A new report on India’s workplaces, by Gallup and the Institute of Directors, has produced a number that ought to have chief executives choking on their purpose statements. Only 23% of Indian employees are engaged, while 59% are not engaged. The latter group, we are told, are “quiet quitting”: they meet the basic requirements of their jobs but are disinclined to contribute much by way of discretionary effort.
That is a lot of people doing precisely what the job description says, and not an inch more. It is also an expensive way to wait for a meeting to end. Gallup estimates disengagement costs India $351 billion, or about 9% of GDP, in lost productivity each year.
The figures invite the usual corporate response: find the offending employees and arrange a resilience workshop, complete with fruit and an exercise in which everyone writes one word describing how they feel. The more interesting diagnosis is that the problem is not primarily employee laziness or disloyalty. It is that too many people have stopped seeing a convincing connection between their work and the organisation.
The middle manager has the most difficult job in the building. Their bosses want transformation; their teams want work-life balance; HR wants engagement scores while Finance wants lower costs and Technology wants them to embrace AI. Meanwhile, everybody wants another meeting.
The numbers suggest managers are struggling with this assignment. Engagement among Indian managers fell from 39% in 2024 to 30% in 2025. Among individual contributors it fell from 24% to 19%. Managers are expected to translate strategy into daily life, clarify expectations, coach performance, recognise contributions, and explain why the latest reorganisation is somehow good news. They are also expected to attend meetings about reducing meetings.
Companies then make matters worse in a wonderfully predictable fashion. They take their best engineer, salesperson, or accountant, promote that person to manager and hand over a dozen human beings. The assumption appears to be that skill at selling insurance or writing code mysteriously confers skill at dealing with sulking, ambition, anxiety, rivalry, and the colleague who wants to know why somebody else received a 9% raise. It does not.
This is where the findings are more hopeful than their headline. Forty-one per cent of the members surveyed say managers should be selected for talent and role fit, rather than simply past performance. Forty-three per cent want teams in which colleagues support and rely on one another. An equal number call for better coaching, simpler technology, and less complicated processes.
These are not revolutionary demands. They are closer to a plea for the basics. Choose people who can manage people; give them time to do it and remove the administrative furniture that blocks the door. Tell employees what good work looks like, notice it when they do it, and explain decisions before the rumour mill does. It is not glamorous work, which is probably why it gets replaced by a dashboard, workshop, and a laminated card explaining the company’s values again.
The strongest insight is that disengagement is not treated as an employee attitude problem for HR to repair. It is evidence about how an organisation is run. Employees notice how promotions are decided, whether leaders explain difficult choices, and whether the values poster survives contact with a budget meeting.
The findings deserve serious attention because they connect engagement to ordinary management decisions. They do not promise that a happier workforce will solve everything. They say that clarity, trust, recognition, development, and sensible role design make performance more likely. That is less exciting than a culture initiative, but considerably more useful. The good news is that employees do not need to be persuaded to care harder. They need better reasons to care. Managers need the authority and support to create those reasons. This may require fewer slogans, better decisions, and, in extreme cases, cancelling a meeting.