US worker engagement hits lowest level since 2011
Gallup found that remote and hybrid employees accounted for much of the decline, especially at organizations that had adopted AI.
Just 29% of US employees were engaged at work in Q3, according to Gallup, a drop of two percentage points from the previous quarter. The reading was the lowest since 2011, with remote and hybrid workers contributing heavily to the fall.
Two areas weakened: employees’ sense of what their jobs required and whether their organizations cared about them as people. The decline in clarity about job expectations was around twice as large for hybrid and fully remote employees.
Organizations using AI continued to show higher engagement, but that advantage shrank to two percentage points among remote and hybrid staff in Q3. For employees working on-site, it held at around four to five points.
Gallup said the introduction of AI may be advancing faster than the communication and managerial support needed for effective use. It recommended making AI expectations clearer, improving support from managers, particularly for distributed teams, and measuring how AI affects productivity and engagement.
The quarterly drop represented about 3.2 million fewer engaged employees, Gallup said. Engagement peaked at 36% in 2020; the decrease since then amounts to approximately 11 million workers.
