The annual Gallup poll released on Wednesday examined the mood and well-being of employees in 160 countries and found that employee engagement declined for the second year in a row, with the South Asia region recording the largest decline in employee engagement over the past year led by India. The region also had the lowest number of employees rated as thriving, and the highest number who reported daily sadness.
Among Indian respondents, the data revealed sharp changes in employee engagement across two categories – disengaged and engaged – over 15 years, with the former declining, and the latter increasing by several points. However, the survey recorded a continuing decline in the number of participating employees, which was first seen in the three-year rolling data analyzed between 2022 and 2024, suggesting that the quiet quitting trend has well and truly impacted Indian workplaces. Furthermore, the report also showed a decline in engagement in the same time frame among managers.
Data from all surveys, including the current one, showed that compared to 2010-12, the number of actively disengaged employees in India declined sharply from 31% to 18.47% in 2023-25, the number of disengaged employees decreased marginally from 59.98% to 59.02%, and the number of engaged employees increased from 9.03% to 22.51%. However, the number of participating employees was the highest in 2020-2022 at 33.17%. Likewise, while 39% of managers were recorded as being engaged in the workplace, according to three-year rolling data analyzed between 2022-2024, the number dropped to 30% in 2023-2025, figures shared by a Gallup representative revealed.
“The big question is whether Indian workplaces have enough great managers who can deliver an engaging experience to their direct team members,” said Puneet Singh, Gallup’s regional director of research and analysis for Asia Pacific. “This is something the whole world is struggling with – lack of talented managers and increasing tenure.”
The State of the Global Workplace 2026 report defines workplace engagement as the psychological connection that workers have to their work, team and employer, and measures this based on a set of 12 statements posed to respondents. These include: “There is someone at work who encourages my growth,” “In the past seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing a good job,” and “In the past year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.” Based on their answers, the survey found that they were either engaged, disengaged, or not actively engaged. This is the same data set that the survey has offered since its first edition in 2009.
Singh explained that the decline in workplace engagement has less to do with active disengagement, and more to do with the middle class — those who don’t engage, but don’t actively disengage either, aka quiet leavers.
“Quietly quitting means that workers are self-employed, do not give any discretionary effort at work, and have no connection to the mission or purpose of the organization. Loudly quitting or actively quitting employees are those who are dissatisfied or actively working against the organization – they are angry and unhappy and insist on others getting involved,” Singh said.
“While engagement occurs at the team level, disengaged or actively disengaged employees lead to less profitable organizations, which in turn translates into lower economic growth,” the report states.
The report noted that managers once enjoyed an “engagement premium” at work, but are increasingly becoming as engaged as those they lead. The largest annual decline in director engagement globally occurred between 2024 and 2025 (a five-point drop from 27% to 22%), with the South Asia region (primarily India) seeing an eight-point decline in director engagement, the largest decline of any region that year.
Participants were also asked to answer a two-part life assessment question to ascertain their health status – thriving, struggling, and suffering. Those who were thriving had positive views about their current life situation as well as the next five years. They also reported significantly fewer health problems as well as fewer daily negative emotions, which the global survey also collected data on. Participants were asked: “Did you feel the following emotions for most of yesterday? Stress, anxiety, anger, sadness, loneliness?”
South Asia had the lowest number of participants who said they were thriving (16% compared to 34% globally), and ranked highest globally in participants who felt daily sad (36% compared to the global figure of 23%). Compared to the global percentage of 22% who admitted to feeling angry daily, the percentage in South Asia was 31%.
In India, employee anger trends show an upward increase from 28% in data collected between 2008 and 2010 to 34% among survey respondents between 2022 and 2024. The number of participants ranged between 2480 and 2839, but they were weighted before assessing the proportion. Likewise, grief trends also increased from 24% (unweighted n=2477 respondents) to 39% (unweighted n=2835 respondents) in 2022-2024. In 2025, these numbers reached 31% and 36% of survey participants over a period of three years, respectively.
The primary data used in this report were collected through Gallup Surveys of the global adult population, using randomly selected samples, since 2005. The 2025 data used in the report were collected from 141,444 employee respondents over the age of 15 working for any employer for any number of hours. The number of respondents in India for the three-year period from 2023 to 2025 was 3,095. All Indian employee engagement figures mentioned above are based on unweighted numbers of survey respondents over the years.
