Worker engagement just hit a decade low — and new data from 88 million employees shows why managers are the problem

Michael Scott, the hapless regional manager at the center of the American version of “The Office” played by Steve Carell, believed he was the world’s best boss. He even had the mug to prove it. Meanwhile, for most of the show’s 2005-2013 run, his employees endured pointless meetings, cringed through his speeches and quietly counted the hours until they could leave.

The joke worked because so many viewers recognized something universal: the gap between how bosses sees themselves and how workers actually experience them. That gap is no longer just a sitcom premise. It may be the central reason American workplaces are in trouble.

In the U.S., only about 30% of part-time and full-time employees say they are engaged at work, according to an annual Gallup survey.

That’s the lowest level in more than a decade. Determining whether am employee is engaged boils down to a single question: Does the work matter to the person doing it? Engaged employees are invested in the outcome of their work.

Disengaged ones have stopped caring. I’m a cultural historian who has written extensively about workplace culture, including the book “The Authentic Leader: The Power of Deep Leadership in Work and Life.” And I believe that when more than two-thirds of the workforce is checked out, it’s evidence of a widespread leadership failure.

What gets said behind closed doors One reason why most workers aren’t engaged on the job has to do with their psychological safety, meaning whether they feel they can speak up, ask questions or admit mistakes without being punished. I have been tracking the gap between psychological safety as a stated value for employers and the lived reality of their employees for years. Amy Edmondson, a leadership and management scholar, has pioneered research in this area.

Teams with that have high levels of psychological safety outperform those that don’t, she’s found. When employees feel psychologically unsafe, they go quiet, contributing to the widespread lack of engagemen