Dive Brief:
- Employee engagement in the U.S. dropped 2 percentage points quarter over quarter to 29% in the third quarter of 2026, its lowest since 2011. The sharpest declines appeared among hybrid and remote employees in organizations adopting artificial intelligence, according to a survey from Gallup released Oct. 28.
- The percentage of actively disengaged employees rose 1 percentage point to 18%, while 53% of employees said they were not engaged, per the report. Workers said they had less clarity regarding what was expected of them and were also less likely to believe someone at work cared about them as a person.
- The report’s findings align with other Gallup studies that suggest manager support isn’t keeping up with the pace of AI adoption. Nonetheless, employee engagement is still critical to organizational success, and the study said “[e]ngaged employees are more likely to put in additional effort to achieve organizational goals.”
Dive Insight:
When Gallup began tracking employee engagement in 2000, it found that 26% of U.S. employees were engaged. That figure peaked at 36% in 2020 but has since fallen. The latest report said that workers who aren’t engaged or who are “actively disengaged” tend to be psychologically disconnected from both their work and their employer.
In the third quarter, only 46% of employees said they strongly agreed that they knew what was expected of them at work. That figure was down from 49% in the first two quarters of 2026.
Meanwhile, just 37% of employees in Q3 said they “strongly agreed that their supervisor or someone at work cares about them as a person,” down from 40% in the first half of the year and far below the 47% peak in March 2020.
The study suggested that physical distance potentially created psychological distance between employees and their organizations, which has been exaggerated as more organizations adopt AI at work.
“The Q3 findings add to concerns about how well organizations communicate expectations and maintain employee connections across different work arrangements,” the report said.
Recent studies also suggest that when employees understand what’s expected of them they’re more likely to be engaged. However, when companies don’t offer positive employee experiences, turnover rates were 40% higher than at companies that did.
