, but regardless, they might want to take note that employee engagement in the United States fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024.

That’s according to an annual Gallup meta-analysis of employee data dating back to 2000. This year the analysis encompassed 183,806 business units and teams worldwide.

After hitting a low in 2014, engagement — which Gallup defines simply as the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace — slowly improved, peaking at 36% in 2020. It has generally trended downward since, culminating a 31% last year, according to Gallup’s report on the survey, authored by Jim Harter.

One layer deeper, several elements of engagement have fallen substantially in recent years. For example, just 46% of employees say they know clearly what’s expected of them at work, down 10 points from March 2020.

Additionally, 39% of employees say they feel strongly that someone at work cares for them as a person, compared with 47% five years ago. And only 30% strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development, a drop from 36% in 2020.

“People of all ages come to work seeking role clarity, strong relationships and opportunities for development, but managers, combined, are progressively failing to meet these basic needs,” the report opined.

At the same time, though, only 31% of managers themselves report being engaged, the same average percentage as for workers overall.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT BY THE NUMBERS 

17%

Proportion of employees who currently are “actively disengaged”

35

Workers below this age — in other words, Gen Z — were five percentage points less engaged in 2024 than the prior year

70%

Proportion of the variance in employee engagement within teams at a given company that’s attributable to the quality of management

1.6 million

Number of employees represented by each percentage-point change in engagement level

Source: Gallup meta-analysis of 183,806 business units and teams worldwide

Despite the falloff in engagement, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported improvements in non-farm labor productivity relative to the previous year. However, the Gallup report noted that the quality of work is difficult to measure.

BLS measures labor productivity as the ratio of revenue to hours worked, but that “is not a measure of work quality,” the report stated. “Output per worker can result from technological advances, the rising value of intellectual property or capital investments.”

According to Gallup, there are several ways for leaders and managers to improve employee engagement. For starters, they should “define what they want in their workplace culture and how that aligns with the organization’s purpose and value to customers.”

They also should develop a plan for upskilling managers to build stronger bonds between employees and the organization through clear priorities, ongoing feedback and accountability, Gallup advised.

Leaders further should prioritize identifying and selecting managers with the innate ability to engage and inspire employees, “especially in a workplace environment where employees feel detached,” the report stated.

Gallup measures engagement through a composite of 12 workplace experiences, including role clarity, resource availability, recognition for good work, development on the job, opinions counting, connection to a mission or purpose, coworker relationships and work progress.

These 12 experiences are, according to Gallup, “linked to performance outcomes and are crucial at every stage of the employee life cycle, from pre-hire interactions and reputation to onboarding, performance management, career progress and, finally, the exit experience.”

Written by:  David McCann has been an editorial manager and business and finance writer, for CFO.