20%
of employees worldwide are engaged
Evidence
Why it matters.
Engagement and results
Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis (11th edition, 2024) brings together 736 studies, 183,806 business units and more than 3.3 million people in 90 countries. Teams in the top quartile of engagement, compared with the bottom quartile, show at the median:
- 23%
- higher profitability
- 18%
- higher sales productivity
- 78%
- lower absenteeism
- 63%
- fewer safety incidents
- 21–51%
- lower turnover, depending on the industry’s turnover level
A global challenge
30%
in Latin America and the Caribbean, the second-highest region in the world
22%
is the engagement of managers themselves, which fell
The role of the leader
Gallup estimates that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in their teams’ engagement. Brand Imprinting puts leadership at the center: the leader must represent the spirit of the brand.
Meaning as an engine
Dave and Wendy Ulrich (Harvard Business Review, 2010) argue that people who manage to create meaning in their work, on their own or with their boss’s help, work harder, more creatively and with more tenacity. To paraphrase Nietzsche: he who has a why can bear almost any how.
Inspiration
- Abraham Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation (1943).
- Gallup, research on employee engagement (Q12).
Sources
- Gallup. State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report.
- Gallup. SOGW press release, April 8, 2026.
- Gallup. Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition (2024).
- Gallup Business Journal. Managers Account for 70% of Variance in Employee Engagement (2015).
- Ulrich, D. and Ulrich, W. Getting Beyond Engagement to Creating Meaning at Work. Harvard Business Review, June 2, 2010.
- Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396.