Remote workers have the highest levels of engagement and life satisfaction, a new global workplace study reveals.
Exclusively remote employees are the most engaged, according to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report.
Remote working advocacy group Grow Remote points to the report’s findings as evidence of how ingrained the model has become in today’s workplace and that it is here to stay.
“Remote work isn’t the future – it’s the present. The organisations that empower their people to thrive in this new world of work will be the ones that lead in tomorrow’s competitive markets”
Grow Remote is a social enterprise on a mission to solve the problems of remote work.
The Gallup report indicates that exclusively remote employees report the highest levels of engagement at 31% and the highest life satisfaction levels at 42%.
Navigating the post-pandemic landscape
The comprehensive study, which surveyed workers across 160 countries, delivers critical insights for employers navigating the post-pandemic landscape.
“The question for leaders is no longer ‘if’ remote work is viable,” notes the report. “It is now about HOW work is done, not where.”
Graham Harron from Grow Remote said this paradigm shift sits at the core of Grow Remote’s mission to help employers, policymakers, and communities unlock the full potential of distributed work arrangements.
The organisation has been tracking these trends since 2018, but the latest Gallup findings provide the most comprehensive data yet on how different work models impact everything from employee engagement to daily stress levels.
Global engagement in general decline
Perhaps most alarming is Gallup’s revelation that global employee engagement fell from 23% to 21% in 2024. This represents only the second decline in over a decade and has cost the global economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity.
The most dramatic drops occurred among managers, whose engagement levels fell from 30% to 27%, with female managers and those under 35 experiencing the steepest declines. Meanwhile, engagement among individual contributors remained flat at 18%.
“Managers are now caught between heightened executive expectations and employee demands for autonomy, inclusion, and balance,” explains Gallup. “They are doing more with less while trying to meet the needs of everyone around them.”
The research organisation warns this is not a temporary issue. To improve team performance, organisations must fundamentally “redefine the role of the manager,” transforming it into one centred on coaching, support, and human connection.
Remote workers lead in engagement
One of the study’s most striking findings is that fully remote employees report the highest levels of engagement at 31%, significantly outpacing their hybrid (23%), on-site remote-capable (23%), and on-site non-remote-capable (19%) counterparts.
Harron says this supports what Grow Remote observes daily: when remote work is implemented with intentionality and structure, people and teams thrive, Gallup further notes that 70% of team engagement is influenced by the manager, underscoring that strong, capable leadership remains essential regardless of work location.
Hybrid advantage
While fully remote workers lead in engagement, hybrid arrangements appear to offer the best overall life satisfaction.
Both hybrid workers and on-site employees in remote-capable roles report the highest life satisfaction levels at 42%, compared to 36% for fully remote workers and just 30% for non-remote-capable roles.
This suggests that a blend of flexibility and structure supports wellbeing more effectively than either extreme of full-time office presence or complete remote isolation.
The remote work paradox
Yet the Gallup data reveals a complex picture. Despite higher engagement levels, fully remote employees are more likely to report daily stress (45%) and loneliness (27%) than their office-based counterparts. They also express the highest levels of daily anger (25%) compared to hybrid workers (17%).
Perhaps most concerning for employers, 57% of remote workers report they are watching for or actively seeking new roles – significantly higher than on-site workers in remote-capable positions (45%).
“This is not necessarily a sign of disengagement,” Harron explains. “Rather, it may reflect limited career visibility, a desire for growth, or lack of upward mobility in distributed environments.”
Grow Remote said the phenomenon underscores the importance of the organisation’s programme of localised social connection events for remote workers. In 2024 alone, the organisation hosted more than 300 meetups for almost 2,500 remote workers across Ireland, with four out of five attendees reporting they “met with interesting people and had fun.”
Management training gap
While the 2025 report captures the current drop in manager engagement, Gallup’s complementary 2023 research provides deeper insight into why so many leaders are struggling in this new environment.
When surveyed about organisational changes, only 48% of managers strongly agreed they had the skills to be exceptional at their job. Most had not received training on conducting meaningful conversations or best practices in engagement and performance coaching. Perhaps most alarming, just three in ten hybrid managers had received any formal training on leading in hybrid environments.
In their April 2025 update, Gallup emphasised: “The best organisations we’ve studied put manager training and development at the centre of their strategy. Even rudimentary training shows benefits to engagement. However, managers who receive best-practice training have seen their own engagement and their team’s engagement improve substantially. Management performance metrics improved by 20% to 28%.”
The path forward
For organisations navigating this complex landscape, Gallup’s research across 2023 and 2025 points to one clear imperative: building a successful remote or hybrid workforce requires focused, intentional leadership and investment in three key areas:
- Intentional connection activities – to foster cohesion and belonging between teams
- Leadership and management training – focused on targeted skills development
- Redefining the role and support for managers – to counter declining trends in key metrics
As workforce expectations continue to evolve and artificial intelligence further reshapes job functions, organisations that adapt quickly to these new realities will gain significant competitive advantages. Remote work isn’t just a pandemic-era experiment – it’s now a permanent feature of the global workplace landscape.
Grow Remote urges that the companies that empower their people to thrive in this new distributed environment will be best positioned to attract top talent, maintain high engagement, and lead in tomorrow’s increasingly competitive markets.
“Remote work isn’t the future – it’s the present,” Harron says. “The organisations that empower their people to thrive in this new world of work will be the ones that lead in tomorrow’s competitive markets.”
Image at top: Photo by Kristin Wilson on Unsplash
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