A new year often ushers in new optimism, but many American workers ended 2024 with frustration and dissatisfaction that’s carried over into 2025.

Gallup carefully tracks workplace behavior and opinions, and its findings have been especially illuminating since white-collar workers embraced hybrid and remote schedules.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, workers fled their offices to work from home. In the early phase of remote work, employers were delighted that productivity didn’t suffer.

It’s not surprising that many workers continued to perform at a high level from their homes because the pandemic created a crisis, and workers rose to the challenge. They wanted to preserve their jobs and wanted their companies to do well during an uncertain economic period and before vaccinations were available.

When the pandemic arrived, employees had existing relationships with their colleagues. They could draw on those relationships during the first year of the pandemic for getting work done and for sustaining their emotional ties to their workplace culture.

But the picture is very different now. During a five-year period, many new employees have been hired, other employees have switched employers, and another group of workers has retired. Unless employers require three days of in-office work per week, strong relationships between employees are difficult to build or maintain.

The Gallup findings reveal how challenging it is to manage employees in hybrid and remote settings as well as solve other workplace woes that may have pre-dated the pandemic.

“U.S. Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low,” is the headline on a Jan. 14 article by Jim Harter, chief scientist for Workplace for Gallup, who’s done numerous studies on workplace effectiveness.

By the end of 2024, Gallup reports that only 31% of U.S. employees were engaged in their work, while 17% were actively disengaged. Gallup uses the phrase “employee detachment” to characterize the consequences of a decline in engagement, which it said is especially prevalent among workers younger than 35.

Gallup’s results stem from a 2024 web survey of nearly 80,000 adults working full- or part-time in the United States. Gallup conducts an annual survey on employee engagement. “Though engagement increased slightly midyear [in 2024], it declined through the rest of 2024, finishing the year at its decade low,” Gallup said.

The research firm measures 12 workplace elements to calculate its engagement numbers. Three of them were particularly revealing as to why employee engagement is becoming a bigger problem in workplaces.

Clarity of work expectations is a baseline requirement for every employee. But Gallup’s research showed only 46% of employees surveyed “clearly know what is expected of them at work.” That was a 10-point decline from March 2020.

Even fewer employees, 39%, have the “feeling someone at work cares about them as a person.” That was a decline from 47% in March 2020.

Professional development and challenging work are often cited by employees as important aspects of long careers. But Gallup found that “only 30% strongly agree that someone at work encourages their development, down from 36% in March 2020.”

In the Gallup article, Harter attributes “declining employee engagement and rising detachment” to four major factors:

• Rapid organizational change
• Challenges from hybrid and remote work transitions
• New customer and employee expectations
• Broken performance management practices

The Gallup findings come at a time when Minnesota is experiencing low unemployment, with the jobless rate under 4% for many months.

The national Gallup results were released shortly after a new Minnesota pay transparency law took effect on Jan. 1. Minnesota employers who have 30 or more employees must include a salary range or fixed pay rate on job postings. That puts more information in the hands of workers who want to switch employers.

Strategies for managers

While employee engagement has declined in the United States overall, Gallup said that some employers have engagement levels more than twice the national average. Gallup advises leaders and managers to take the following three actions to boost employee engagement:

“Define what they want in their workplace culture and how that aligns with the organization’s purpose and value to customers.

“Lead with their own strengths while clarifying the organization’s purpose, approach to people, key decisions and performance. Specifically, include a plan for upskilling managers to build stronger bonds between employees and the organization through clear priorities, ongoing feedback, and accountability.”

“Prioritize identifying and selecting managers with the innate ability to engage and inspire employees, especially in a workplace environment where employees feel detached.”

In mid-December, Gallup identified seven workplace challenges for 2025.

The first challenge documented how the “great detachment threatens performance.” Among U.S. employees surveyed, only 18% reported they were “extremely satisfied” in their jobs. The research showed that 51% of the employees were “watching for or actively seeking a new job.”

Challenge No. 2 was described as “poor job markets lead to more disgruntled workers.” Looking at the global picture for employment, Gallup noted how job markets vary by country and city. “We found that when it’s harder to find a job, people are more likely to be actively disengaged,” Gallup reported. “A plausible explanation is that people become very unhappy when they are trapped in a job they don’t like.”

Another key trend for 2025 was defined as “productive hybrid work requires better team collaboration.” Gallup recommended that work groups create a “team charter” that’s “distinct from corporate policy, that defines how members best work together.”