By Pooja Bajaj, Founder & CEO – ExtraMile
I want to share a number that stopped me in my tracks this month.
23%!!!
That is the percentage of Indian employees who feel genuinely engaged at work in 2026, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report. It is the lowest India has recorded in four years. And it is down sharply from 30% just a year ago.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Seven out of ten employees in Indian workplaces are going through the motions. They are present. They are productive enough. But they are not invested. They are not connected. And at the first better offer, they will leave.
This is not an abstract statistic. For any organisation with 100 or more employees, this number sits inside your team right now.
Why Is This Happening?
The reasons are not mysterious. The post-pandemic hybrid experiment left many employees feeling structurally disconnected. The return-to-office pressure created friction without rebuilding belonging. Recognition programs became inconsistent. And many organisations, with the best of intentions, defaulted back to the old model: an annual engagement survey, a festive event, a town hall, and silence in between.
Engagement cannot be episodic. It has to be continuous.
And the data tells us that when it is episodic, employees notice. They do not complain loudly. They just quietly withdraw.
What HR Leaders Need to Do Right Now
First, audit your listening infrastructure. When did you last run a pulse survey? When did you last ask employees, genuinely and informally, how they are feeling? Real-time listening is the foundation of everything else. Without it, you are managing in the dark.
Second, invest in your managers. As we explored in our piece on how managers drive employee engagement, the single biggest variable in whether an employee feels engaged is their direct manager. Not the culture program. Not the salary. The manager. Train them. Support them. Give them tools.
Third, build a structured, year-round engagement plan. Not a list of events. A plan, with clear goals, regular touchpoints, and ways to measure whether it is working. Our HR Playbook for Year-Round Employee Engagement is a good starting point.
Fourth, make it personal. The teams seeing the best engagement outcomes are not running the biggest programs. They are running the most relevant ones. Engagement that reflects your team’s actual culture, your city, your calendar, and your people.
Finally, act now, not in Q1. Every month of disengagement costs real money in attrition, productivity, and lost momentum.
At ExtraMile, we help organisations build employee engagement programs that are continuous, personalised, and measurable, not once-a-year gestures.
If the Gallup number felt uncomfortable to read, that discomfort is useful. Let it drive action.
ExtraMile is India’s leading employee engagement company. Book a free demo and let us help you move that 23% number in the right direction.