The Year We Didn’t Process — And What Gallup’s Data Might Be Quietly Revealing
When you look at stats and data points, what do you actually see?
For me, it’s rarely just numbers. It’s about how the dots connect — sometimes even noticing what isn’t immediately visible — and the story waiting to be uncovered.
And when that story starts to reveal itself, that old Hunters & Collectors line pops into my head: “Do you see what I see?”
Because when you pause long enough to connect the dots, something deeper emerges — something statistics alone rarely do justice.
Recent Gallup research showing declines in engagement across generations did exactly that for me.
On the surface, the headline focused on U.S. employee engagement declining from its 2020 peak, with the largest drops among Gen Z and millennials:
- Generation Z and younger millennials dropped eight points between 2020 and 2025.
- Older millennials dropped nine.
- Gen X declined six, from an already lower baseline.
- Baby boomers remained relatively steady.
At first glance, that looks like a generational story.
But what struck me wasn’t just who declined.
It was when it began. 2020.
2020 Was a Defining Moment — Not a Phase
You cannot look at 2020 like any other year.
It wasn’t a fluctuation.
It was a defining moment.
We lived through a global pandemic many believed belonged only in films. Hospitals overwhelmed. Mass loss of life. Fear. Isolation. Uncertainty. A sudden awareness of how fragile our systems — especially supply chains — and our assumptions truly were.
The world we had known changed almost overnight.
We adapted. We had no choice.
Remote work.
Rapid digital pivots.
Operational triage to stabilise what we could.
We kept going.
But adaptation is not integration.
And adaptation without reflection always carries a cost — if not immediately, eventually.
While organisations moved forward operationally, many people never truly had space to process how that period affected and changed them — emotionally, psychologically, relationally.
We were too busy surviving.
Too busy rebuilding.
Too busy regaining ground.
That matters.
Because when we look at engagement data now, we may not simply be seeing motivation decline.
We may be seeing the long shadow of a moment we collectively lived through — but never fully unpacked.
We Accelerated Before We Integrated
If 2020 forced survival, the years that followed forced acceleration.
Automation expanded.
Digital transformation intensified.
Artificial intelligence moved from concept to capability.
Organisations were asking:
- How do we regain productivity?
- How do we stabilise performance?
- How do we future-proof against disruption?
Employees were asking something different off the back of COVID:
- What is work costing me now?
- What actually matters after what I had lived through?
- How do I want my life to feel?
Returning to work wasn’t simply about returning to an office.
It was about returning to a version of work that no longer felt the same — because it wasn’t.
That created friction.
Not because people became less committed. But because people had changed — even if they hadn’t fully recognised it.
And when outcome drivers and technological acceleration took centre stage, the human experience often took the back seat — reframed as resistance rather than reflection.
Yet what I consistently see in my work is this:
What looks like reluctance is often reconciliation.
Many people are still trying to reconcile who they became during crisis — with systems that evolved quickly operationally, but not always humanly.
When Progress Accelerates, Leadership Gets Tested
Post-2020, leaders were asked to do something almost impossible:
Support wellbeing.
Rebuild engagement.
Stabilise performance.
Adopt new technologies.
Deliver stronger results.
All at once.
Many leaders genuinely wanted to protect their people. But they were operating within systems increasingly driven by urgency, performance recovery, and competitive pressure.
Empathy didn’t disappear.
Trust-building didn’t vanish.
Long-term stewardship didn’t stop mattering.
But they were often overshadowed by metrics that felt more immediate and measurable.
Fighting for people became harder — not because leaders stopped caring, but because the systems rewarding them prioritised speed and certainty.
At the same time, broader global shifts — political, economic, technological — appeared to legitimise sharper, more transactional leadership tones across sectors.
Language hardened.
Performance narratives intensified.
Tolerance narrowed.
For some employees, it felt abrupt.
For some leaders, it felt like survival.
And for many, the last six years have felt less like recovery — and more like standing in a ring where the blows keep coming:
Pandemic.
Digital acceleration.
AI disruption.
Geopolitical instability.
When people feel constantly on the ropes, engagement doesn’t disappear because they don’t care.
It erodes because they’re exhausted.
