Gallup says manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%. 6 fixes so your managers coach instead of chase admin.

A Tuesday question for People leaders in Tallinn, Stockholm and London: how many hours did your managers spend last review cycle chasing forms, copying notes and arguing over ratings, and how many did they spend actually coaching their people?

Gallup’s latest State of the Global Workplace findings (Jim Harter and Ryan Pendell, 22 April 2025) say the people in the middle are the ones running out of steam. Managers have been squeezed between new executive priorities and employee expectations, and their engagement is falling faster than anyone else’s.

1. What Gallup actually said

In plain language:

• Engagement fell for only the second time since 2009. The global share of engaged employees dropped from 23% to 21% in 2024. The other fall in the past 12 years was 2020.
• Managers took the sharpest hit. Manager engagement fell from 30% to 27%, while individual contributors stayed flat at 18%. Managers under 35 fell by five points; female managers by seven.
• It costs real money. Gallup estimates the 2024 drop cost about $438 billion in lost productivity, and that a fully engaged workforce could add $9.6 trillion, about 9% of global GDP.
• Wellbeing is slipping too. The share of employees rating their lives as thriving fell to 33%, and again managers saw the largest decrease.
• The fix is the manager role itself. Gallup suggests rethinking manager responsibilities around performance coaching. Managers who get best-practice training saw their own and their team’s engagement improve, with management performance metrics up 20% to 28%.

2. The mid-market hurdle: managers drowning in process, not coaching

In a 200–600 person company, most managers were promoted because they were good at the work, not because they were trained to coach. Then the review cycle lands: spreadsheets to fill, goals to dig out of old slides, feedback to remember from March, and a calibration meeting that eats an afternoon. Coaching becomes the thing that happens if there is time left over, and there rarely is.

You do not need a leadership academy to start fixing this. You need to take admin off managers’ plates and give them a short, repeatable coaching rhythm that fits into a normal month.

3. 6 fixes so managers coach instead of chase admin

1. Count the admin hours first. Ask five managers how long the last review cycle took them, end to end. Write the number down. If it is days per manager, that is your coaching budget being spent on paperwork. In Revolut People: review cycles, goals and 1:1s sit in one place, so People teams can see who is done without a tracking spreadsheet.
2. Shrink the scorecard. One page, a few criteria, a clear rating scale. Long forms do not make reviews fairer; they make managers skim. In Revolut People: configurable review scorecards tied to your talent bar, so every manager scores against the same short list.
3. Keep goals, 1:1 notes and feedback together. Most review admin is hunting for evidence. If goals, 1:1 notes and feedback live in one system, the review writes itself from what already happened. In Revolut People: goals, structured 1:1s and continuous feedback sit next to the review, so evidence is there when the cycle opens.
4. Give managers a monthly coaching script. Three questions every month: what went well against your goals, what got in the way, and what do you need from me? That is performance coaching most managers can run without training. In Revolut People: 1:1 agendas and notes that carry forward month to month.
5. Make calibration shorter, not longer. Calibrate on evidence that is already written down, and only discuss the edge cases. An afternoon of debate is a sign the evidence was missing. In Revolut People: calibration views across teams, so People leaders can spot outliers before the meeting.
6. Train the first-line managers, starting with the newest. Gallup saw the biggest drops among younger and female managers. Pick your newest managers for a short coaching module this quarter, and check in after one cycle. In Revolut People: analytics on 1:1 cadence and goal progress, so you can see which teams are getting regular coaching.

The PDF goes to your work email. More on the method at peopleperformanceplaybook.com.

4. Where Revolut People fits, and where it doesn’t

Revolut People started as the in-house system Revolut uses to run performance. The part that matters most for Gallup’s manager finding is time: goals, 1:1s, feedback and reviews in one place, so managers spend the review cycle on conversations rather than copying evidence between tools.

To be straight about the limits: software will not turn a reluctant manager into a great coach, and it will not fix workload or budget pressure. Those are leadership choices. What it can do is remove the admin that crowds coaching out, and give every manager the same simple rhythm. Related reads: Gartner on culture atrophy, Gartner on underperformance and monthly 1:1s, and Feedback that never sticks.

Bottom Line

Gallup’s data is blunt: manager engagement fell from 30% to 27% while everyone else held flat, and the global engagement drop cost an estimated $438 billion. For a mid-market People team, the fastest win is not another engagement survey. Count the admin hours your managers lose to the review cycle, cut them, and hand that time back as a monthly coaching rhythm. Try it with one department for one quarter.

FAQ

What did Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report find about managers?

Gallup reported that manager engagement fell from 30% to 27% in 2024, while individual contributor engagement stayed flat at 18%. Engagement among managers under 35 fell by five percentage points, and engagement among female managers dropped by seven points.

How much did global employee engagement fall?

Global employee engagement fell from 23% to 21% in 2024. Gallup estimates that drop cost the world economy about $438 billion in lost productivity. It is only the second fall in the past 12 years, after 2020.

What does Gallup recommend doing about it?

Gallup suggests leaders rethink the manager role and redesign responsibilities around performance coaching. It also reports that managers who receive best-practice training saw their own and their team’s engagement improve, with management performance metrics improving by 20% to 28%.

How can a mid-market People team free up manager time for coaching?

Cut the admin around the review cycle: one short scorecard, goals and 1:1 notes in the same place, feedback captured during the year, and reviews pre-filled from that evidence. Then give managers a simple monthly coaching rhythm instead of one long annual conversation.

Is Revolut People available in Estonia, the Nordics and the UK?

Yes. Revolut People is available to businesses with a registered entity in the UK, the EEA or the US, which covers Estonia and the Nordic countries.