thrive at work/The cost of disengagement: the data (2026)
Data hub · Updated quarterly
The cost of disengagement: the data.
Disengagement is the most expensive problem most organizations never put a number on. Here is what the latest data says it costs — globally and per organization — and the capacity signal underneath it. Every figure cited and dated.
What is the cost of employee disengagement and burnout?
Disengagement and burnout cost you through lost output, errors, absence, and turnover. At the Eurostat average labor cost of €34.90 per hour, every hour lost per person adds up fast. Work out your own figure: hours lost per person per week, times headcount, times hourly cost. thrive at work shows where those hours are being lost.
How do you prove the ROI of an employee engagement program?
Compare the cost of lost performance with the cost of acting. thrive research shows employees in the lowest capacity quarter deliver 56% of priority tasks on time, against 86% in the highest. thrive at work tracks that gap by group over time, so you can show it narrowing.
The formula: people affected × hours lost per week × hourly labor cost × 46 weeks.
Example: 100 people × 2 hours × €34.90 (Eurostat average hourly labor cost) × 46 = €321,080 a year.
The scale of disengagement.
Engagement has fallen to its lowest level since the pandemic. The 2026 Gallup data shows a workforce that is, on the whole, switched off — and managers are taking the hardest hit.
What it costs.
Disengagement is not a soft metric. Gallup puts a hard number on it, and at the organization level it converts directly into lost productivity, turnover and absence.
Our cost-of-burnout calculator estimates the turnover, productivity and absence cost for your own headcount, salary and sector — with every assumption shown.
What drives it.
Disengagement is rarely about effort or attitude. The data points to structural causes — and to depletion as a leading one.
The capacity signal.
Engagement tells you whether people are switched on. It can't tell you whether they have the capacity to stay that way. Our validation study (n=10,000+) quantifies the gap.
Method & sources.
This page curates published engagement statistics alongside thrive at work's own validation data. External figures are summarized directionally with the source and year given; the global cost and engagement figures are Gallup's. Figures attributed to thrive at work come from our validation study (n=10,000+, 2025–26) and are labelled as such.
We review this page quarterly and refresh figures as new editions of the underlying reports are published. Last reviewed June 2026.
- Gallup — State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report (published April 2026, data collected 2025). Global engagement (20%), the not-engaged (64%) / actively-disengaged (16%) split, daily stress (40%), Europe (12%) and manager engagement. The ~$8.8tn / ~9%-of-GDP cost of low engagement is Gallup's flagship estimate from the report narrative.
- SHRM — Cost of replacing an employee. Replacement cost commonly estimated at one-half to two times annual salary.
- Maslach & Leiter — Areas of Worklife. The framework linking workload, control and recovery to disengagement and burnout.
- thrive at work — validation study, n=10,000+, 2025–26. Capacity's unique explained variance, the engagement-return multiplier, and the retention gradient.
Common questions
How much does employee disengagement cost?
What percentage of employees are engaged at work in 2026?
Why does measuring capacity reduce the cost?
Stop paying for disengagement you can't see.
Thrive measures capacity and engagement together — per team, before disengagement turns into attrition. Book a diagnostic call to see how.