The World at Work in 2026: What Gallup's Latest Data Means for Australian Workplaces
Written by Sue Chennell | Shared Safety and Risk | April 2026
Gallup has just released its 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report — the world's largest ongoing study of the employee experience — and the findings make for sobering reading. Subtitled The Human Side of the AI Revolution, the report surveyed over 250,000 workers across more than 160 countries and areas. The surveys were conducted between January and December 2025. The results paint a picture of a global workforce that is increasingly disengaged, stressed and uncertain about the future. For WHS and people professionals, the data is not just interesting — it is directly relevant to how we think about psychosocial risk, worker wellbeing and the legal obligations that sit behind both.
The Global Picture: Engagement Is Falling — Again
For the second consecutive year, global employee engagement has declined, dropping to just 20% of the working population — its lowest level since 2020. Globally, 64% of workers are "not engaged" (going through the motions) and 16% are "actively disengaged" (checked out and potentially undermining their teams).
This is not a trivial statistic. Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the global economy approximately $10 trillion in lost productivity in the past year — roughly 9% of global GDP. Engagement, as Gallup frames it, is not just a "feel good" metric. It is a measure of psychological attachment to work, team and employer — and it is one of the strongest predictors of organisational performance, safety outcomes and resilience to change.
Notably, the steepest falls have been among managers. Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped nine percentage points globally, falling from a position of "engagement premium" — where managers were more engaged than their teams — to being only as engaged as the individual contributors they lead.
Australia and New Zealand: Better Than Average, But Under Pressure
The news from our own region is mixed. On several measures, Australia and New Zealand remain among the best-performing regions in the world — but the trend lines are moving in the wrong direction.
Thriving: At 55% of workers classified as "thriving" in their life evaluation, Australia and New Zealand sits well above the global average of 34% and remains one of the highest-ranked regions globally. That said, thriving has been declining gradually — down from a peak of 69% in 2011 — and ticked down again by one point this year.
Engagement: At 21%, engagement in our region is marginally above the global average of 20%, but it has declined by two points over the rolling average period and is now broadly aligned with global norms — a significant fall from where our region has historically sat.
Job market confidence: This is where the most dramatic shift is visible. Job market optimism in Australia and New Zealand dropped by a sharp 12 percentage points year-on-year — the largest decline of any region globally. After years of leading the world on this measure (post-pandemic optimism peaked at 73%), our region has fallen to second place behind Southeast Asia, sitting at 60%. The Gallup report specifically notes this as a headline finding for the region.
Stress: Nearly half of Australian and New Zealand workers (49%) reported experiencing significant stress the previous day — well above the global average of 40%. Stress levels have been climbing steadily over the past decade. Women (53%) and younger workers under 35 (58%) report the highest levels, and managers (51%) and individual contributors (48%) are similarly affected.
Loneliness: At 14% of workers reporting significant loneliness, Australia and New Zealand fares better than the global average of 22% — though younger workers under 35 report meaningfully higher rates (17%) than their older counterparts (13%).
The WHS Lens: Why This Data Matters for Psychosocial Risk Management
Under the Work Health and Safety Acts 2011 PCBUs are required to manage psychosocial hazards as they would any other workplace risk. Safe Work Australia's Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work specifically identifies job demands, lack of role clarity, poor support, low control over work and organisational change as hazards requiring active management.
The Gallup data speaks directly to each of these. Declining engagement, elevated stress, growing uncertainty about job security in the context of AI adoption, and disengaged managers are all indicators that psychosocial hazards may be active and uncontrolled in many workplaces.
Several findings deserve particular attention from a health and safety perspective:
Manager disengagement is a safety risk. Research consistently shows that the quality of the manager-worker relationship is one of the most significant determinants of psychological safety at work. When managers are themselves disengaged, burned out or unsupported, their capacity to provide the kind of supervisory support, recognition and clear communication that protects worker wellbeing is severely diminished
Stress is elevated and structural, not episodic. The steady upward trend in daily stress in— rising from 33% in 2011 to 49% in 2025 — suggests that workplace stress is not a cyclical or crisis-driven phenomenon but a structural feature of how work is organised. This is precisely the kind of chronic psychosocial hazard that requires organisations to identify and control, not simply acknowledge.
AI-driven uncertainty is an emerging psychosocial hazard. The report finds that in organisations where AI has been implemented, 23% of US workers believe their job will be eliminated within five years — and that figure rises significantly in industries such as finance, insurance and technology. Unmanaged anxiety about technological displacement is a psychosocial hazard, affecting engagement, performance and mental health.
Wellbeing is not the same as engagement. One of the more nuanced findings in the report is the disconnect between life evaluation (thriving) and daily emotional experience. Leaders in particular report higher thriving scores but significantly worse daily emotional states — more stress, anger, sadness and loneliness than those they lead.
What Does "Good" Look Like?
The Gallup report is not all grim. It points to what best-practice organisations are doing differently — and the results are striking. In organisations that genuinely prioritise employee engagement as part of their long-term strategy, 79% of managers are engaged at work — nearly four times the global average. These organisations exist across all regions and industries. Their defining characteristic is not resources or sector; it is intentionality.
The report also finds that when employees see their work as intrinsically rewarding, feel it improves others' lives and believe they have real choice in how they work, their wellbeing and engagement are substantially higher. This is a useful framework: the conditions that Gallup associates with thriving workers are, in large part, the same conditions that good WHS management is designed to create.
Five Things Organisations Should Be Doing Now
Drawing on the Gallup findings and the Australian regulatory context, organisations should consider the following priorities:
1. Assess your psychosocial hazard profile. Do not wait for a stress claim or a regulator inquiry. Conduct a structured psychosocial risk assessment now, using the Codes of Practice as your guide, and map your findings against indicators like engagement, workload, supervisory support and role clarity.
2. Invest in your managers — genuinely. The data is unambiguous: manager engagement is collapsing, and managers are carrying disproportionate emotional loads. Organisations that support their managers with meaningful coaching, realistic spans of control, clear role expectations and psychological safety at the leadership level will outperform those that do not — on every measure that matters.
3. Take AI-related anxiety seriously. If your organisation is implementing AI tools or restructuring roles in response to automation, the psychological impact on workers requires active management. Transparent communication, genuine consultation and upskilling pathways are not just good people practice — they are likely to be assessed by regulators as reasonably practicable controls for a foreseeable psychosocial hazard.
4. Don't confuse thriving with safety. High-level wellbeing surveys may mask significant day-to-day distress. Include pulse checks on daily emotional experience — stress, exhaustion, connectedness — alongside broader life satisfaction measures.
5. Look at your engagement data through a safety lens. Disengaged workers are not just less productive — there are likely systems of work that require review and control. Low engagement correlates with low psychological safety, risks that go unchecked and weaker safety culture. If your engagement scores are declining, your health and safety risk profile is likely changing with them.
Conclusion
The Gallup 2026 State of the Global Workplace Report is a reminder that the human experience of work is not a soft topic — it is a hard one, with measurable consequences for productivity, safety and organisational resilience. For workplaces, the combination of rising stress, falling engagement, uncertain job markets and the rapid introduction of AI-driven change creates a psychosocial risk environment that demands active, proactive management.
The WHS framework already requires it. The data now makes it impossible to ignore.
If your organisation would like support conducting a psychosocial risk assessment, reviewing your engagement and wellbeing strategies through a WHS lens, or developing your manager capability to support safer, healthier teams, the team at Shared Safety and Risk is here to help.
And make sure to look out for our upcoming webinar on using leader capability uplift as a key psychosocial risk control.
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