Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2025 report revealed a troubling reality: global employee engagement fell from 23% to 21% last year, marking only the second decline in engagement since 2009. But here's what makes this moment different—and urgent: the collapse is starting with managers.
According to Gallup’s research, manager engagement plummeted from 30% to 27% in 2024, with young managers (under 35) and female managers hit hardest, experiencing drops of five and seven percentage points respectively. Meanwhile, individual contributor engagement remained flat at 18%.
This isn't just a management problem. It's an organizational crisis in slow motion, and its costing a great deal of money.
When managers disengage, the entire organization follows. Gallup asserts that 70% of team engagement is attributable to the manager. This relationship is so powerful it appears in country-level data: nations with disengaged managers inevitably have disengaged individual contributors.
This disengagement cost the global economy $438 billion in lost productivity in 2024. But the real number at stake is much larger: $9.6 trillion in productivity could be added to the global economy if workforces were fully engaged—representing a 9% increase in global GDP.
The path to that productivity boom runs directly through managers. And right now, they are drowning.
The voices from Gallup's global research paint a stark picture of managers under siege:
"Difficult decisions put pressure on me psychologically, such as hiring. And sometimes there aren't many resources. And there are also disputes between employees, facing problems, new systems, and so on." — Abu M., Marketing Manager, Saudi Arabia
"We should have [a] team of six people. There's only two of us. I think that is very stressful." — Andile V., Field Operating Manager, South Africa
"I mean, my guys will do anything I ask of them, and I love my guys, but there's no enthusiasm. I'm not asking anybody to be jumping around because we got work to do, but you can just feel it." — Ryan S., Supervisor, U.S.
Since the worldwide outbreak of COVID in 2020, managers have been handed an impossible equation: navigate post-pandemic retirements and turnover, manage hiring booms and busts, restructure teams across rapidly changing departments, operate within shrinking budgets, untangle disrupted supply chains, meet new customer expectations, drive digital transformation and AI adoption, and balance conflicting executive demands with employee desires for flexibility.
All while being expected to inspire, develop, and retain their teams.
Though only 44% of managers globally have received any management training, the empowering impact of providing it effectively is dramatic:
LOCAL's client results validate these findings. When Republic Services equipped managers with training and gave them tools to lead differently, customer satisfaction scores beat management goals, and the initiative embedded so deeply into culture it transformed how the organization approached everything.
Gallup's report recommends three critical actions:
But here's what Gallup doesn't tell you: how to do this in a way that actually works.
Most corporate training fails because it's boring, generic, and disconnected from daily reality. Most change initiatives fail because they aren’t designed for the people who have to live the change.
Because here's the truth: Training is only as effective as the story managers believe about why it matters. If your managers see training as another checkbox exercise imposed from above, even the best curriculum becomes background noise. But when training is embedded in a narrative that speaks to their challenges, aspirations, and daily frustrations, it transforms from obligation into opportunity.
The difference between training that sticks and training that gets forgotten isn't what you teach. It's the story you tell about why it matters and how it will help.
Right now, a story is already running through your organization’s managers. It sounds like this:
"Leadership doesn't understand what it's like on the ground."
"We're being asked to do more with less and nobody cares."
"This latest ‘development program’ is just more work that won't actually change anything."
That story is being told in Slack channels, in the gaps between meetings, in break rooms, and in the body language during town halls. Every manager who believes this story unconsciously looks for proof that reinforces it — confirmation bias provides endless examples. And because people follow people, that story spreads to everyone working with that manager. The collective mentality calcifies. Everyone stays stuck, if not actively disengaged.
This is organizational inertia, but it's also your opportunity.
The ongoing development and encouragement that Gallup says is key to increasing manager wellbeing comes from your company culture, and that can’t be mandated. Instead, culture is composed of what your people think, feel, and do. It emerges from the mindsets of the people operating together within it. And those mindsets are shaped by the stories people tell themselves and each other.
Here's how LOCAL's Change Marketing™ Flywheel transforms manager breakdown into breakthrough:
1. Understand the Current Stories
Start with research. What stories are managers actually telling about work, training, leadership, and their role? What do they believe about the latest transformation initiative? What narrative reinforces their current mindset?
As soon as Capital One BC&P recognized some gaps between their mission and people strategy, they set about conducting empathy interviews to understand and validate the problem, because you can't change a story you haven't heard.
2. Insert a New, True Narrative
Don't fight the old story directly. Introduce a new one that's compelling, true, and demonstrates how things are actually changing.
When Southwest Airlines faced employee disconnection after years of COVID disruptions, weather events, and technology failures, LOCAL didn't create aspirational "we're great" messaging. We acknowledged the pain first: Yes, things have been hard. Here's exactly what we're fixing and how it will improve your working life.
The new story must be backed by real policy and practice changes. If you say you value manager wellbeing but still pile on unrealistic expectations or condescending “education,” you're not telling a story; you're spreading propaganda. Your employees' BS detectors will activate, and the flywheel will turn against your plan for change.
3. Tell It Intentionally, Consistently, and Persistently
One memo doesn't change culture. Neither does one town hall or one training session.
Marketing works through strategic repetition and multi-channel persistence.
Republic Services didn't just train managers on their new program once. They created 30+ films showcasing real employees, deployed break room posters in every business unit, built mandatory manager training modules, and gave managers ongoing tools and tactics. The story showed up everywhere, repeatedly, in formats designed for how field employees actually consume information.
4. Watch the Stories Evolve
In time, when told well and backed by action, the new story influences people — even skeptics. Their internal narrative begins to shift. There are fewer handy examples reinforcing the old belief. They start showing up differently. They act and react from altered attitudes.
And here's where the flywheel magic happens: managers start telling new stories. To themselves. To each other. Stories about how "leadership actually listened this time" or "that new toolkit actually helps" or "I saw how we're committed to operational improvements."
These peer-to-peer stories are more powerful than anything leaders can say.
5. Build Momentum That Self-Sustains
As more people adopt and spread the new narrative, the flywheel accelerates. The culture shifts not because you mandated it, but because the collective mindset of your people evolved through stories they believe and tell each other.
A leading QSR client achieved 98% program engagement by creating a company-wide immersive experience that gave people new stories to tell. When employees felt genuinely connected to the mission through intentionally designed moments, they became storytellers themselves.
Gallup's conclusion is unambiguous: "The choice for executives is simple: Invest in the future of management or risk the consequences of inaction."
The consequences aren't abstract. They're showing up right now in:
The solution requires more than commitment to training. It requires fundamental rethinking of how we communicate change, develop managers, and design their experience. It requires treating internal audiences with the same sophistication, creativity, and rigor that we apply to external marketing.
Understand the stories your managers are already telling, insert new narratives backed by real action, and build momentum through persistent, transparent, story-driven communication that eventually becomes self-sustaining.
The flywheel is always turning. The question is whether you're going to influence its direction or let disengagement keep spinning the same stories that are driving your managers — and your culture — toward breakdown.
LOCAL specializes in turning organizational inertia into momentum for change. We don't fight your culture. We work with it to shift the stories your managers tell themselves and each other.
Sources:
Gallup, State of the Global Workplace: 2025 Report
Neil Bedwell, "The Change Marketing Flywheel: How To Shift Company Culture Through Stories," Forbes, February 27, 2023
LOCAL case studies and client testimonials
