Managers are absorbing the most disruption, and their engagement is falling

Leaders and managers are 56 percent more likely than individual contributors to experience extensive disruptive change in their organization, Gallup reported in 2024. That is a relative difference. It does not mean that 56 percent of managers face extensive change, or that the gap is 56 percentage points.

The same Gallup study adds detail. Seven in 10 US workers reported disruptive change in their organization in the past year, Gallup found in 2024, but that count includes any degree of disruption, and only 20 percent reported change to a large or very large extent. In Gallup's 2024 data, over half of managers said their organization had restructured teams. Gallup's 2024 study also found that employees facing extensive disruptive change were 67 percent more likely to cite an issue with a leader or manager, another relative measure.

Managers' engagement has also fallen. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace 2026 report found that global manager engagement fell from 27 percent in 2024 to 22 percent in 2025. Gallup calls it the largest year-over-year drop in manager engagement, and it left the figure nine points below its 2022 level. According to the same 2026 Gallup report, the fall in manager engagement accounted for most of the decline in overall employee engagement, to 20 percent. Gallup says managers have largely lost the engagement advantage they once held over individual contributors.

HR leaders doubt that managers are ready. In a July 2024 Gartner survey of 473 HR leaders, 74 percent said their managers were not equipped to lead change. Change practitioners single out the middle layer: in Prosci's 2023 benchmarking study, 43 percent of participants named mid-level managers as the group most resistant to change.

How the research was done

Gallup's disruption findings come from web surveys of the Gallup Panel, US adults working full or part time, conducted in the first three quarters of 2023. Gallup ties its headline seven-in-10 figure to the third-quarter survey of 18,665 employees, fielded August 9 to 24, 2023, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.1 points. The engagement figures in Gallup's 2026 report are global estimates from Gallup World Poll data covering more than 140 countries, and "managers" there includes every level, not only middle managers. Gartner's 74 percent comes from 473 HR leaders, a subset of the 1,403 it surveyed in July 2024. Prosci's 43 percent comes from 2,668 change practitioners who chose to take part in its 2023 study.

What it does not show

The headline pairs two separate Gallup data sets. The disruption finding covers US employees in 2023. The engagement decline is global and covers 2024 and 2025. Gallup's engagement measure is general, not a reaction to change, so these data do not show that disruption caused managers' engagement to fall. Gallup suggests that organizational flattening and cuts to management roles, especially in South Asia, may be one factor. That is Gallup's interpretation, not a measured cause.

The other two figures record views. Gartner's 2024 figure of 74 percent is HR leaders' judgment of their managers. Prosci's 2023 figure of 43 percent records how practitioners see managers, not how managers behave. Managers go through change while leading it for others. What practitioners call resistance may reflect overload or an unclear role.

Read together, the findings are consistent with managers under strain. They do not establish why.

Managers go through change while leading it for others.

What to do with it

• Give managers a change plan of their own, separate from the plan for their teams. Prosci says much manager resistance can be reduced by addressing managers explicitly in change plans.
• Ask managers whether they feel equipped to lead the next change. Gartner's 2024 figure is HR's view, and the managers' own view is missing from it.
• Count the changes each manager is leading and the changes each is going through, and review the totals before approving new initiatives that land on the same layer.
• Report manager engagement separately from team engagement, by level, so that a fall like the one Gallup found globally would show up in your own data.