Global employee engagement just hit a five-year low, and the managers responsible for reversing it are more disengaged than ever. Dan Rust, Global Head of Leadership & OD Practice at Infopro Learning, has tracked these metrics for 22 years, and what he’s seeing now is different. This white paper breaks down the data behind the decline, the five forces driving it, and the leadership model built to fix it. It also lays out what organizations must do differently, starting now, to close the gap.
What’s Inside the White Paper
- The Data Everyone Sees and Ignores: Gallup’s 2026 numbers show engagement at a 5-year low, with manager engagement down 9 points since 2022, plus the $10 trillion productivity cost behind it.
- Five Converging Forces: Why information overload, leader isolation, collapsing institutional trust, unmanageable spans of control, and outdated development models are hitting organizations all at once.
- What Employees Actually Need: The three things employees consistently say would drive their engagement, and why none of them require budget approval.
- Three Gaps Leaders Are Getting Wrong: Where managers believe they’re succeeding on communication, hybrid leadership, and burnout, and what employees actually report.
- The AI Multiplier: Why an unengaged manager doesn’t just fail their team, they block the organization’s entire AI return on investment.
- The Vanguard Leadership Model: Infopro Learning’s five-capability framework for what effective leadership requires in 2026.
- What Organizations Must Do Differently: Six concrete shifts, starting with self-awareness before skills training, to move the needle now.