Employee engagement is falling to alarmingly low levels worldwide!
Gallup's ‘State of the Global Workplace 2025’ report shows that global engagement has fallen from 23% in 2023 to 21% in 2024. This is only the second decline in twelve years and is accompanied by an estimated productivity loss of £438 billion in 2024 alone.
Most employees are not experiencing positive development in this environment.
Globally, only 21 % feel connected to their work, 62 % say they are ‘not engaged,’ and 17 % say they are actively disengaged. Silent resignations, increased sick days, waiting for the weekend, and feeling stuck in energy-sapping roles have become the norm in many companies.
There is a clear pattern behind these figures.
Long-term studies by Gallup suggest that around 70 % of the differences in team engagement can be attributed to managers. Independent studies show that around one in two employees has quit their job at some point in their career to escape a manager and improve their life – even if they still cared about their work.
This is not to place the blame solely on managers.
Managers are also under a lot of pressure. Manager engagement has fallen to around 27 %, with young and female managers seeing the sharpest decline. Many feel caught between the demands from above, the expectations of their teams, and the lack of support or training. In this context, both managers and employees suffer from increasing stress, lower well-being and higher turnover.
There is hope.
The same data that highlights the problem also shows that engagement increases when people know what is expected of them, have regular meaningful conversations about their work, and feel that they are trusted to use their judgement. Research on motivation, including the work of Daniel Pink, points to three key factors: meaningful goals, a sense of progress and mastery, and autonomy – genuine freedom to decide how to approach one's work within clear guidelines.
People enter companies with energy and hope.
They leave managers, systems and cultures that ignore how they work best.
Many companies have turned to personality tools in search of answers. Personality generally remains stable in adulthood. Labels based on fixed types often make people feel pigeonholed, while expectations of their behaviour hardly change.
Preferences behave differently.
They respond to awareness, environment and intention. When you understand your preferences, you begin to recognise how you approach relationships, thinking, decisions and outcomes. You also acquire the language to express the conditions that help you perform at your best. When managers understand these preferences in a team, they adjust communication, role allocation and expectations to increase engagement and reduce friction.
Sariio MAPS (Motivations And Preferences Survey) was developed for this purpose.
It focuses on four factors in the workplace:
Connect and Act are the parts of your personality that others notice first. They shape how you come across in meetings, conversations and daily work. Thinking and Deciding tend to be more in the background. They influence how you process information, weigh options and make judgements before you act or speak.
The report acts as a mirror.
It shows how you tend to interact with others, organise your thoughts, make decisions and get your work done. It links these patterns to Daniel Pink's ideas about autonomy, mastery and purpose, as well as Alfred Adler's focus on contribution and social interest – the belief that work is important when it supports something beyond the self.
If you lead others, this report provides a practical framework for understanding what drives different people so that you can work with their preferences rather than against them.
If you are not a leader, it gives you a clear language to express how you prefer to work and what helps you make your best contribution.
The purpose is clear: more transparent communication, better coordination and healthier working relationships.
Sariio MAPS gives you the insight to use your preferences – so that work feels more sustainable and you feel more engaged and in tune with the contribution you want to make.
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