Employee engagement is falling and that’s a problem for your brand

Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace paints a sorry picture for employee engagement, with levels dipping back to Pandemic times!

• Global employee engagement has dropped to 21%, down from 23%. The last time we saw a dip like this was 2020.
• Manager engagement is down too, from 30% to 27%. It’s even worse for female leaders (-7 pts) and under-35s (-5 pts).
• And in the UK? Just 1 in 10 managers say they’re actively engaged.

Yes, 1 in 10. That’s not just a red flag, it’s a fire alarm for leaders and marketers.

If 70% of team engagement is driven by manager engagement, we’ve got a big problem on our hands. Because when leaders switch off, their teams follow. So what does that mean for marketing?

Everything.

Because disengagement doesn’t stay in HR spreadsheets. It shows up in the quality of your creative, the speed of your execution, your customer service and the credibility of your brand.

WHY MARKETERS SHOULD BE PAYING ATTENTION

If you’re leading a marketing function, low engagement isn’t just a “people problem”. It’s a big brand risk.

• Engaged teams are up to 18% more productive and 23% more profitable (Gallup).
• Disengaged employees? They don’t innovate. They quit. And they quietly ruin your employer brand from the inside.
• Internal comms isn’t the warm-up act. It needs to be the centre stage. When done well, it’s also your most powerful engagement tool.

INTERNAL COMMS IS A BRAND STRATEGY

Internal comms should be building high-performance brand culture, at every turn, with every challenge and opportunity.

1. CLEAR MESSAGING = CLEAR PURPOSE

If your team can’t tell you what they’re doing or why it matters, they’re halfway out the door already. Internal messaging should clarify, not clutter.

Good example: Virgin Atlantic smashes this with their “Red Spirit” internal comms. Everyone from cabin crew to marketers knows the customer experience mission and that brand tone carries from internal updates to customer-facing touchpoints.

Bad example: A major UK retail chain (we won’t name names) recently rolled out a multi-million-pound rebrand and forgot to brief their own store staff. Cue confused customers, mixed messages, and a branding campaign that failed before it left HQ.

2. MANAGERS SHOULD BE YOUR MULTIPLIERS

Most engagement problems start and end with managers. Yet 44% haven’t had any leadership training.

·         Give them comms toolkits.

• Coach them on how to deliver brand messages.
• Set them up with 1:1 frameworks that keep strategy in view.

Good example: Sky equips their people leaders with weekly “Manager Briefings” that tie business updates to team-level actions. It’s practical, on-brand, and consistent.

Bad example: A large government department recently launched a “culture reset” with a single email to middle managers, no follow-up, no context, no tools. Unsurprisingly, it failed within weeks.

3. WE NEED TO LISTEN MORE THAN EVER

Stuck in top-down comms mode? Change the model. Ask more. Listen more. Act faster.

• Use surveys, focus groups, intranets, Slack channels and listening tools.
• But most importantly, show people what changed because of their input.

Good example: Monzo regularly shares “you said, we did” updates, closing the loop between employee voice and leadership action. It builds trust, fast.

Bad example: A FTSE 100 firm rolled out a quarterly engagement survey, then ghosted the results for nine months. No action. No update. Just silence.

4. VISIBILITY MATTERS – PRESENCE V POLISHED

When leaders go quiet, culture does too. Presence > polish.

• Think short, authentic video updates.
• Informal town halls.
• Q&As that actually answer questions.

Good example: Octopus Energy’s founder shares scrappy, real-time updates with staff, video chats from airports, blog-style memos, even customer DMs. It’s human, relatable, and on-brand.

Bad example: Too many traditional brands still rely on ghostwritten “CEO updates” full of jargon and zero personality. If ChatGPT can write your internal comms word-for-word, your people have already stopped listening.

5. MEASURE LIKE A MARKETER

Measure what matters most:

• Sentiment analysis
• Retention and intent
• Manager confidence
• Alignment to strategic goals
• Number of Brand champions

Then feed that insight back into your content, your channels, your leadership comms.

Reporting engagement alongside marketing KPIs is the game changer, because your internal story affects your external one more than you think.

IF YOUR TEAM’S COLD, YOUR BRAND’S COOLING TOO

If engagement’s stuck at 21%, your team’s running cold. And when the inside goes cold, the outside cracks.

Internal comms isn’t about “keeping people in the loop.” It’s about creating belief, building clarity, and enabling everyone from the C-suite to the creatives to understand shared direction.

Because no matter how brilliant your brand is on the outside, it will only ever be as strong as the people behind it.

And if they’re checked out? So is your marketing.

Let’s Talk

If we’ve got you thinking, get in touch with us.