You increase employee engagement mainly through the manager. Invest in your people's growth, have a real conversation every week, work with clear goals and a higher goal, give room instead of controlling, and measure work engagement instead of satisfaction. Below you can read why this matters so much and how to go about it.
Employee engagement is a term you hear more and more often in business. It is not directly tangible, but it is very important. The extent to which employees are engaged largely determines an organisation's success. In this blog, we look at the types of employees you come across in every organisation and give tips to increase engagement in your organisation.
Engaged, not engaged and actively disengaged
According to Gallup's latest research, the State of the Global Workplace 2026, only 20% of employees worldwide were 'engaged' in 2025. 64% are not engaged and 16% are actively disengaged. It is the second year in a row that engagement has fallen. Gallup estimates that low engagement costs the global economy around 10 trillion dollars in lost productivity, roughly 9% of global GDP. Gallup
At the same time, there are huge opportunities here. If you as an organisation or manager manage to increase engagement and keep it up, you immediately have an edge over your competitors. More employee engagement goes together with higher productivity, less absenteeism and better performance.
You can divide employee engagement into three types:
Engaged
An engaged employee is loyal and highly committed to the organisation. He or she makes the most of their talents and keeps developing. Engaged employees are willing to go the extra mile that helps the organisation move forward.
Not engaged
You can compare not-engaged employees to 'satisfied' employees. They don't really feel connected to the organisation's mission, vision, goals or customers. That doesn't mean they don't do their work well. Often there is nothing wrong with it: they are present, receive a salary, but that's about it. They don't go the extra mile. This group is both a threat and an opportunity. After all, an employee who isn't engaged can still become engaged.
Actively disengaged
Actively disengaged employees are like poison for an organisation. They are unhappy in their work and actively share that with colleagues. They speak negatively about the company and undermine the performance of others. You can see them as the 'bad apples' in an organisation.
Want to see these types broken down further? Then also read about the engagement pyramid.
Employee engagement in the Netherlands
In earlier Gallup measurements, the Netherlands came out at only 9% engaged employees. Something has changed, but it is still not good. According to Gallup, 14% of Dutch employees are now engaged in their work, 74% are not engaged and 12% are actively disengaged. That is slightly better than the European average of 12%, but 2 percentage points lower than in the previous measurement. Gallup Netherlands
Europe remains the region with the lowest engagement in the world. Gallup Europe Strikingly, Dutch employees are satisfied with their lives in general: 68% say they are thriving. So life is fine. But they are far from engaged in their work. Plenty of work to be done, then!
How do you increase employee engagement?
Managers play a big role in their people's engagement. According to Gallup, as much as 70% of the differences in engagement between teams are down to the manager. Gallup Here are a few tips to increase engagement in your team.
Be involved and invest in your employees. Besides salary and terms of employment, employees find it important to be able to develop. They want to keep challenging themselves and didn't apply for a boring job in which they do the same thing for years. So give them new tasks or responsibilities every so often. Offer training and courses. That shows you care about their growth, and at the same time you add new skills to your team.
Have a real conversation every week. A pat on the back here and a 'have a nice evening' there never hurts. But what delivers most is structural attention. Gallup advises managers to have one meaningful coaching conversation with each team member every week. It doesn't have to take long and can happen at the coffee machine, by phone or in a video call. Gallup An employee who feels seen stays engaged. An employee who feels ignored drops out.
Make hybrid working a conscious choice. Working from home is not the enemy of engagement. According to Gallup, 25% of hybrid workers worldwide are engaged, compared with 17% of people who work on site and cannot do their work remotely. Fully remote workers score highest at 30%. Gallup What matters is that as a manager you consciously choose what you do together at the office and what can be done remotely. Use the office days for working together, sparring and connection, and make sure nobody drops out of sight. Read more tips in leading a hybrid organisation.
Set goals. Without a clear goal, productivity drops. So work with annual and monthly goals. That way, once they are achieved, you let your people feel what impact they have on the company's success. Do make sure you always also work with a higher, never-finished goal. As soon as there is no goal left to work towards, you are left with only satisfied employees. Such a never-finished goal is also called a 'purpose'. It can never quite be reached, but it does inspire. Besides the organisation's purpose, it is important that your employees have their own purpose that fits with it. That is the essence of engagement.
Use the right leadership style. According to Bas Kodden, safety is a manager's greatest asset. Only in a safe working environment can your people perform at their best. That means you interfere as little as possible with the day-to-day running of things and only 'step in' when it is really necessary, for example when safety is at stake or goals are not being met. When you do step in, choose your style consciously and don't let yourself be led by your first reaction. Try supporting and coaching first, and if at all possible never start directing. If you tell your people exactly what to do and constantly look over their shoulders, creativity, productivity and morale drop. That is how you turn engaged employees into not-engaged or even actively disengaged employees. Read more about leadership styles and stepping in and about psychological safety in teams.
A good manager therefore lets their team do as much as possible themselves and, as it were, 'leans back'. Let people come up with their own ideas, let them decide how they do their work and let them solve their own problems. Look at the big picture yourself and leave the details to them. That way they really get the feeling that they are important and that what they do is valuable to the organisation. That leads to higher employee engagement and is contagious too.
Look after the manager's own engagement too. According to Gallup, the recent fall in engagement is mainly due to managers. Their engagement dropped from 27% in 2024 to 22% in 2025. Gallup A manager running on empty can hardly inspire a team. So also invest in your managers' development, overview and energy.
Measure work engagement, not just satisfaction. A classic satisfaction survey tells you whether people are enjoying themselves. It doesn't tell you whether they have the energy to go for it. If you want to know how engagement is really doing per team, and what role leadership plays in it, look at an Employee Engagement Survey.
