How Can Leaders Improve Employee Engagement and Company Culture?

How Do Managers Influence Employee Engagement?

Gallup research finds that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. This means managers have a substantial influence on whether employees are engaged, indifferent or actively disengaged. Gallup studies also show how managers’ own engagement affects those they lead:

• Gallup’s research on more than 180,000 manager-led teams, published in its 2024 Q^12® meta-analysis, finds that more highly engaged managers have more engaged teams. 

Engaged teams outperform on outcomes that matter most to organizations, including productivity, profitability, safety and employee wellbeing. Improving employee engagement and performance across an organization starts with addressing manager engagement and effectiveness. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report: 

• Manager engagement fell 9 percentage points, from 31% to 22% globally, between 2022 and 2025.
• Individual contributor engagement had a 1-percentage-point decline overall between 2022 and 2025 (20% vs. 19%).

What Are Reasons for Low Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement reflects the health of an organization’s culture. When engagement is low, these factors may be contributing:

1. Employees lack connection to the organizational culture.
2. Managers aren’t meeting employees’ engagement needs.
3. Managers need professional development as coaches.

1. Employees Lack Connection to Organizational Culture

Organizational culture defines how an organization’s purpose and values show up in daily work. As of 2026, just 2 in 10 U.S. employees feel connected to their company’s culture. When employees feel disconnected from the culture, engagement and other workplace indicators can suffer.

A Gallup analysis from February 2025 found that U.S. employees who strongly agree that they feel connected to their organization’s culture are:

• 4.3 times as likely to be engaged at work
• 5.3 times as likely to strongly agree they would recommend their organization as a great workplace
• 62% less likely to feel burned out at work very often or always
• 47% less likely to be watching for job opportunities or looking for another job

As of May 2025, about one-third, 32%, of U.S. employees describe their workplace as isolated or impersonal, lacking the conditions that help people feel connected to their teams. Learn more about why employees feel detached and what leaders and managers can do about it by exploring three employee engagement strategies for 2026. 

2. Managers Aren’t Meeting Employees’ Engagement Needs

Even in organizations with a clearly defined culture, engagement can be lower when employees do not have the daily experiences that meet their engagement needs: basic, individual contribution, teamwork and growth. According to May 2026 Gallup research on U.S. employee engagement trends:

• 34% of U.S. employees strongly agree they have the opportunity to do what they do best every day
• 32% strongly agree they have had opportunities at work to learn and grow in the last year
• 31% strongly agree they have someone at work who encourages their development
• 29% strongly agree they have received recognition or praise for doing good work in the last seven days

Managers influence these and the other elements of employee engagement.

3. Managers Need Professional Development as Coaches

Traditional performance management systems often leave employees with unclear and misaligned expectations, ineffective and infrequent feedback, and unfair or missing evaluation practices. Managers who use a coaching approach to performance management can see higher employee engagement on their teams. 

According to Gallup research published in its 2019 book It’s the Manager, an analysis of data from more than 60 million employees worldwide:

• Employees who receive daily manager feedback are 3 times more likely to be engaged than those who receive it once a year or less.
• Employees whose manager involved them in goal setting were nearly 4 times more likely to be engaged. 

Effective manager coaches establish clear expectations, provide frequent and individualized feedback, and create accountability through ongoing conversations based on each employee’s strengths.

How Can Leaders Develop Managers to Improve Engagement and Culture?

Leaders can develop managers to strengthen employee engagement and company culture in these ways:

• Prioritize development over training. Invest in ongoing, individualized manager development that builds lasting capabilities rather than relying on one-time training that provides information without changing behavior.
• Define what great coaching looks like. Set clear expectations for the frequency, format and focus of managers’ coaching conversations with their teams.
• Measure manager effectiveness and make adjustments. Review engagement and culture data at the team level, help managers act on the results and use those results to guide their continued development. 
• Model the behaviors you expect. Invest in your own development and actively coach the managers who report to you.
• Invest in strengths-based development. Give managers a strengths-based framework that helps them develop their own strengths and coach each employee as an individual rather than using the same approach with everyone.

