<h2 style="font-size:18px"><strong>Gallup attributes 70% of the variation in team engagement to the manager.</strong></h2>That figure caught my attention, not because a manager’s role in building engagement is anything new. It was more that when I set it against the way organisations try to manage engagement today, I see an inconsistency.
For years we have measured satisfaction and engagement, analysed turnover, run pulse surveys and designed development programmes, benefits, wellbeing initiatives and work on organisational culture.
Engagement happens closer to home than we think
One of the strongest sources of an employee’s day-to-day experience sits far closer to them – in the way they are managed.
Gallup has long held that managers account for roughly 70% of the variation in engagement between teams. At the same time, according to State of the Global Workplace 2026, only 20% of employees worldwide are engaged at work.
What interests me most is what those figures say about organisations themselves.
It is not created in a survey. It is created day to day.
Engagement is not created during an annual survey, nor in a presentation about company values.
It is built in far more mundane ways – in how priorities are set, in the quality of decisions, in how clear expectations are, in feedback, in how responsibility is delegated, and in how a manager reacts when something goes wrong.
It is at the level of the line manager that an organisation’s strategy very often meets an employee’s reality for the first time.
So if one team in the same organisation is doing very well while another has high turnover, little sense of ownership, people under strain and trouble hitting its targets, the problem may not be “organisational culture” taken as a whole.
It may be the quality of management in one particular part of the organisation.
The problem may be far more specific
There is one more aspect to this that I think tends to be underrated.
We measure employees’ results very precisely. We far less often measure the quality of management with the same rigour.
We know whether someone hit their target, how productive they were and whether they met their KPIs. It is much harder to answer whether the manager created the conditions in which the team could achieve those results at all.
- Do they delegate responsibility properly?
- Do they make decisions when they should?
- Do they develop people and retain critical skills?
- Can their team work independently, or does everything have to go through them?
- Are problems solved at the right level, or do they regularly get escalated upwards?
Managers leave results behind them too
Because the quality of management has a business result of its own.
You can see it in turnover, absence, productivity, hitting targets, how quickly decisions get made, the number of escalations, an organisation’s ability to keep key people – and ultimately in the business result.
Before we start “fixing” engagement
So when I look at Gallup’s data, I see more in it than another employee engagement statistic.
I see a reminder that before we start “fixing” employee engagement, it is worth looking very closely at the environment people are asked to work in every day. And one of the most important parts of that environment is still the quality of management.
Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026; Gallup, The Science of High-Performing Teams; Gallup, Employee Engagement.
Paulina Jarecka – HR Consulting Manager, an Executive MBA graduate, certified coach, trainer in soft skills and psychometric tools, and an AC/DC assessor. For years she has combined managerial experience with HR consulting, supporting organisations in HR strategy and processes, leadership development, job evaluation, audits and organisational change. She is drawn above all to projects where developing people translates into a real change in how teams and organisations work.
