Your Employees’ Disconnection Is Your Customers’ Business
Companies depend on their people to deliver on promises, solve problems, build relationships, and create reasons for customers to return. When employees lose their connection to the organization, those capabilities are at risk.
That is why Gallup’s latest employee engagement findings are quite alarming and deserve attention in every leadership meeting.
According to its October 28 report, just 29% of U.S. employees were engaged in the third quarter of 2026. This is the lowest levels of engagement since 2011! Another 53% were not engaged, and 18% were actively disengaged. This is not good.
Behind those numbers are people making decisions that affect customers every day. Those leadership decisions connect the employee experience to business performance. And the purpose of a business is to create value for customers. Talent creates value through judgment, ownership, and connection.
A company can hire highly capable people and still create an environment that makes it difficult for them to contribute.
Consider an experienced service employee who recognizes that a customer’s repeated complaints stem from a broken internal process. That employee may know EXACTLY what needs to change. But if raising the issue invites criticism, and fixing it requires layers of approval, and performance is measured primarily by how quickly the interaction ends? Then the organization has made meaningful resolution harder.
The company still has the talent. But it is failing to make effective use of it.
The business consequences can extend well beyond that interaction: repeat contacts, unnecessary rework, customer frustration, lost renewals, and employees who eventually stop offering ideas.
This is what makes engagement mission critical. Companies need people who can apply their capabilities, exercise sound judgment, and take responsibility for outcomes. Hiring talent is only the beginning. Leaders must create the conditions that allow that talent to produce value.
Leadership is the linchpin.
Two findings in Gallup’s report are particularly revealing:
Only 49% of employees strongly agreed that they knew what was expected of them.
Only 37% strongly agreed that their supervisor or someone at work cared about them as a person, down from 40%.
Clarity and care are fundamental leadership responsibilities.
Clarity means helping employees understand what success looks like, which priorities matter, and how to navigate competing demands. If leaders tell employees to put customers first but reward speed regardless of resolution, they have created a conflict employees must manage.
Care becomes credible through daily behavior: listening when someone identifies a problem, providing useful coaching, addressing unreasonable workloads, and supporting people who exercise thoughtful judgment.
Leaders influence whether employees feel able to speak up, whether managers have time to develop their teams, and whether organizational incentives support the customer promise.
Customers experience the consequences of those leadership choices.
They experience them as a smooth handoff or another explanation of the same problem. As a thoughtful solution or an employee who needs permission for every decision. As a commitment kept or a promise nobody owns. I am certain every single person reading this has felt this way at work before.
Technology raises the importance of getting this right.
AI can help employees access information, automate routine tasks, and respond faster. Realizing that value requires decisions about how work should change, where human judgment remains essential, and who is accountable when something goes wrong.
Gallup found particularly sharp engagement declines among remote and hybrid employees, especially in organizations adopting AI. Those findings do not establish that AI caused disengagement. They do raise a practical leadership question: Is the support people receive keeping pace with the changes being introduced?
Deploying technology without clear expectations can leave employees uncertain about their responsibilities and their future. Leaders need to explain how new tools help people serve customers, provide opportunities to develop relevant skills, and evaluate whether the changes actually improve outcomes.
A faster response has limited value if the customer still needs to call back.
Customer-driven leadership makes the connections explicit.
For leaders, the response should be practical:
1. Define success in customer terms. Help each team understand whose experience it affects and what a successful outcome looks like.
2. Remove obstacles to ownership. Give employees appropriate authority, resources, and support to resolve problems.
3. Reward the behaviors the customer promise requires. Examine whether targets encourage resolution, collaboration, and long-term relationships.
4. Connect employee feedback to operational results. Investigate whether unclear expectations, poor handoffs, or insufficient support coincide with rework, complaints, or customer losses.
5. Develop managers as leaders. Give them the time and capability to coach, clarify priorities, and help people navigate change.
Gallup’s findings should prompt leaders to examine those decisions. A company’s investment in talent delivers value when people have the clarity, support, and opportunity to contribute. Leadership makes that possible, and customers have a direct stake in whether it happens.
Where might your customers already be experiencing the cost of an employee problem your leadership team has yet to address?