When to Get Help Improving Engagement Through Culture Initiatives

When employee engagement challenges persist despite leaders’ and managers’ efforts, your organization may benefit from outside perspectives on how to improve your company culture. Signs that additional support may help include:

• Leaders agree that engagement is a problem but disagree on how to address it.
• Manager development efforts improve engagement survey completion rates but do not lead to behavior change within teams.
• Engagement scores vary dramatically across teams within the same organization, reflecting inconsistent management practices.
• Employee engagement has plateaued or declined even as investment in culture and people programs has increased.
• Managers and teams express confusion or frustration about processes, roles and responsibilities and lack a shared framework for understanding how each person works best.

A Customized Approach for Improving Engagement and Culture

Gallup helps organizations improve employee engagement through workplace advisory consulting on employee engagement and organizational culture, including a strengths-based approach tied to their unique mission, vision, values and goals. Strengths-based strategies may include:

• Introduce CliftonStrengths^® across the workforce so every employee understands their natural talents.
• Provide individualized CliftonStrengths reports to employees at all levels to show how their strengths apply to their role and responsibilities.
• Connect employees’ strengths to their organization’s specific mission, vision and values so the relationship between individual contributions and the company’s purpose is clear.
• Equip managers with strengths-based coaching tools tailored to the organization’s engagement goals, performance expectations and culture.
• Measure the effectiveness of strengths-based practices to see how strengths-based leadership improves employee engagement, retention and performance over time.

Contact us to learn how Gallup can customize a strengths-based approach to improve employee engagement and culture in your organization.

Frequently Asked Questions About Employee Engagement

What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is the degree to which employees are enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. Engaged employees are psychological owners of their work who contribute discretionary effort and produce better outcomes for their teams and organizations. 

How Are Organizational Culture and Employee Engagement Connected?

Organizational culture sets the direction for an organization. It defines how purpose and values show up in daily work, how leaders make decisions, and which behaviors managers recognize. Employee engagement measures how ready employees are to perform at their best within that culture. When employees feel connected to their organization’s culture, employees are more likely to be engaged. Leaders who want to improve employee engagement over time should build a culture employees can connect to and develop managers who reinforce that culture at the team level.

What Are the 3 Levels of Employee Engagement?

Gallup research identifies 3 levels of employee engagement, each reflecting a different degree of employees' emotional connection to their work:

1. Engaged. Engaged employees bring energy, commitment and purpose to their work every day. They take initiative, contribute ideas and invest in outcomes that move their organizations forward. They are psychological owners of their work.
2. Not engaged. Not engaged employees are present but psychologically detached. They fulfill their responsibilities without much energy or passion. They are not disruptive, but they are not contributing at their full potential either. 
3. Actively disengaged. Actively disengaged employees are resentful that their needs aren’t being met. They are frustrated and are likely taking actions that are at odds with their employer’s goals.

Why Should Organizations Build an Employee Engagement Strategy?

Gallup’s ongoing research into employee engagement and business performance consistently finds that business units with highly engaged workforces outperform those with low engagement, according to the 11^th edition of Gallup’s Q¹² meta-analysis, published in 2024. When comparing business units in the top quartile of employee engagement with those in the bottom quartile, Gallup finds the following median differences in business outcomes:

• 23% in profitability
• 18% in productivity (sales)
• 10% in customer loyalty/engagement
• 51% in turnover for low-turnover organizations (those with 40% or lower annualized turnover)
• 63% in safety incidents
• 78% in absenteeism

These are among 11 performance outcomes Gallup has studied across more than 180,000 business and work units.

Organizations that make employee engagement a core part of their business strategy are better positioned to retain their best people and sustain performance over time. 

How Do You Measure Employee Engagement?

Gallup measures employee engagement using the Q¹² survey, which assesses elements related to employees’ core needs at work. Managers directly influence many of these elements, including whether employees know what is expected of them, have opportunities to do what they do best, receive regular recognition and feel encouraged in their development. Organizations that run an employee engagement survey receive team-level data that show engagement levels and help identify how teams can improve.

What Is the Manager's Role in Employee Engagement?

Managers have the greatest influence on employee engagement. Gallup research shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. Managers shape engagement by setting clear expectations, providing frequent and meaningful feedback, recognizing employees’ contributions, and creating opportunities for employees to do what they do best, along with other actions that help meet employees’ needs at work. 

Start Building a More Engaged Workforce

Your employee engagement challenges are specific to your managers, culture and goals. Gallup works with leaders to develop a customized, strengths-based approach that can improve engagement, retention and performance.

Speak with a Gallup expert to learn how we can help.