Gallup says clarity, connection and development drive employee engagement

Global employee engagement fell to 20 percent in 2025, the lowest level since 2020. Gallup identifies three controllable levers: clarity, connection and development. Gallup found that highly engaged teams see 23 percent higher profitability, up to 18 percent higher productivity and 51 percent less turnover, while 47 percent of employees do not strongly agree they know what is expected of them.

The scale of the problem is already visible

Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report estimates that low engagement cost the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity, or 9 percent of global GDP. In the U.S., disengaged employees cost an estimated $2 trillion in lost productivity.

Manager engagement has dropped by nine points since 2022, and Gallup attributes most of the recent downturn to that decline.

Clarity is the first managerial job

The easiest way to lose engagement is to make people guess. Only 47 percent of employees strongly agree they know what is expected of them, a basic operating failure rather than a motivational one. At monday.com, where the workforce spans engineering, product, sales and support, clarity is the difference between coordinated execution and endless rework.

For engineers, clarity means more than a ticket and a deadline. It means knowing what technical problem matters most this quarter, what tradeoffs are acceptable and what “done” looks like in production. For product managers, it means connecting roadmap decisions to a business outcome, not just to a release date. For sales teams, it means knowing which behaviors matter, which deals are strategic and how success will be measured beyond quota alone.

Gallup found that only 26 percent of employees say their organization has communicated a clear plan for integrating AI. Without a clear AI plan, employees are left to guess where AI fits into their workflow.

A few habits make clarity real:

• Publish the top three priorities for the quarter and revisit them often.

• Spell out role-specific expectations, especially for delivery, quality and response times.

• Define what AI is supposed to change, and what it is not changing.

• Use team meetings to remove ambiguity, not to add more of it.

Connection has to be built into the hybrid week

Most of monday.com’s teams work in a hybrid model and spend three days a week together in the office. That setup can be a strength, but only if the in-person time is deliberate. Connection does not come from seating charts or snacks; it comes from the quality of the manager relationship and the rhythm of the team.

If managers are less engaged, team connection usually frays in small, hard-to-measure ways: weaker feedback, fewer coaching moments and less trust that anyone is tracking the same goals. monday.com had more than 250,000 customers worldwide and 3,211 employees as of March 31, 2026.

Hybrid teams need a tighter operating cadence, not more meetings. The best 1:1s are not status updates; they are the place to clear blockers, talk through workload and make sure people are not quietly disappearing into frustration. Office days should be used for the work that benefits most from proximity: planning, conflict resolution, customer review, product alignment and manager coaching.

Connection gets stronger when managers do a few simple things well:

• Use 1:1s to ask what is unclear, what feels stuck and what support is missing.

• Reserve office time for decisions that require fast back-and-forth.

• Pull cross-functional partners into the room when work spans engineering, product and sales.

• Make recognition specific, so people know exactly which behavior mattered.

Development has to be visible, not implied

Gallup’s third lever is development, and that is where a lot of companies get vague. They tell people growth matters, then leave the path to growth hidden inside annual review forms and informal sponsorship. That does not scale in a SaaS business, especially one that is changing its product and operating model at the same time.

monday.com’s first-quarter 2026 revenue rose 24 percent year over year to $351.3 million, and CFO Eliran Glazer said the company is seeing “AI productivity gains we are seeing inside our own organization are demonstrating that we can grow revenue without growing headcount in lockstep.” That points to a future where output can rise without a matching rise in headcount, and people need to see how their roles evolve when AI takes on more of the routine work.

For sales professionals, development means a visible coaching path, not just a quarterly number. For product managers, it means learning how to translate customer problems into better product decisions. For engineers, it means growing from shipping features to shaping architecture, reliability and AI-enabled workflows.

The practical version of development looks like this:

• Write a growth plan that names the next skill, not just the next title.

• Tie coaching to specific work, so feedback is actionable.

• Make internal mobility visible, especially in fast-changing teams.

• Treat AI fluency as a career skill, not an optional side project.

AI is now part of the engagement equation

monday.com announced on May 6, 2026 that it was becoming an AI Work Platform with native AI agents that team members can configure, deploy and direct.

AI changes work fastest when employees can see how it helps them do their job better. It also changes work fastest when managers explain the why, the scope and the guardrails. In a company that markets itself around transparency and helping teams achieve more and be happier at work, the message has to show up in the day-to-day: clearer priorities, better 1:1s and growth plans people can actually point to.