The newly released State of the Global Workplace: 2025 report by Gallup delivers a compelling snapshot of a world and workforce in transition. As artificial intelligence reshapes jobs and workplace expectations continue to evolve post-pandemic, the question for leaders is no longer if remote work is viable. It is now about HOW work is done, not where!
At Grow Remote, this question sits at the core of our mission. We work with employers, policymakers, and communities to unlock the full potential of remote work. Below, we unpack Gallup’s latest findings through the lens of remote work and explore what it means for building a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future of work.
📊 Remote Work by the Numbers (Global Averages)
| Metric | Exclusively Remote | Hybrid | On-site (Remote-Capable) | On-site (Non-Remote-Capable) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee Engagement | 31% | 23% | 23% | 19% |
| Life Satisfaction (“Thriving”) | 36% | 42% | 42% | 30% |
| Daily Stress | 45% | 46% | 39% | 38% |
| Daily Loneliness | 27% | 23% | 20% | 21% |
| Daily Anger | 25% | 17% | 21% | 21% |
| Good Time to Find a Job | 54% | 56% | 58% | 50% |
| Intent to Leave | 57% | 57% | 45% | 47% |
Note: “On-site (remote-capable)” refers to jobs that could technically be done remotely but are not. “On-site (non-remote-capable)” jobs require physical presence, such as in healthcare, manufacturing, or retail.
📉 A Global Engagement Crisis
In 2024, global employee engagement fell from 23% to 21 percent. This is only the second decline in over a decade and is estimated to have cost the global economy $438 billion in lost productivity.
Manager engagement saw the sharpest drop, falling from 30% to 27 percent. Younger managers under 35 experienced a five-point decrease, while engagement among female managers declined by seven points. Meanwhile, individual contributor engagement remained flat at 18 percent.
These numbers reflect the increasing pressure managers are under. Following the pandemic, organisations have undergone widespread restructuring, budget tightening, and shifts in flexibility policies. Managers are now caught between heightened executive expectations and employee demands for autonomy, inclusion, and balance. They are doing more with less while trying to meet the needs of everyone around them.
Gallup suggests this is not a temporary issue. To improve team performance in today’s workplace, leaders need to fundamentally redefine the role of the manager, transforming it into one centered on coaching, support, and human connection.
Source: Gallup – Global Engagement Falls for Only the Second Time Since 2009
🚀 Key Insights from Gallup’s 2025 Data
✅ 1. Remote Workers Are the Most Engaged
Exclusively remote employees report the highest levels of engagement at 31 percent. This supports what we see every day at Grow Remote. When remote work is implemented with intentionality and structure, people and teams thrive.
Gallup also finds that 70 percent of team engagement is influenced by the manager. Strong, capable leadership is not optional. It is essential.
🌟 2. Hybrid Workers Report the Highest Life Satisfaction
Employees in hybrid and remote-capable roles both report the highest life satisfaction levels at 42 percent. This suggests that a blend of flexibility and structure supports wellbeing more effectively than extremes.
😓 3. Remote Workers Experience Higher Stress and Loneliness
Fully remote employees are more likely to report daily stress (45 percent) and loneliness (27 percent). This underscores the importance of investing in intentional connection rituals, mental health strategies, and social design within remote environments.
This new data underscores the importance of what we have learned at Grow Remote since 2018, and reminds us of the need for our programme of localised social connection events for remote workers. In 2024, we hosted more than 300 meetups for almost 2,500 remote workers across Ireland – 4 out of every 5 attendees “met with interesting people and had fun”.
🧭 4. Remote Workers Are the Most Likely to Be Looking for New Jobs
Fifty-seven percent of remote workers are watching for or actively seeking new roles. This is not necessarily a sign of disengagement. Rather, it may reflect limited career visibility, a desire for growth, or lack of upward mobility in distributed environments.
Note – full definitions for the terms used are available in the methodology of the Gallup report available here: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/659279/global-engagement-falls-second-time-2009.aspx
🧠 Manager Development: A Missed Opportunity
Although the 2025 report captures the current drop in manager engagement, Gallup’s 2023 research provides deeper insight into why so many leaders are struggling.
When Gallup asked managers what changes their organisation made in 2023, they found:
- Only 48 percent of managers strongly agreed that they had the skills to be exceptional at their job.
- Most had not been trained on having meaningful conversations or on best practices in engagement and performance coaching.
- Just three in ten hybrid managers had received any formal training on leading in hybrid environments.
Source: Gallup – The Manager Squeeze: A New Workplace is Testing Team Leaders
Coming back to what has been published on April 23, 2025 Gallup reinforced this by stating 👇
“The best organisations Gallup has studied put manager training and development at the center of their strategy. Even rudimentary training shows benefits to engagement. However, managers who receive best-practice training have seen their own engagement and their team’s engagement improve substantially. Management performance metrics improved by 20% to 28%.”
⚖️ What Employers Must Prioritise
Gallup’s research across 2023 and 2025 points to one clear truth. Building a successful remote or hybrid workforce requires focused, intentional leadership. That means investing in:
- Intentional connection activities to foster cohesion and belonging between teams
- Leadership and management training focused on targeted skills development
- Redefining the role and support for managers to counter declining trends in key areas
Remote work isn’t the future – it’s the present. The organisations that empower their people to thrive in this new world of work will be the ones that lead in tomorrow’s competitive markets.
🏛️ Lead the Future of Work with Grow Remote
Grow Remote’s training programme, Leading Remote & Hybrid Teams, is purpose-built for this era. It equips managers with practical skills to lead distributed teams with confidence, engagement, and impact.
🟢 Fully funded training is available through the LOTEB scheme for qualifying employers in Ireland.
🔗 Find out more and register your interest here
About Grow Remote – Our mission is to solve the problems of remote work in order to unlock social, economic and environmental change for individuals, employers and local communities.
