How to Strengthen Manager Engagement? Measurement and Program Design for HR

How Can Executive Commitment Be Strengthened?

Manager engagement is one of the indicators that directly shapes an organization’s capacity to deliver change programs. According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace: 2026 report, global employee engagement stood at 20% in 2025. The same report shows that engagement among managers fell from 31% in 2022 to 22% in 2025. In organizations that apply best practices, by contrast, this figure reaches 79% (Gallup, 2026).

HR approaches this picture not as a motivation issue but as a system that can be designed. Strengthening manager engagement requires building a measurement set, reporting the data at manager level and designing a program that responds to the findings. These steps are covered in order below.

What Does Manager Engagement Measure?

Manager engagement shows the extent to which a manager is intellectually and emotionally involved in their work and their organization. Measurement covers areas such as clarity of expectations, scope of decision-making, access to the resources needed to get the work done, frequency of development conversations and the visibility of employee contribution within the organization. These are not personality traits but working conditions designed by the organization, which makes them areas where HR can intervene directly.

HR reports the results separately for the management tier. The reason is that a manager holds two roles at once: an employee accountable for their own targets, and a practitioner who shapes their team’s working conditions. When a manager’s own role clarity is lacking, the target and priority messages they pass on to the team lose clarity as well. Manager data is therefore tracked as a distinct segment rather than being absorbed into overall employee data.

For senior leadership, this segment is a performance variable. The engagement level of the management tier affects how quickly targets cascade to teams, the implementation rate of change programs and retention in critical roles. Making the measurement manager-specific also gives the people report presented to the board a concrete indicator.

Building the Measurement Set

HR starts with the annual engagement survey and defines the manager group as a separate cut. The segmentation uses management level, span of control (the number of direct reports per manager), function and tenure as a manager. These four variables show which manager group a finding belongs to and make program design targeted.

The survey alone does not form a sufficient set of indicators. The data HR adds alongside it includes manager turnover rate, the share of manager positions filled through internal promotion, the completion rate of development conversations, annual leave utilization and the number of direct reports per manager. These data come from HR’s existing systems and add no extra survey burden.

Alongside the annual survey, the measurement calendar includes two interim pulse surveys. The pulse survey is kept short and focuses only on the areas being addressed. A confidentiality threshold is set for reporting: results for groups below a defined headcount are not reported separately but are rolled up into the next level. Announcing this threshold at the outset directly supports the participation rate.

Gallup’s 2026 report shows that global wellbeing was measured at 34%, and that leaders and managers report stress, anger, sadness and loneliness at higher levels than individual contributors (Gallup, 2026). With this finding in mind, HR adds questions on workload and recovery to the measurement set, so that engagement data is read together with working conditions rather than in isolation.

The final step in building the measurement set is deciding who the data will be shared with. Results are opened to senior leadership at company level, to functional heads at the level of their own teams, and to HR business partners in the detail needed for program design. Announcing the sharing plan before the survey supports both participation and the translation of results into action.

Program Design: Workload, Authority and Support

Once measurement is complete, HR turns the findings into a program under three headings: the structure of the workload, the limits of decision authority and the support provided to managers.

The program components are defined as follows:

•       Reviewing span of control: The number of direct reports, the complexity of the work and geographic spread are assessed together.

•       Documenting decision authority: Approval levels, spending limits and exception processes are defined in a delegation of authority matrix.

•       Reducing administrative load: Recurring reports are consolidated, and requests for the same data in different formats are discontinued.

•       Development modules: Practice-focused sessions are planned on managing difficult conversations, feedback, delegation and prioritization.

•       Peer groups and executive coaching: Manager peer groups that meet at regular intervals and individual coaching processes are introduced.

•       Recognition: The manager’s contribution to developing their team is included as a defined item in the performance system.

Of these components, the one most often overlooked is reducing administrative load. Even when a development session is on the calendar, the program may stay on paper if the manager’s weekly schedule leaves no time to apply it. When HR builds the program calendar, it therefore also puts the manager’s existing meeting and reporting load on the agenda.

Tracking Impact and Reporting to Leadership

HR completes the baseline measurement before the program starts and documents the target indicators. Once the program is under way, measurement is repeated in the sixth and twelfth months. The indicators tracked include the manager group’s engagement score, the engagement score of the teams reporting to those managers, manager turnover rate and the share of manager positions filled through internal promotion. Without a baseline, later results cannot be linked to the program.

Measurement is also used in transformation projects. Gallup’s 2026 report shows that 12% of employees strongly agree that AI has transformed their work, and that a manager actively supporting its use is among the strongest signals of adoption (Gallup, 2026). This finding means manager readiness should be treated as part of the project plan in new tool and working-model projects. How engagement measurement is set up across the organization is covered in our article on measuring employee engagement and turning it into action.

The tracking rhythm is tied to the leadership agenda twice a year. The first review shows which program components have been implemented; the second shows the change in the indicators. Between the two reviews, feedback from managers is collected and program components are updated during the year, so there is no need to wait for the next measurement cycle.

In the report to senior leadership, the indicators are translated into the language of decisions: the effect of changes in manager turnover on hiring and onboarding costs, the contribution of the internal promotion rate to succession planning and how the program budget is allocated. How early-tenure support is designed for newly appointed managers is covered in our article on the transition program for first-time managers.

Manager engagement is not something a single training can address; it is a systems effort that delivers results when measurement, program components and tracking rhythm are defined together. To see where this structure fits within your organization’s development architecture, explore our training and development programs.

As Kaan Böke Management Consulting, we offer strategic and actionable solutions drawing on more than 35 years of corporate experience and more than 25 years of C-level leadership perspective. For work on strengthening manager engagement in your organization, get in touch.

Source: Gallup. (2026). State of the Global Workplace: 2026 Report. Gallup, Inc.