One topic often discussed in Indian workplaces is the issue of disengaged employees. But the very people expected to ensure employee engagement, the managers, are perhaps being overlooked, says a study. The workplace is currently witnessing an unusual trend. Managers are no longer as engaged with their jobs as they have traditionally been.
Manager engagement across the world slid from 31 per cent in 2022 to 22 per cent in 2025 according to Gallup’s 2026 research on the state of the global workplace. To put it in perspective, the research says that by comparison, engagement among non-managers was 19 per cent.
India dominates Gallup’s South Asia data set, and it has found that manager engagement in this region declined by eight percentage points in 2025, the steepest fall of any region in the world.
This should be a concern for Indian companies, as managers are saddled with probably the most unenviable position in an organisation. They are sandwiched between targets handed down by their seniors and resistance from the team under them. They have to ensure that productivity improves, employees are retained, hybrid teams are managed smoothly, performance is reviewed regularly, conflicts are resolved quickly, while also introducing AI and maintaining the morale of employees. And the number of managers left to do this may simply have reduced.
The research has found that along with manager engagement, even the proportion of managers has declined in South Asia. One factor contributing to this, according to the research, could be the decline in mid-level and senior positions in India’s technology sector. This suggests that organisations may be reducing management positions.
This may sound as if they are becoming efficient. But when you look deeper, you find that only the number of managers has reduced, not the managerial work. The result? The remaining managers are burdened with broader responsibilities and larger teams to be managed.
Research on managers in the US also reveals that an increase in team size and responsibilities tends to reduce manager engagement, while it is also true that managerial ability and training can reduce the impact. But the research says that although effective people management is a skill, many managers have never received the training required for it.
Managers cannot be expected to hold their teams together, while companies continue to add people, responsibilities and pressures to their role, but fail to add the required support to carry them. If managers are stretched thin and struggling with their own jobs, it no longer remains a manager problem. It is an organisational one.