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With employee experience being a central focus for many organizations and leaders, the newly released 2026 edition of Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace report offers useful insights into employee sentiment. While there are several insights throughout the 251-page report, one notable finding is that manager disengagement is the primary driver behind the 20% drop in employee engagement from its 2023 peak. Manager engagement has declined at nearly three times the rate of employee engagement over the past three years, a shift from the past when managers typically reported higher engagement than individual contributors, whose engagement has remained relatively flat. A second key finding is that managers are also the strongest predictor of AI adoption success in the workplace, even more than technical integration. Employees whose managers actively support AI use are 8.7 times more likely to say their work has been transformed by AI. For HR and talent leaders, one implication is that rebuilding manager engagement is not a separate initiative from driving AI impact, but rather part of the same initiative. Said differently, there are implications for how organizations design AI change management and enablement programs. The report also includes additional insights, including regional breakdowns showing how workplace sentiment varies across geographies.