Is Engagement Broken — Or Under Siege?
Disengagement is often framed as a motivation problem.
But what I’m seeing — and hearing — feels different.
Engagement isn’t evaporating.
It’s under strain.
Work feels more complex.
Leadership styles in some sectors have hardened.
KPIs are sharper — often focused on “what,” not always on “how.”
Technology is accelerating faster than humans can emotionally metabolise.
And many people are quietly disillusioned when behaviour doesn’t align with stated values.
Overlay that with something rarely acknowledged:
For many, COVID left a wound that was never fully recognised — let alone processed.
Not always dramatic. Often subtle.
A quiet loss of certainty.
A quiet loss of trust.
A quiet awareness that stability can vanish quickly.
That vulnerability didn’t disappear when offices reopened.
It went underground.
Now layer relentless change on top of that — and even those who embrace progress and change can feel worn down.
I hear it often:
“I can handle change… but I don’t know how much more I can carry.”
Or from leaders:
“I care about my people… but the organisation doesn’t seem to. And my team sees it.”
That isn’t apathy.
It’s strain.
High performers absorb pressure quietly. They keep delivering. They keep performing. But inside, they are managing a tension between what they believe work should represent — and what they’re increasingly being asked to tolerate.
That internal conflict has a cost.
Generations Aren’t Weak. They’re Responding to Context.
The generational breakdown matters — not to stereotype, but to understand context.
Generation Z and younger millennials, who started at the highest engagement point in 2020, showed the sharpest decline. They entered formative professional years just before or during global crisis — followed immediately by relentless digital acceleration.
They are the most technologically fluent generation in history. They understand automation and AI intuitively. But that also means they see the implications clearly — ethically, socially, environmentally, economically.
Their engagement drop doesn’t signal weakness.
It signals awareness.
Older millennials, many in mid-career or early leadership roles, dropped even further. They were balancing professional accountability, financial pressure, caregiving responsibilities, and identity recalibration simultaneously.
They were often translating executive urgency downward and employee anxiety upward — holding the middle.
Sustained pressure without processing space leaves a mark.
Nine points is not a small shift.
Generation X, often described as the resourceful, independent “middle child” generation, declined six points from an already lower baseline. Many now carry institutional responsibility while absorbing new waves of disruption.
Lower baseline engagement suggests something important: fatigue at scale can become normalised.
Baby boomers, shaped by different historical adversity and longer institutional cycles, show steadier patterns — not because they are unaffected, but because their integration framework was built under different conditions.
This isn’t fragility.
It’s context.
Each generation has been shaped by what it endured — and how much space it had to integrate it.
And integration takes time.
Especially when acceleration never stopped.
The Work Now: Integration
If adaptation was the reflex of 2020, integration must be the discipline of this decade.
This cannot be solved with louder resilience slogans.
Or more initiatives.
Or more technology.
It requires space.
Space to acknowledge what truly changed.
Space to name what was lost — and what was revealed.
Space to explore what people discovered about themselves.
Space to rebuild trust where it fractured.
Space to reconnect with meaning — not just momentum.
Because when people don’t have space to process, they don’t stop feeling.
They stop sharing.
And disengagement becomes visible long after the early signals were there.
Resilience is not manufactured through pressure.
It is the byproduct of alignment, trust, effective operations that support people, and psychological safety.
The Risk Rebel Reframe
Gallup’s data isn’t just measuring engagement. It’s revealing where trust is thinning, where meaning is fading, and where people are carrying more than the system can see.
That’s a risk.
But it’s also an opportunity — the kind most leaders miss because they’ve been trained to treat engagement like a KPI problem, not a leadership signal.
When you respond to this moment well — when you lead with clarity, courage, and care — you don’t just lift engagement.
You rebuild something far more valuable:
Belief.
Belief that people matter.
Belief that leadership is safe to trust.
Belief that work can still mean something.
Not to fix a generation.
Not to push harder.
Not to chase a score.
But to lead in a way that helps people integrate what they’ve lived through — and reconnect with who they are now.
That is Risk Rebel leadership.
And if you’re brave enough to step into that space, what Gallup is signalling isn’t a warning.
It’s your greatest opportunity.
