Your people have left. They just haven’t told you yet.

I track Gallup’s State of the Global Workforce report, every year.

I don’t really know why. It’s the same depressing reading every damn time. 

That’s not Gallup’s fault, but if you’re an employer, it might be yours.

So what did the 2025 report, recently released, reconfirm?

That the pattern remains clear. Here’s an excerpt, using earlier Gallup data, from my new book, The X in CX:

“Over recent years, a pattern is discernible. Only one in five workers is actually engaged with their work—they feel involved, are enthusiastic, and go the extra mile. Three in five are typically not engaged, while one in five is actively disengaged.

Think about it: An average team of five workers has only one willing to do the work with any eagerness or gusto. Three are just showing up for the money and will give you none of their discretionary effort. One actually detests the organization and has already quit mentally.”

The workers, frankly, don’t really care. In an average team of five, one is fired up and trying. Three are coasting. One is sabotaging, silently.

And if that weren’t bad enough news, here’s some more. Manager engagement has also declined, to 27%. Just over one in four managers are engaged with their work. And that really matters, because Gallup tells us that 70 per cent of employee engagement comes from, you guessed it, the manager! Why is manager engagement declining? Well, they’re probably recoiling from the boom-and-bust cycle in hiring, when one day we’re gung-ho and aiming for the stars and talking about the war for talent; and the next, we’re removing people as though they were mannequins in a clearance sale and talking about rebalancing the corporation.

Managers everywhere are being given the impossible task of making it all work in the real world, even as budgets are slashed, burnout is real, digital transformations are botched, and AI looms large over their jobs.

This is probably a western thing, you say, and we in Africa might be different. We value our jobs more, smile more, give more.

Ahem.

Brace yourselves. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of employees actively seeking a new job—72%, vs 50% globally. In Kenya, it’s an eye-popping 82%.

The proportion of employees willing to say that they are “thriving” in their jobs is just 33% in the world—and an even worse 18% in Sub-Saharan Africa. 82% say they are either “struggling” or “suffering” in their jobs.

And yet CEOs everywhere are busy touting their employee engagement and calling these unhappy people their best assets. Well, good luck with that.

Is there any hope? Yes, there is. If you study just the best-practice organizations, employee engagement rises to 70%. So some organizations are already there. They have cultures built around engagement and management practices based around humanity. And guess what, they are more productive, across industries, across cultures.

Gallup suggests some concrete actions. First, train your managers to lead, not just do and deliver. Second, show them how to be coaches, not bosses, so that they work through their people, not at them.

Or, to strip through all management-speak: just run your organization as though people matter! If they really do matter, then it will really bother you if they are disengaged, looking to leave, and generally disheartened. If you were just treating them as resources, however, none of this matters. Let them go, replace them, start over—rinse and repeat. You exist to bring the average down.

So why is this still happening? Why do we keep pretending engagement is something to be “driven” by HR initiatives, pulse surveys, or free lunches? Because most leaders still don’t get it: you don’t engineer engagement—you enable it. It’s not a perk. It’s a culture. Engagement happens when people believe their work has meaning, their voice has weight, and their leader has their back. None of this can be faked. People know when they’re being played.

The truth is, most organizations aren’t suffering from a lack of productivity tools or strategic plans. They’re suffering from a deficit of trust, safety, and purpose. That’s what drives people out—or worse, keeps them in and turns them cold. The real engagement crisis isn’t about people being lazy or entitled. It’s about people feeling unseen, unheard, and uninspired.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

If your workplace runs on fear, firefighting, and fake smiles—then disengagement is not a surprise. It’s the system working exactly as designed.

 

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