The employee-employer power balance has shifted firmly to the employer, according to Glassdoor’s 2026 Worklife Trends report — and it has prompted employees to reexamine their engagement in turn.
That power isn’t necessarily exercised in loud or expansive moves but in quiet, consistent changes, the report showed. For example, employers are turning toward smaller layoffs of 50 people or less, with 51% of all layoffs in 2025 fitting that description, Glassdoor said, and doing so over several waves rather than all at once.
Notably, 50 people is the cut-off for the federal WARN Act to require notice, though some states have stricter requirements. These serialized “forever layoffs,” as Glassdoor described them, are a quieter way to cut jobs than the mass layoffs that tend to dent Glassdoor reviews for the long-term, though employers are not escaping the consequences of this behavior entirely, the report noted.
“Rolling layoffs may give companies a way to reduce headcount without making headlines, but they create cultures of anxiety, insecurity and resentment at companies,” Glassdoor said in its post.
Layoff anxiety was already high at the beginning of the year, other surveys have shown — and since then, 78% of U.S.-based HR leaders told Careerminds that they had conducted multiple rounds of layoffs in the past year.
Pressure to return to the office has also ramped up — though not necessarily through highly publicized RTO mandates, Glassdoor said, since actual compliance with such mandates varies heavily.
Instead, workers are noticing that those who go to the office tend to be prioritized for promotions and opportunities, leading to declining satisfaction for remote and hybrid employees, Glassdoor said.
“In 2026 and moving forward, remote and hybrid work aren’t going to disappear, but workers will be pressured to make more explicit trade-offs between flexibility and career advancement,” according to the report.
These trends, among others, have emphasized the growing employee-leader disconnect, Glassdoor reviews showed. Words like “disconnect,” “misaligned,” “miscommunication,” “hypocrisy” and “distrust” have all risen in worker reviews, the company said. “Misaligned,” in particular, shot up 149% in the past year.
“The twin forces of quickly-changing market conditions and declining worker power in the labor market will drive leaders to keep making big strategic moves while workers suffer from burnout and job insecurity,” Glassdoor said. “This is a recipe for decaying trust.”
Other reports have shown a disconnect, as well, in how managers are perceived by both themselves and by their direct reports. While 59% of managers surveyed by the American Management Association said their engagement increased in the past year, 80% of workers said their managers’ engagement stagnated or even declined.
In other words, managers think they are stepping up, but workers don’t see it, AMA’s CEO said in a statement.
