Manager engagement has fallen nine points since 2022. Down five points in the last year alone from 27% to 22%. For the first time, managers are only as engaged as the people they lead. The "engagement premium" that used to come with the job? It's gone.
And when you look at what managers are actually carrying from the Global Managers Survey, it's not hard to see why:
75% are experiencing stress and burnout
70% say supporting their team emotionally impacts their own stress levels
50% spend up to five hours a week providing that support
The role has changed, and the load has become unsustainable.
⚠️ Manager pressure is at a breaking point.
💡 But there's a second story that doesn't get talked about enough.
Through COVID, engagement surveys and poorly structured wellbeing initiatives, we've unwittingly built a culture of expectation.
Where engagement is something that happens to employees, not by them.
It's not that employees don't want to take ownership. It's that nobody has shown them how.
Without a personalised framework, people default to looking outward. They look to the manager, the organisation, the culture. But what drives engagement is unique to each person. No top-down program can substitute for an employee who owns their own engagement.
🎯 So what's the answer?
Not more pressure on managers. Not another initiative that treats everyone the same. It's giving employees a framework to own their engagement, and giving managers a repeatable process to embed and sustain it. We move from dependency to personal accountability.
💼 That's not a nice-to-have. That's a business case.
If your organisation is navigating low engagement, manager burnout, or wellbeing investments that aren't landing, I'd love to have a conversation.