Employees are checked out at work more than at any time in history — and it makes no difference if they work from home or not. Here’s why

Do you wake up with a wide smile, excited about the long work commute, the micromanaging boss, the fake smiles, the extra hours without overtime pay, the … ?

Thought so.

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Many Americans belong to this workplace club, though they’d definitely rather not. In fact, the disengagement Americans feel about their jobs is only getting worse, recent studies show.

To be fair, engagement wasn’t great before the pandemic struck: Just 36% of full-time and part-time employees described themselves as fully engaged in 2020, according to Gallup’s latest Employee Engagement Survey. But since then, the figure dropped to 34% in 2021 and dipped again to 32% in 2022.

So consider the numbers — and look around. Chances are two or three people in your cubicle forest or on that video call have lost any sense of purpose and/or excitement about what they do.

Now, look at your boss. Maybe them, too.

What’s driving this growing disengagement? Some believe that rising levels of remote or hybrid work could be responsible. But it’s a little more nuanced than that.

Remote work and remotely invested employees

Three years after the global workforce was forced to experiment with mass remote options, there’s enough data to reveal its impact on work culture.

So far the results are mixed.

Last year, a study conducted by Tracking Happiness found that remote employees were roughly 20% happier. Yet other reports suggest that the bosses disagree. Studies by Microsoft and Citrix revealed a “productivity paranoia”; that is, “leaders fear that lost productivity is due to employees not working, even though hours worked, number of meetings, and other activity metrics have increased.”

In other words, too many bosses miss the days of peering over the cubicle wall at employees they treat like cookie-jar kids who can’t be trusted. And they wonder why their charges feel no sense of engagement: more hours, more meetings, more activity and yet, less faith.

Meanwhile, workers with a remote-capable job — yet forced to be fully on-site — saw the biggest engagement drop during this period: a five-point plunge, coupled with a seven-point surge since 2019. You’ve no doubt heard of “quiet quitting” by now, another term for the phenomenon; it’s a story that, if you will, refuses to quit.

Put simply, disengagement is rising across the board. Engagement declined for all types of employees — remote, hybrid and on-site — from 2019 to 2022. That noted, forcing people to report to the office when they truly don’t need to puts an even bigger dent in worker enthusiasm.

Fortunately, this wave of disillusionment is disproportionately spread across the American workforce. Some employers enjoy much better engagement and their best practices can be replicated by others to revive workplace enthusiasm in 2023, Gallup found.

Read more: Here’s how much money the average middle-class American household makes — how do you stack up?

Four office keys: How to revive enthusiasm

Winners of Gallup’s 2022 Exceptional Workplace Award saw 70% employee engagement on average. That’s more than double the rate of the national average. Surprisingly, these organizations reported similar levels of employee engagement — even during “disruptive times.”

These top performers shared four key elements:

A values-based culture, which results in decisions based on clearly communicated guidelines
Flexible work locations that offer employees remote or hybrid options
A focus on employee well-being that was clearly connected to higher performance
Giving managers the right tools to help employees understand and embrace the organization’s culture.

Bottom line: if you feel disengaged at work, maybe it’s not so much location, location, location as your organization.

Every company is different. See if you can find an ally or start a positive conversation with an open-minded supervisor. It could begin with something as simple as peering over her cubicle wall.