Happy managers = happy staff

Hello and welcome to Working It.

I’ve just finished Rutger Bregman’s new book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. The Dutch historian has sold millions of copies of his previous titles, and I think this will be one of those “it books” that everyone is talking about.

If you’re unfulfilled in your job (lots of people are — read on to see why), then this book may even inspire you to change careers. “Moral ambition,” as Rutger says, “is the will to make the world a wildly better place”.

Read on for more detail on the global problem of “disengagement” at work, and the secrets of companies with happy workers. And in Office Therapy we reassure a parent worried about children messing up their CVs.

Help managers to thrive and you’ll help everyone else, too 💡

The headline figure on the latest Gallup State of the Global Workforce report, published today, is that in 2024, “the global percentage of engaged employees” fell from 23 per cent to 21 per cent. Engagement has fallen only twice in the past 12 years — in 2020 and 2024. The report says the situation is sufficiently serious that “the productivity of the world’s workplace is at risk”.

In Britain those engagement figures are even worse: only 10 per cent of workers are happy in their work ☹️. Although (slightly good news?) this 10 per cent figure hasn’t shifted for four years.

Gallup’s definition of worker engagement, for clarity, is: “Employee engagement reflects the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace. Employees can become engaged when their basic needs are met and they have a chance to contribute a sense of belonging, and opportunities to learn and grow 🌷.”

We know what was happening in 2020, and in 2025 we are facing global political and economic crises. But when I spoke to one of the report’s authors, Gallup’s chief scientist, Jim Harter, he highlighted increasing manager burnout and disengagement as the key problem.

“We’ve done a lot of different analyses, and at both country and team level, higher manager engagement relates to higher employee engagement. So managers are really central to getting that right.” (Gallup draws its findings from more than 200,000 people at every organisational level).

If the managers in your organisation can’t cope with the ever-increasing demands on them, (their overwhelm is real, as this report demonstrates) then they will withdraw, become disengaged, and then their teams will follow suit. Jim outlines some of the responsibilities that are now routinely loaded on to managers: “They’re trying to meet the expectations of senior leadership, but trying to communicate changes as they occur. They’re trying to keep up with market intelligence, they’ve got to analyse new information coming in and try to relate that to their employees. They’ve got to do the administrative things like monitor time sheets, pay, expenses, DEI concerns. It’s a pretty long list.” Add incoming challenges such as the rollout and impact of generative AI, and it’s clearly a heavy workload 😰.

Some companies, however, have got it right, with employee and manager engagement as high as 70 per cent ✅. These companies are situated all over the world, and Jim suggests we can look to them for ideas on how to improve workplaces. “They have leadership that really is intentional about their culture, but they do it through their managers — and they implement training for managers.” Only 44 per cent of the managers interviewed by Gallup said they’d received any training.

Another effective intervention we can learn from happy workplaces is to teach coaching techniques to managers. Not everyone is a naturally inspiring leader, but it can be taught 🎓. Finally, make sure all managers receive ongoing training and support. The report says that when managers have both training and “someone at work who actively encourages their development”, 50 per cent say they are actively “thriving” at work.

Finally, I asked Jim why Britain’s workers are particularly unenthused. He sets the regional scene: “Overall, stress is lower in Europe than in the US, but the US has higher employee engagement, even though it’s been dropping recently.” Why? Perhaps a tradition of taking management seriously in the US. And a different emphasis on the place of work in our lives, “and [in the US] of thinking how can work improve your life?” (I think this is a polite way of saying Americans have traditionally worked much longer hours and take fewer holidays 🏖️.)

I’d love to hear readers’ ideas on how to improve engagement at work. Focusing efforts on manager training and support makes total sense: I have never understood why this area is so overlooked. All thoughts and ideas: [email protected]. I’ll print the best (you can be anonymous if you want 🤫.)

Office Therapy

The problem: My children are in their twenties and trying to get graduate-level jobs. I was dismayed to see that neither of them is putting A level or GCSE results (or even their school) on CVs unless it’s asked for. Is it necessary to state this information once you have, as they both do, a degree and work experience? They say not. Am I out of touch?

The advice: A timely question, as the competition for graduate-level posts is intense and a strong CV is key. I turned to Jonathan Black, director of the careers service at Oxford university, and THE expert on all this. Gen Z often prefer video 📲, so you could direct them to an FT film we made with Jonathan a few years back about “how to write a top-notch CV” that is still extremely relevant. Or try his colleague’s nifty two-minute video on CV writing, with lots of AI-beating tips.

And the answer to your question about mentioning A levels and so on is “it depends”: you and your children are both right. Here’s Jonathan: “Some people will include A-levels, even GCSEs, to show how broadly educated they are: scientists might include English Literature, and humanities graduates often include maths. But this is perhaps to lose sight of the aim of the CV: to convey the most relevant points about your skills and experience in a clear, accessible way.

“Whether it is a human, or an Applicant Tracking System assessing your application, make it easy for them/it to find what they are looking for, so tailor each CV (yes, each one) to the role’s core requirements. Then use active verbs and numbers to define what you achieved 🏆, and specify what you were responsible for. Make sure a friend reads it for 100 per cent accuracy and no typos. AI tools can give your CV a score, but they can’t write it for you, since no AI tool knows what you have achieved and all your relevant skills.”

Five top stories from the world of work

1. Why Jamie Dimon is right about meetings: The JPMorgan boss suggested his workers “kill” the meeting in his annual letter to shareholders, and so tapped into a very deep vein of anti-meeting sentiment, captured here by Emma Jacobs. (And the FT readers agree, in droves.)

2. The silence of the CEOs: A deafening silence from the leaders of corporate America in response to Donald Trump’s tariff chaos is, says Stuart Kirk, one of the “biggest failures of leadership in corporate history”.

3. Harvard sues Trump administration over funding freeze: As Andrew Jack reports, after Harvard’s legal action over “unlawful” efforts to freeze $3bn in federal funding, 150 other US university leaders have issued a joint statement opposing “undue government intrusion”.

4. The legacy of a compassionate reformist pope: The FT’s editorial board considers the considerable achievements of Pope Francis, and describes him as someone whose “personal example was perhaps his most powerful legacy”.

5. How Hollywood learnt to love video games: A Minecraft Movie demonstrates the power of video games to generate big box office returns, writes Christopher Grimes. As Shuji Utsumi, CEO of Sega in the US and Europe says: “Games are now the culture.”

One more thing . . . 

Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story, is a captivating documentary about the Irish writer’s life. O’Brien, who died last year at 93, talked at length on camera to filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea for this project, but didn’t live to see its release. There’s also lots of footage of O’Brien at the peak of her fame (including some appallingly sexist 1970s television interviews). The film is a tribute to the author’s remarkable life and hard-won professional and personal successes.

A word from the Working It community

I asked for your summer-ready photos of rooms/roofs/offices with a lunchtime view, and you did not disappoint. This week’s winner is Irfan Mohammad, who will receive a “lucky dip” of titles from my stash of new management books and optimisation manuals.

This is Irfan’s wonderful London view. Do keep them coming: [email protected]

Before you log off . . . 

The newsletter that caught my attention this week 👋 is “How to have good taste”, by Henry Oliver (his Substack is called The Common Reader). This post has gone modestly viral, I think because we all worry about whether we have good taste, and what even is “taste”? (Asking for myself 🫣.) Henry offers up some ideas: “The way we can relate personal taste and good taste is realising that taste is knowledge”. In literary terms, this means “The more we have read, the better we know where a new book fits.”